Incense In The Wind

Radiating Incense In The Wind - a painting by Hai Linh Le

Sunday 20 August 2023

Bimal (BAW) Shree Vitthal Flora Sticks

 


I picked this up from a UK eBay seller, Home-giftSolutions - recommended to me on the Reddit incense forum, which is a useful international resource and place to gather and chat. The eBay seller has imported a selection of 50g packets of rich incense by a variety of little known but traditional Indian manufacturers. The prices include postage, and represent excellent value for money. 

This is a 50g packet of flora style incense - such incense tends to be a richer, fatter, and wetter form of masala, often heavy with fragrance oils.  This is certainly heavy and moist, though is perhaps a little thinner than the average flora/fluxo. 

The scent on the stick is perfumed and volatile with touches of alcohol and fruit and cleaning materials - it is mildly sharp, alert, clean, softly acerbic. It presents to me like a mixture of fruit gin, wax furniture polish, and mouth wash. It's curious and mildly pleasant. More curious than pleasant, though not at all offensive. I could sniff for hours and discover new scent suggestions - chocolate, sandalwood, etc, though I'm not finding it especially compelling nor as interesting as it could be. It's like the scents are just dumped there - they don't actually integrate or contrast in a way that intrigues or delights. Nice though. 

The scent on the burn lacks clarity. It has a warm, smoky presence, not too assertive, but certainly enough to makes itself known and to inform a large room. There are elements in the burn of the scents on the stick, but with little distinction - the scents sort of merge in a homogenised and pleasant whole. I do like it - this is my sort of incense, but the vagueness and lack of clarity means it's not an incense that interests or excites me. It's a lower end decent incense. 

The company, Bimal Agarbatti Works (BAW), is a family business founded in 1979 by Jaswantray Acharya in Rajkot, a large city in the Gujarat region on the west coast of India. They sell a wide range of perfumed and masala incense. They don't appear to have an outlet in the West, though some individuals are selling them on eBay. 


Date: Aug 2023   Score: 34 

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