Murungakkai

I have never had a fancy eating MURUNGAKKAI. Infact, I have been annoyed with this vegetable quite many times.Ask me why?I started detesting sambhar because of the murungakkai added in it.I always prefer vetha kuzhambu to sambar cos vetha kuzhambu can be made even without any vegetables, but by adding some manathakkali vethal.But for sambhar, you need to add vendaikkai or murungakkai. My appa has always felt murungakkai does better justice to the sambhar and that left amma with adding lots of murungakkai to it.I had no qualms with vendaikkai cos as the cliche goes, I was told "vendaikkai is the vegetable which helps me improve my mathematical abilities"( anyways that dint help me in becoming one mathsla puli).But I happily stuck to vendaikkai and disowned murungakkai.

But it wasnt that easy to ignore this vegetable.I agree it has a nice flavour, tastes nice, but many times it gets stuck in your thorat. Sometimes I wonder if people took some special training to chew the murungakkai. I am sure even a cow if competing with our men would loose its race in chewing a murungakkai.How is it that our people manage to chew it so violently?.I always associate eating murungakkai with embarassament. Another thing was washing the plates after my appa/ chithappa or the guests ate. I dreaded doing this especially when there was the violently chewed murungakkai in the plates and I had to trash them before washing the plates.And then on, I close my eyes before trashing the chewed murungakkai and also wash my hands with soap after I trash.