Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes #3) - Sonali Dev Page 0,68
bowl in the sink and rinsed it off. “Maybe I’ll have some more oats. Did you have Mr. Raje try some?”
“Call me Yash, please. And India was kind enough to offer—”
“Yash didn’t find them appetizing enough to try,” India said.
Tara looked horrified. Yash looked cornered.
“No one who’s tried India’s oats hasn’t loved them,” Tara said, with the kind of determination that usually went with words like, You’re getting out of this over my dead body. She pushed the bowl India had filled toward Yash.
To his credit, he did not step back. In this moment it was clear the man had warrior ancestors.
Something ominously close to a giggle escaped India. She turned it into a cough. The look he gave her nudged awake parts of her she hadn’t used in a very long time. A look hungry for her laugh. The one he had once extracted from her over and over. With far too much ease. How easy she’d been. How careless with her self. She reached for the bowl—time to stop this idiocy.
He scooped it up before she got to it. Then took a spoonful and pushed it into his mouth.
Against her better judgment, she waited, jaw thrust out, refusing to show the anticipation burning her throat. She was a terrible cook in most instances, but she loved her overnight oats, she was proud of them, and if he didn’t like them, well, people had a right to their opinion.
A whole array of emotions flitted across his face. All of which boiled down to disbelief. “It’s . . . umm . . . very fruity,” he said, as though “fruity” were the rarest of tastes. “What’s that crunch I’m tasting?”
Holding her amusement in was a losing battle. Clearing her throat, she answered, “That’s chia seed.”
“Ah.” The future governor of California obviously had no idea what chia seeds were.
“It’s surprisingly . . .” He struggled to find the exact right word.
“Delicious?” Tara was smiling too now.
“Ingestible?” India said.
“It’s certainly that. But also, different from anything I’ve ever ingested before.”
She pressed a hand to her heart. “Easy with the praise. You’ll turn a girl’s head.”
Tara started laughing and he joined her. Something bright and shiny lit the room.
“Please tell me the future governor of California has tasted overnight oats before,” Tara said. “Next you’ll say you don’t drink wine. California has standards, son!”
“Well, fortunately what I lack in oats I make up for with wine. And now India has fixed me for the oats-based voters. So, thank you.” He took another bite, looking like the action took him completely by surprise.
India felt her cheeks warm. “Please, we’re teasing you. Don’t feel like you have to.”
“No, you’re right. This is surprisingly ingestible.”
Her mother let out another laugh. “Speaking of ingestible, have you heard of Agastya Rishi? He ran a gurukul, a school that only the most brilliant scholars were admitted into.”
Yash took another bite and nodded encouragingly. India gave up on trying to stop her mother.
“Once, he developed an abscess in his leg. It filled up with pus and swelled up to twice its size.” She patted her calf, and India fought to hold in her groan. “It was declared that he would die unless someone sucked the pus out of his leg.”
“Mom, please,” India said, but Yash looked fascinated and horrified and so utterly baffled that no more words came out.
“What?” Tara said. “They didn’t have medical instruments back then, so sucking on abscesses was the only way to save his life.”
That couldn’t possibly be true, but it was one of Mom’s stories and India bit her tongue.
“Did someone?” Yash asked, throwing a wary glance at the spoon of yogurt he’d been about to put in his mouth.
“Agastya asked all his disciples if they would do it. They all refused. But there was one boy, a servant boy who had served Agastya day and night. He was devoted to the sage but was too poor to be his student. Without a moment’s hesitation he offered to do it.”
India groaned. Yash gasped.
“And?” they both asked together.
Tara smiled. “And he did it. But instead of pus, the sage’s abscess was filled with the sweetest nectar. Not even the sweetest mango on earth had ever tasted that good. It had been a test to see which of the disciples was devoted enough to the guru to deserve to be taught his most closely held knowledge.”
“Oh God,” Yash said, staring at his spoon of yogurt like he was going to explode.