Incense and Sensibility

by Sonali Dev

  “Mommy?” India had been adopted when she was sixteen months old. She had no memories of her birth mother, but through most of her childhood she did remember waking up at night with a racing heart, covered in sweat, with an indescribable terror that would only be quelled when she walked around their home and made sure that China, Sid, and Mom were still there.

  She felt that same terror now.

  Tara blinked her tears away. “Oh, my darling child, I’m not angry at you. I’m never angry at you. How can I ever be?”

  India took Tara’s hands and stroked them, thumbs against skin, the way Mom had always done to soothe her, tracing the familiar tendons and vein patterns, the strong sharp knuckles. “Tell me. Whatever it is, we’ll take care of it. Together. Don’t be afraid.”

  Her mother had said a version of this to her so many times. Enough times that nothing had ever felt like a crisis because of her.

  “I . . . I dropped my health insurance six months ago.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When we did the renovations. You kids spent all that money. You drained all your savings.”

  “You drained yours too. And you’re helping pay for the home equity loan.” Mom had insisted on paying into that.

  “When I took that on, I thought the incense sales would cover it. But, well, Whole Foods didn’t renew the contract. They decided to import from China, where they could get the incense sticks for less than half of what it costs us to make them. That was our biggest contract.”

  India let Mom’s hands go. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You’ve already taken on so much. You’re single-handedly running the studio, teaching classes and those retreats, running your practice, helping with incense production. I couldn’t put another thing on your shoulders, strong as they are.”

  “But health insurance, Mom? You’re sixty-two.”

  “I know. But those things you said to me are true. I’ve practiced yoga all my life. I’ve lived as healthfully and mindfully as anyone can. I thought I of all people had nothing to worry about. I was only going to go off it until we got a new contract for the incense.” She reached out and took India’s hands and started stroking, tracing the veins and tendons, caressing the knuckles. “I am so sorry.”

  India pulled her close and held her tight, her heartbeat mimicking her childhood nightmares. “Please don’t say that. It’s going to be fine. We’re going to the doctor. Let’s find out what we’re faced with. Our theory about our lifestyle isn’t just a theory. Our bodies are strong. Our minds are stronger. We’ll find a solution.” Smiling, she wiped her mother’s wet cheek. “It’s only money.”

  That was what Tara had always said to them, when she paid for their college, when she paid for trips and supplies and shoes and backpacks. All the latest styles that China wanted. All the camera equipment Sid needed. All the reasons why there had been no money saved up when the structure of the studio was crumbling and they had to rebuild. Loans on the studio were how they had made it through all the early surgeries and tough times, and now they were borrowed out and already it wasn’t easy to make the payments.

  “We will figure this out.”

  Tara studied her with her kind eyes. “This is health care we’re talking about. Apparently no one can figure it out.” She smiled, more defeat in it than India could stand. “We’re already deep in debt over the renovation.”

  “Stop it. I want you to stop this negative train of thought. Our business is solid. Didn’t you read the Daily Post last month? I’m the undisputed leader in stress management coaching in the Bay area? Do you know how much stress there is around here? It’s a gold mine. We’re going to keep our focus on what we can control, and the universe will take care of the rest.”

  Chapter Eleven

  It had been years since Yash had sat in the gazebo on his parents’ estate. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d just sat anywhere without actively doing something. Lying in a hospital bed drugged out of his mind didn’t count. It had been two weeks since the shooting, four days since he’d shelled peas in India Dashwood’s kitchen. He’d spent that entire time working on the policies his team was getting ready to post on his campaign website. Fortunately, there had been no more scheduled events to cancel until next week.

  The wound on his shoulder barely hurt as he pressed a finger into it. The doctor had removed the bandages today and left just some strip dressing on. Same with his arm. Both wounds were almost healed.

  “They’re going to leave a scar,” the doctor had said, and they’d both laughed. Sesame seeds in a river, his grandmother would say.

  After he’d seen the doctor, he’d sat by Abdul for the rest of the morning, trying to block out all his scars, the new ones, the old ones. It had been years since he’d let himself think about how alive they felt on his skin. Like organisms crawling over half of his body, leeching at something. The only way he’d ever known how to deal with his own ravaged skin was to separate himself from it, to cut off the oxygen that gave it power by concentrating on the things that did need the oxygen of his focus.

  Then Rico had come to get him. Did his family not trust that he would show up for his own campaign meeting?

  Today was one of Ma’s Family Teas™. Which was basically code for an all-hands-on-deck meeting to recap the past week of the campaign and make plans for the upcoming week. Usually Yash looked forward to the meetings; they relaxed him and got him ready to take on the week ahead.

  Today, however, Rico had to drag him out of the hospital and bring him here. If that wasn’t bad enough, he’d asked Rico to go inside and join the others because Yash had needed to come to the gazebo to gather his thoughts. Now he couldn’t get up off this bench.

  It wasn’t like he didn’t want to be with his family. He did. He missed them, even though they were all right here, a few steps away, inside the house he’d grown up in. He’d never been able to go too far from them, yet he felt miles away. How did Vansh do this? His kid brother had gone to boarding school and then never truly returned home. Yash scrolled to his brother’s number on his phone and called him.

