A Taste of our own medicine

I told a friend to have a cough lozenge for her cough. She did and found it effective – not without me getting a scolding for recommending a foul tasting remedy. That set me wondering - Why are medicinal products so antagonistic to taste… is it really a mystery? I should think that some pediatric formulations are sweetened and cough syrups are tolerable, but broadly all medicines are unpalatable. I remember as I kid I just could not swallow a tablet. Capsules were worse. I would throw up more trying to take in my medication than I would because of the given illness! Pulverising tablets just made water taste horrid. Traumatic childhood memories resurfaced recently… my mother made some ‘home remedy’ formulation with a gazillion ingredients according to some ayurvedic recipe. I cannot fathom how one can voluntarily swallow such a vile preparation – it even looks dark and forbidding. Already one suffers on account of ill health – to top it off one has to undergo the inimical onslaught of the taste buds. What could be worse?

Mom has a garden that uses kitchen wet-waste as manure… Her efforts do bear fruit but in the form of vegetables! This implies some vegetable every now and then. But in all these years if we have ever had a “bumper” crop – the award for most profligate and bountiful produce goes to the ‘bhendi’ and the ‘karela’. They are worse than the much hyped and maligned yet totally harmless broccoli. The karela ought to be voted in as one of the wonders of the world. Seriously. It is one vegetable that makes me marvel. I cannot fathom how it manages to taste so bitter. It is almost as if all the bitterness that has leached into the soil over the years is sucked as nutrition by this diminutive plant. Some way of recycling agony. And for all the frying and garnishing it is made to undergo, it seems to mock me and my discomfort - before I haltingly gulp down a spoonful – “How do you like me now?”