green

I am in the south of India, high in the Western Ghats: the mountain range which runs down the west side of India. And I'm in the middle of a tea plantation. Looking around me, I see the tea plants everywhere, stretching to the horizon, hill after hill covered in tea. And there a few other trees planted in amongst the tea, mostly eucalypts, dotted here and there. And this landscape, covered in these plants, is green – very, very green. The tea especially has a vibrant green colour, in the fierce noonday sun.

Nature creates many colours, but the colour I most associate with the natural world is green: the foliage of plants photosynthesising. There would be no life on Earth without this, at least not on the land. Ultimately we all rely on this green. It's the colour of life, the colour that takes sun's energy and converts it into other forms of energy, that the plants – and indirectly us animals too – can use to sustain ourselves.

And sitting here in the sun, surrounded by this green, I feel the energy of it all soaking into me. It feels so vital, so alive. It's as if I'm not even just seeing the green. It's as if it's oozing into me, being imbibed through the pores of my skin: green.

And it's not only that it's vitalising me. There's a paradox here. It's also relaxing me. I feel I can afford to relax. Ahh. I don't need to strive. It's as if all this green is reminding me that life is given to us. We don't need to struggle. It's not supposed to be a huge effort. We can afford to relax and soak it up.

So I am thankful for all this green, for all these tea plants, and not only for all the chai that they make: I'm thankful for their greenness.