Ranga Rao Cycle Brand Heritage Chandanam Prayer Sticks

 

A Cycle Brand masala incense picked up from my local incense shop. This is a fairly crude masala - there is sandalwood here, but it's not creamy and sweet, it's quite rough and earthy and dark. There is an appeal here, but quite a basic one - like a cuppa with spotted dick at Joe's Caff compared to cream tea at the Ritz.  Both have their charms, but in a different way. 

The stick itself is quite rough. A paste made from fragrant ingredients, binder, charcoal dust, and water has been hand rolled onto a plain bamboo splint, and then rolled in a finishing powder to prevent the wet paste from sticking to other finished sticks.  The paste has dried hard. The appearance is what you might expect if you shoved a stick up the arse of someone with diarrhoea. The stick itself feels rough and bumpy. It's not promising. The scent on the stick is OK. Not great, but OK. It is quite flowery - the scent propelled by a fragrance oil or perfume. 

On the burn the scent is woody and earthy. The tones are dark and heavy, and the flowery fragrance that was on the stick doesn't really show up here. I have found it is often the case that lighter fragrances (such as fruits and florals) can get swamped by heavy ones (such as musks and woods), and that oil or perfume scents are often lovely on the stick, but can burn off quickly, so are sometimes unable to make themselves noticed against the organic material which burn more slowly. 

Overall I'm not impressed with this incense, though it is sturdy and workmanlike, and I have a modest liking for it. It's not a good sandalwood, but the general spicy wood aroma is cleansing and reassuring.   

Date: March 2022   Score: 24 

 

Though there is an appearance of this being a masala incense, it smells and behaves like a perfumed incense. There is a sharp volatility to the scent on the stick, with that petrol/alcohol tang you get with perfumed products such as car air-fresheners, disinfectant, etc. It's not an unpleasant scent - far from it: it has a solid sandalwood scent. But it is not pure. It is not magic. It is not natural.  

  

The burn is acceptable. It is a sandalwood scent. It burns at a decent pace - never getting too hot, too false, too smoky, or too intrusive. It gently informs the room with the scent of sandalwood. But it's not sandalwood. It smells like sandalwood, but lacks the beauty, the sweetness, the sexiness, the calmness, the essence of sandalwood. It is simply a pleasant scent that reminds us of sandalwood - like looking at a photo of a field rather than being in the field. 

Date: Jan 2023    Score:  24

***

Ranga Rao 

Sandalwood