Being a simple sort of a guy with minimum needs in life, there is only one thing where I can express my lavishness and indulge.
It’s a four-letter word, which is music to many ears. To me it is eternal love.
Food, that delightful treat to the senses, I am obsessed with you. I can write volumes about the sweetness of your offerings if I knew how to.
Yet, to sound a bitter note, there is a bit of discord in this great journey of love. I have expounded in great detail about my hate for that whitish, gooey substance called curds, yoghurt or whatever.
Now I am adding two more to that list. With great sadness I must announce that I am forced to strike out bitter gourd or karela and radish from my list.
I had eaten both of them before but only in moderate quantities without raving about them. Before you recoil in horror over my decision, let me assure you that I have taken this step after careful study and with a sound mind and body.
I must confess that a family history of that horrid condition called diabetes finally caught up with me recently.
That is an ultimate insult to a foodie like me. After having used strong language against Fate for this curse, I settled down to the fact that some foods were an absolute No-No for diabetics.
You may be startled and ask – why karela, a boon for diabetics and radish whose health benefits are too many to recount. It is like this. While talking to a friend with a similar condition like mine but a hypochondriac of the highest order, I was advised the juice of a karela twice on a daily basis to keep sugar-related problems at bay.
I did not look forward to it. The unpleasant, bitter taste of the foul fruit (yes, it is not a vegetable, Thank God) was just about tolerable as a dish.
Somehow, it looks like a dead rat when served as a dish. It is not a pretty sight. Stuffed karela, or rather stuffed rat, indeed. You could always sense that the thing would wake up suddenly, bite you on the face and slide away under the dining table.
The dark, slimly thingy in the glass, called karela juice, was an insult to the taste buds. There a muddy, yucky, feel to it. And it stank to high heavens.
The juice of course was not the “a beaker full of the warm south”. The poet Keats would have left the world before his time to join the nightingales in heaven if he had sipped karela juice.
Enough is enough. I decided off with it as soon as possible. No karela, health benefits be damned. So what was this about radish? I will give you a hint.
Go to the kitchen, take a few radishes and boil to it. The next few minutes will be a trial by fire. Have you by mistake entered a sewage plant or a dirty public toilet with faeces choking the bowl and the walls splattered all over with the waste.
I rest my case, Watson.
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