Page 180 of A King's Oath

“Said no child ever.”

“Alright, yes, it’s taxing,” he admitted. “But the more I finish, the sooner I will get over it.”

“I’ll give you that,” she sat back. “Did you have breakfast?”

“I’ll eat in between meetings.”

“Like you ate yesterday?”

He glanced away sheepishly.

“I did eat a brunch…”

“That same cold poha. Samarth, at least get the food reheated.”

His eyes widened.

“What? Only you can have unnamed sources, Kunwar?”

He loved that she still slipped out Kunwar sometimes. Made him feel like Papa was still alive.

“Alright, I have to move now! Aagya,” he folded his hands and turned on his heels.

“Run, run,” she chuckled. “Giriraj has taught you his superpower of slipping out of difficult conversations.”

“And how!” Samarth hollered, closing the door behind him.

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The most dreaded time of the day was lunch. Between morning and afternoon, his day went so busy that he didn’t even have the time to come up for air, forget thinking about the horrors of the last few weeks. He assumed the same was true for Sharan with his home school classes and Maarani with her working double-time on completing her environmental philosophy thesis.

But as they would gather on that table for lunch — a second to spare, a minute to think, a meal to go through in that gaschamber of the mind, all three of them would fall silent. Eating had become a chore. Most morsels weren’t even chewed, just swallowed.

Samarth unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up the sleeves. He braced himself for another gas chamber as he entered the dining room but found Maarani standing behind Papa’s chair. He glanced from her to the chair to Sharan sitting not on his own chair but the one that he had occupied all his life — the one next to Papa’s.

“New arrangement, boys,” she announced. “Sharan is on his new seat. Get to yours, Samarth.”

He blinked, horror mushrooming inside him at the idea of occupying that chair.

“Rajmata, let’s…”

“Come on, everybody is hungry,” she pulled the chair back. “Most of all you. Did your daily dose of poha finally bore you?”

He snorted — “I like poha for breakfast.”

“Every day?” Sharan asked incredulously. Samarth strode down the table and shook the top of his head — “Every day.”

“I hate poha!” He made a face as Samarth slid between the table and the chair and sat down, eyeing Rajmata as she took her place to his right.

“Poha is nutritious and our staple breakfast,” she lectured Sharan just as a steaming bowl was brought to the table and placed by his plate. “And not to be eaten in lunch,” she added, looking pointedly at him. Samarth smiled, opening his plate to be served — “I had it made for breakfast and skipped it, so it’s only fair that I finish it in lunch. Sharan, doesn’t Mummy say no wasting food?”

Sharan glanced at the pot of poha and then at him — “We can feed this nutritious poha to our cows though…”

Samarth threw his head back and laughed, pulling his arm back as a bowl of sev was placed beside his plate. The servers began to fill Sharan’s and Maarani’s plates with the usual lunch fare — rotli, shaak, kadhi, kathol, salad. He waved it all away and sprinkled a generous amount of sev on his poha.

“Bring kachumbar for Rawal’s poha,” Rajmata ordered.

“Oh no, this is fine,” he spooned a bite and closed his mouth around it.

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