SPRING GREAT WHITE – 50 Gms

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing views. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets’ towers into a dark primeval  forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottoes of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightening clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you—beyond that next turning of the canyon walls. So long”. – Edward Abbey (Benediction)

….It was an advice we’ve remembered since, that asked gently to “just pay attention” while praying and then “patch a few words together without trying to make them elaborate, for praying isn’t a contest but a doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak”. Since then, we’ve come to realize that the advice for praying works equally for a blessing, an apology, a goodbye or say, an offering. Since then, we’ve learnt to hush the contestant within us, every time we feel a doorway into thanks opening up – which is to say without trying to be elaborate, every once in a while, we let the offering speak for itself.

The ‘Great White Benediction’ would have been too elaborate, simply ‘benediction’ would’ve been too presumptuous, too disrespectful, too loud to be an offering – it’s White and it’s Great, so Great White. It’s the vivid flavor of Green Bamboos when freshly cut and laid bare to dry in the sun – flavors not quite woody, not quite grassy not quite floral but all present densely enough, that is plenty to open a doorway into thanks.  The Lemons – its aroma offers benediction – brings out the tangier and fruitier side but only till the trail winds into flavors of warm biscuits and salted butter. The Green Bamboo aroma, just beyond that next turning, now turns musky and floral and sweet. Yield of very high-altitude mixed leaves – one can still make out the B157 and AV2, however it is dense for a white tea – another way of saying its complexity sticks to the palate, gives it a vibe – something that need not necessarily be chased down by the mind – instead offers benediction – a silence in which another voice may speak.