  “Hey, old man,” the brat answered.

  “Hey, brat.”

  “Are you hiding in the pool house?”

  “No!” Not a lie. He was hiding in the gazebo.

  Vansh laughed. “I just spoke to Trisha. They’re all waiting for you upstairs.”

  “How can you be so up in everyone’s business all the way from Africa?”

  “Because I don’t have the weight of the world on my shoulders. How’s Abdul?”

  Yash filled him in on Abdul’s condition.

  “When are you coming home?”

  “Aww, you miss me. Or then you need me for something. Distracting HRH? Figuring out what to do with the police union? Trouble in paradise with Knightlina?” Vansh was the only one who used Naina’s birth name and got away with it. She hated the name her dad had given her and would kill anyone else who dared to use it.

  Vansh might believe himself to be the problem-solver extraordinaire, but to solve a problem you had to identify it, and therein lay the problem.

  You’re not broken but you are wounded. Why would her words not stop playing in his head?

  “I just miss you, gym-rat.”

  “I’ll be home in a couple months. You’re in luck, dad-bod.”

  Yash had to laugh at that. “Such a brat.”

  “I know. You should try it.”

  “Not all of us can pull off living only for ourselves.”

  “Why not? How can you live for anyone else if you can’t even live for you?” And with that wisdom that came to him so very easily, he was gone.

  Yash leaned back against the railing and trailed a finger along the worn wood of the bench. This was where he’d been sitting when he’d first held India’s hand. His first time holding a girl’s hand. Romantically. When he was all of twenty-eight.

  He hadn’t e
xactly been precocious with his dating life. Then again, his lack of skill was more than proven by the not-quite relationship he’d been in for the past ten years.

  How had he put a night that magical away so easily?

  By the time he’d met India at the mehendi ceremony the night before Nisha’s wedding, the path of his life had been set. Anyone with a modicum of sense, and integrity, would have walked away from her after she’d helped him out with those boxes he’d been staggering under.

  She’d done it with such ease.

  Lift with your legs and carry with your core. It makes it easier on your back.

  The memory could only be described as staring into a blast of sunshine. She’d dazzled him. A girl who looked as delicate as spun glass, white and silver chiffon spilling around her like liquid light, with herculean strength.

  “I’m India Dashwood,” she’d thrown over her perfectly sculpted shoulder as she carried the box to the pool house, tempering her pace so he could keep up.

  “I’m . . .” For a second there he clean forgot his name.

  “I know who you are, Yash.” There was an almost artless directness to the way she spoke.

  “Have you seen me on TV?” Why? Why on earth would he ask something so juvenile and needy?

  “No. Sorry.” Her smile was far too kind, and for the lack of a better word: delighted. “You were moving boxes dressed like that.” She lifted her chin at the silk and gold angarkha Nisha had picked out for him. “So I assumed you live here. And you look like the rest of your family.”

  When she put the heavy box down—gently, not with a thud the way he did—the blouse straps that went around her neck snapped.

  She pressed a hand to the fabric to hold it up, the wardrobe malfunction painting pink streaks across her cheeks and brightening her eyes with mortification. He averted his eyes and pointed her to the restroom. Then he waited for her outside the door.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  After waiting twenty minutes, he finally knocked on the door. Maybe the right thing to do would be to fetch one of his sisters in case she needed help. But he couldn’t. What if she came out and wondered where he’d disappeared to after she’d helped him?

  Who was he kidding? The idea of leaving her didn’t enter his mind. Who could leave a girl like this? With a smile that dipped divots into her cheeks at either corner of her mouth, and hair so shiny it was like she had a halo.

  “India, umm, do you need help in there?”

  An embarrassed laugh-sob sounded on the other side of the door.

  “It’s okay. I have four sisters. I’m practically a woman. You can tell me.”

  She laughed then, and even across a door something inside Yash shook free. “I’m going to need a safety pin. The . . .”—she cleared her throat—“hook on my halter has fallen off.”

  While he had no idea what a halter was, it felt safe to assume she was talking about her blouse. “Okay, I can go find you a safety pin.” He actually had no idea where he could find one.

  Asking one of his sister’s meant a million questions about why he wanted one. Which should have been easy enough to answer. India was their friend. He’d heard his sisters talk about her, but he’d just never met her until today.

  “Do you know where to find one?” How she knew that he was still standing there on the other side of the door, he had no clue. His breathing did feel different, so maybe she could hear it?

  “Not really. But I’ll figure it out.”

  “There should be one in Nisha’s room.”

  “Thank you. You’ll be okay in there?”

  “Why? Is there something I don’t know about this restroom?”

  He pressed his forehead to the door, not even sure why he was smiling. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  Inside the house, Nisha’s mehendi ceremony was in full swing. Some two hundred women dressed in all sorts of glittery things (none of which were the exact incandescent white and silver of India’s clothes) filled the great room, where an army of artists piped henna on hands.

