It seems like the season of Rotary Fellowships. Suddenly in the space of a few weeks we at Rotary News have received a bunch of requests to feature this Rotary Fellowship group or that… First it was the biking enthusiasts and then one of hypnosis and healing, and this month we are talking about a group of tea lovers in Bengaluru, who take their tea fellowship very seriously, with their meetings complete with a tea sommelier!
I didn’t know there were tea sommeliers, I joke with Chetan Navin Kamani, who was recently installed the chair for this three-year-old fellowship. He tells me they recently met at the Leela Palace, where the hotel’s tea sommelier “crafted a special blend of tea exclusively for the occasion.”
“Oh yes, now there are water sommeliers too,” he responds.
Anyway, the tea specially blended for the occasion was named Karmayogi Tea and no prizes for guessing that it was created for the occasion to recognise the immense contribution of time, money and service to Rotary by Ravishankar Dakoju, who is presently DG of RID 3192.
This special tea was blended by bringing together Oolong tea and Moroccan mint “to create harmony in a single cup,” says Kamani, adding, “The Oolong brought depth, refinement and character. The Moroccan mint brought freshness, vitality and energy. Together, they made a rather fitting metaphor for the man himself — depth with purpose, character with conviction, and an ever-fresh energy to keep doing good.”
He winds up this generous description of Dakoju by saying: “We all felt that this was gratitude, served in a cup at an occasion to celebrate a life defined by purpose, service and giving.” The reference was to Dakoju’s major greening project titled Dhanyavad.
Lest you want to pick up your phone and order a few packets of the Karmayogi tea, Kamani explains that this tea was “not picked from a catalogue, nor created for sale. It was created for just one evening and is not commercially available.”
But Dakoju, who is apparently a tea lover himself, created quite a flutter when he said he’d like to buy a few packets! Somehow the fellowship members used the good services of the hotel’s tea sommelier to put together a takeaway package for their special guest!
Kamani himself is a tea lover and when I ask him about his favourite tea, I half expect the name of some fancy tea from an exotic tea destination. But pat comes the reply: Masala chai, our normal typical Indian tea with ginger, lemongrass and mint.
The fellowship has over 500 members, most of them in Bengaluru. A meeting is held every month and about 30–40 members attend it, and at the event different kinds of tea are paired with different food courses. Says the tea aficionado Kamani, “At these events we have tasted a whole lot of different teas, right from Turkish teas to Chinese and Japanese teas. The tea sommeliers tell us stories about different kinds of teas, which as you know, range from teas grown in hills to coastal areas. And each tea has its own story… how it was grown, how the leaves were plucked, the special way to prepare it to bring out the best taste.”
So what made them choose Dakoju for creating a special blend in his name? I’d have thought the man is more a dal-rice, tea-kadai cup-of-tea kind of a person? “Because he is so special and known for giving back to society… so we thought we should give back to him a specially curated tea,” says Kamani.
Apart from the Karmayogi blend, other teas served included ginger tea, Yerba Mate, a traditional south American herbal drink, Sulemani tea and Sencha, a refined Japanese green tea.
These tea lovers already have their next fellowship meet planned… apart from a later trip to Darjeeling… at the Four Seasons Hotel to sample the Kombucha tea. As he is so excited about this meet, I Google it and find this on the hotel’s info sheet. “ Discover the fizzy, flavourful world of Kombucha. Sample a variety of house-brewed flavours — ginger, berry, citrus and herbal — while learning about the subtle differences in sweetness, acidity and carbonation. Dive into the basics of fermentation…”
Whoever said only wine tasting has a lot of hype and hoopla? Bengaluru’s tea lovers can give them a run for their money. And at that meet, I am sure the cup of these tea lovers will truly runneth over…