Rupesh Gajurel

For the majority of die-hard yogurt lovers this article will be offensive and thus I suggest you stop reading it right now and finish the rest of the paper. Go check out the horoscope on the last page if you haven’t already done so. Now, since I have warned you, I will drop the bombshell then. I have an inexplicable aversion towards yogurt. Meaning, I hate it; I hate its taste; I hate its smell; and I hate the very sight of it. I know having such an antagonistic attitude towards a food is not healthy — although I don’t have any problem with the bacteria in it — but I can’t stand yogurt. Flavoured yogurt, plain yogurt, ‘the Bhaktapur yogurt’, low-fat yogurt, just about every yogurt I have tried, I can’t make me like it. It’s not that I am lactose intolerant and it isn’t genetic either. Nor is it that I wasn’t acquainted with yogurt since my early childhood; in fact, my parents tried desperately to make me eat that stuff. They would label it as ice cream or cheese or something that didn’t exist but sounded very tasty so that I would try just a little bit. By my early teens my parents finally gave up on making me eat yogurt.

But since it is thought of as a sacred diet in the Hindu religion and everyone’s all-time favourite dessert, I haven’t completely been out of the torment. My relatives have even called me blasphemous and anti-patriotic for disliking yogurt. How the hell can you not eat yogurt? Seriously, I need an explanation. Ceremonies, parties, people’s houses, everywhere I go, I am offered yogurt and I have a hard time clarifying that I don’t eat it. The only reasonable explanation about my enormous dislike for yogurt that I can come up to for now is this: during my previous life, I died of yogurt poisoning. That must be it. How else can I explain why I hate something the rest of the world unquestionably loves. For now, I am trying to find out who poisoned me. I will turn into a vegetarian if I have to but God forbid if yogurt-arian was on the prospect. And just last week, at a wedding party I decided to try yogurt again, for the last time. Astonished after seeing me gulp down half a cup, my cousin asked how it was. I replied, sincerely and politely, “Yuck.”