  A dance floor had been put in for the ceremony and was filled with dancers letting loose as a band of women played the dholki drums and sang wedding songs on a raised stage.

  On another platform lined with a thick mattress sat Nisha, flanked by two artists, one on each side, painting both her hands. Her already painted feet were propped on a padded stool. Ashna, Trisha, and Neel’s cousins sat surrounded by a bunch of friends having their hands done as well.

  India had probably left them in search of the restroom and then lost her way and found him fumbling with the boxes that contained the surprise gift he’d ordered for Nisha and Neel. Replicas of Kamasutra sculptures from Khajuraho, an inside joke because Neel loved to tease Nisha about honeymooning at the erotically carved caves, much to her horror. Yash certainly did not want their parents to know.

  The mehendi was traditionally a women-only celebration. The few men in the house were in HRH’s office, drinking scotch and smoking cigars. Yash had hurried back to the house when the incompetent delivery people left the packages in the middle of the entrance porch. He had needed to hide the boxes before someone found them.

  That’s when the most beautiful girl he’d ever laid eyes on had stopped by—almost causing him to lose his toes by dropping the box he was carrying—and asked if she could help.

  Before Yash could say, No, thank you, she picked up the second box—the one he hadn’t been able to budge—with considerable ease and asked where they were taking them.

  No, with the way he was feeling right now, asking anyone who knew him—especially his busybody sisters, who had no concept of boundaries—where to find a safety pin and telling them why he needed it was out of the question.

  Avoiding the gaggle of aunties, Yash made his way up to Nisha’s room. Nisha had spent the past few months talking incessantly about everyone’s outfits for each wedding event. That’s how Yash knew what he was wearing was called an angarkha. For all the complexity of that name, it was simply an embroidered silk kurta with buttons running down one side of his chest instead of the center.

  India was right, if anyone in this house was going to have pins that could substitute for malfunctioning hooks on a halter, then Nisha was the one.

  He went to her dressing table and started riffling through her cabinets.

  “Do you need something?”

  Shit. He should have known that he wasn’t cut out for sleuthing.

  “Hey, J-Auntie,” he said to their housekeeper. “Did I tell you how lovely you look today?” She wasn’t dressed in her usual severe black-on-black uniform but in a navy-blue sari with all sorts of . . . wait for it . . . sparkles.

  “Thank you, Yashu.” Much to his sisters’ chagrin, J-Auntie doted on him and his younger brother. It was legendary, the things they had gotten away with because she had cleaned up after them without breathing a word to anyone.

  “What are you looking for? Does Nisha need something? You’re such a good brother, to help your sister on her mehendi day when all the men are off in the den.” He heard the worshipfulness in her voice and felt like a prized fake.

  “She needs a safety pin.” He hadn’t said Nisha, so that meant he wasn’t lying, right?

  She hurried over, her movements just as efficient in a sari as they were in trousers. Within seconds she had extracted a handful of safety pins from the back of one of the drawers, all crammed with more trinkets and gizmos than he’d seen in his entire life. Usually he hated when someone acted like his sisters were somehow different from him. But, man, Nisha, get a grip!

  He gave J-Auntie a quick hug, making sure he didn’t thank her quite as profusely as he wanted to, because he did not want to make her suspicious. He didn’t break into a run until he was outside the house where no one could see him.

  “You still here?” He leaned in to the bathroom door and tried not to let his voice sound breathless.

/>   “No.” Just that one word.

  It wasn’t even that funny.

  Come on, it was hilarious. And incredibly sweet.

  “If you open the door, I’ll slip it to you.”

  She did, and he did.

  Another silent minute went by.

  “Yash?”

  “India?”

  “Have you ever secured a halter with a safety pin?”

  “Do it all the time.”

  He heard her smile across the door. Then it opened.

  Her cheeks were still flushed. And smooth, and glowing. Her head was held high as though she were trying to convince herself that this was not at all embarrassing. One hand held the straps of her halter top at the back of her neck, the other one held the safety pin out to him.

  He took it and she turned around, giving him her back. A gesture of trust that hit him square between his ribs.

  “You just hold the two ends of these straps I’m holding together and then run the pin through them to secure them together.”

  “Easy,” he said as breezily as he could manage. She trusted him to do this and he would rather die than let her feel uncomfortable for even a moment.

  In two quick movements, with all the focus he was famous for, he accomplished the mission and stepped away, giving her space. “There, done.”

  When she turned to him she had the oddest expression on her face. “You look like you climbed a mountain.” With that she burst into laughter.

  For a few moments they stood there, winded with laughter, and the exertion of wrestling fashion, and whatever else was spinning around them. Then she thanked him and started to walk to the door and he realized that he did not want her to leave.

  “India?” When he’d heard his sisters say her name, he’d thought it a bit strange to name a child that. Especially a child who had no apparent connection to the country. Now he found that there was a magic to saying it and a perfection to the way it fit her.

  “Yash?” She said his name the way his family said it.

  His brain raced. All he knew was that he did not want her to leave. “I need help with something, do you mind helping?”

  “Sure. What is it?”