💬 Hated bitter gourd as a kid, now I order it everywhere

As a kid I would rather skip dinner than eat bitter gourd. My mother made it every Thursday. I counted. She tried everything. Fried thin like chips, stuffed with masala, mixed into dal where I couldn't see it. I found it anyway. One bite and I'd spit it into a napkin and hide the napkin in my pocket. Once I forgot a napkin in my school trousers for 2 days. Everybody in my class knew. Something changed after I moved abroad. Nobody cooked it for me there. One Saturday I saw a pile at an Indian grocery shop and bought 2. I don't know why. I fried them in my tiny kitchen with way too much salt. They were awful. I ate all of them. The week after, I bought 4. My flatmate asked what the smell was and I said dinner. Back in Hyderabad now. My mother got so happy when I asked for it that she cried a little. Then she made it that same Thursday. Fried thin, a bit burnt on the edges, onion on top. I eat it with plain rice and nothing else. Sambar would only get in the way. She still puts 2 extra pieces on my plate and watches me eat them like a hawk. My nephew is 7 and hates it the way I did. I told him it gets better. He gave me a look like I was selling him something. My mother told me not to say anything more. She says he'll find the napkin trick himself. I've told him where I used to hide mine, but not the part about the trousers.

A napkin forgotten in school trousers for 2 days, and the whole class knew. That is a legendary detail. I came to karela after 30, when a colleague brought fried rings in a tiffin, and I ate half of them in one sitting.

Karela was my sworn enemy until college, my mother used to disguise it in every possible way just to get a few bites into me. Now I order it deliberately when I see it on a menu, mostly stuffed with onions the way my grandmother made it. Funny how the exact bitterness that made me gag as a kid is now the whole reason I want to eat it.