SUMMER UNKNOWN LEGEND – 75 Gms

“…Now she’s dressin’ two kids,
Lookin’ for a magic kiss,
She gets the far-away look in her eyes
But somewhere on a desert highway,
She rides a Harley-Davidson,
Her long blonde hair flyin’ in the wind.
She’s been runnin’ half her life,
The chrome and steel she rides,
Collidin’ with the very air she breathes
….The air she breathes…”
                – Neil Young ‘Unknown Legend’

There are things that age with you, then there are things, both blessed and stubborn, that refuse to age with you. To say that they don’t age, is to say that they shift-shape, transform, seep deep – into pith and marrow, into ink and paper, into song and sensation, into seasons and scents and textures and tears. There’s almost always a wildness to such things, but only in reminiscence, never up-close – that is, before memory touched and turned them memorable- from way back, when they were a part of you! Memory of this alluring, far-off ‘country’ where such blessed, stubborn, ageless and wild things live – one we can never return to – pierces our delicate heart with such a holy, hurting sweetness that, they say, we turn vengeful and give them names – Nostalgia! Adolescence! Romanticism! It is not easy coming to terms with a feeling that you don’t know how to claim – so we resort to naming. It’s hard to say what inspires the act of naming – vengeance or a desire for peace. Maybe, a bit of both.

Naming such blessed, stubborn, ageless and wild things, weather vengeful or not, does very little to make one feel less like a tourist in our own youth – it does however feel more like making peace with an unknown legend of our own past – the country where our very own blessed, stubborn, ageless, wild things live! It’s strange. It’s all very strange.

 Strange isn’t the nostalgic longing for how we used to be, who we used to be and when we used to be – we are, after all, creatures with wonder – the only part of the universe that’s self-conscious. Strange is how much of that yearning survives and how we fail to realize that it comes bearing reminders to make peace with the ambivalence, the duality and the incohesion residing in us- those that we are constantly at war with; reminder that it is the nostalgia – a pure feeling different from knowing, believing or thinking – that makes up this life’s “wholeness”– yet another pure feeling, different from knowing, believing or thinking! The difficult part isn’t making peace with a feeling – difficult is making peace with what one knows, believes or thinks- that which makes us wage wars against our own ambiguity and duality. One should assume- that is how we lose a feeling!

This isn’t your favorite tea – at least it doesn’t begin that way. It begins much more simply: with a willingness to settle for something far less – say maybe a conversation about your favorites, with you sitting down in that old, not too comfortable chair you keep for sentimental reasons. Its aroma – proof enough of its intention – helps you make up your mind: “It’s a young tea – for sure, but definitely has the old tea – long drawn, storytelling vibe, not too exuberant, not too revealing, not too impatient and in no rush to reveal it all……Wait! What’s that?”- that’s when something disrupts the comfort and you notice – like an accident on the road, you must oblige – you’re in conversation with an Unknown Legend of your own past, nostalgically narrating its notes in deep, earthy tone that’s feeding back into something essentially and sincerely feminine – exactly like Linda Ronstadt singing the chorus with Neil Young!

Unknown legend comes bearing its relative obscurity- familiar yet unintentionally unmentioned, maybe even overlooked – in both Neil Young’s catalogue and the Darjeeling hills – a title befitting, literally, of the P312 cultivar from the hills of Darjeeling. Just like the song, it is ‘Twang Tinged’– like an Unripe apple but not quite sour, like caramelized sugar but not as sweet! More lumbering than woody, Herby– slightly Hay like, heavy notes narrating and dispensing distinctly sweet and feminine aromas of Dark Honey, Toffee and Candy, it is a full-bodied tea with a long aftertaste. Darker than the more Redder Autumn Exile and not as large as the slightly Greener  Spring Petrichor, Unknown Legend  bears the same warm and comforting profile, if a little more intense – going well beyond the conformity of memory, into the far-off ‘country’ of pure ‘feeling’ – where your blessed, stubborn, ageless and wild things live!

“I am nostalgic for my twenties but I can tell you for sure that they weren’t as great as I now crack them up to be. I was always broke, I was often lonely, and I had some really terrible clothes. But my life was shiny and unblemished. Everything was ahead of me. I walked around with an abiding feeling that, at any given time, anything could go in any direction. And it was often true” – Meghan Daum