How I fell in love with ghee

by Amrutam India

Ghee. When I hear that name, I have flashbacks of my grandma pouring ghee all over my chapatis and me being confused if I am eating chapatis or ghee. I also remember wiping the ghee off that chapati and hearing my mom screaming at me for doing so. I have always despised ghee while growing up.

The colour and smell of ghee made me want to throw up. I always wondered how my grandma would add extra ghee in her food and relish it. She said it was good for health, but then again everything that doesn’t taste nice is good for health.

I was surviving my teen years by secretly switching ghee with butter, and it was all going great until my mom dropped the bomb. She suddenly decided that butter was extremely bad for health and that she was going to stop getting butter at home. I was frozen to the spot. That meant that I had to have ghee with everything including bread, sandwiches and everything else that needed butter. For a 12-year-old it sure seemed like the world had ended.

I had to get butter back in my house, but I couldn’t think of a way out. Thanks to the 21st century and technology I googled - ‘how do I make my mother stop feeding me ghee’ nothing substantial came up, and I was pretty disheartened. I could go on a hunger strike, but I knew that would never work out. I sat there, thinking, I wasn’t going to give up so soon when, I thought of a brilliant idea. I could develop an allergy to ghee. I turned to technology again - ‘what happens when you get a food allergy ‘.

I finally had my game plan I was going to puke after eating a ghee loaded chapati and act sick and tired and then quietly slip the idea that ghee did this to me in my mother's mind.

At that moment I thought I was the smartest 12-year-old ever.

I pulled that stunt on my mom, she wasn’t too pleased, but she believed me, and I was finally ghee free - or at least I thought.

A couple of years passed by and I think even I started believing the lie I created that I am allergic to ghee. A constant source of butter was present at home, and I didn't have to switch butter with ghee secretly.

Like any bored social network-obsessed I was scrolling through Instagram where I saw one of my favourite celebrity eating ghee, and she swore that she only had ghee for years and it helped her lose weight.

After 5 years and 6 months of being ghee free, I decided to look up ‘what are the benefits of ghee.’ Innumerable benefits of ghee came up, and I was shocked reading each and everyone one of them. After searching for about 1 hour and contemplating life for one more, I decided to give ghee a try. I went straight to my mother and told her I want to taste ghee. She stood there staring at me without blinking for a minute straight. She was shocked.

The next day I was staring at a sandwich that was coated with ghee instead of butter. I ate that sandwich, and to my surprise, it tasted exactly how it tasted with butter. I was puzzled and went to consult my mother about my confusion. She laughed after listening to me, and I stood there wondering if she had lost it; when she told me I had been eating ghee all these years. She never believed my allergy story and came up with a plan of her own where she would be using ghee but would tell me its butter.

I was quite surprised to be honest, but like it's been said, your mother knows what’s best for you.

Ghee is not only healthy for you but is delicious and helps you to lose weight. The calories in ghee are far less than the ones in butter. I mean who wouldn’t want to have ghee.

As dorky as it sounds well I’m 18 and in love with ghee.