I sat quietly and ate all the vegetables in front of me.My mother would've been proud of me. I not only ate the damn things but I downright enjoyed it too. My mother would've had a heart attack just hearing me say it.

Right from my childhood I wasn't a big fan of vegetables. My mother would mask beetroots as vadas and carrots as pickles and what not just to make me eat my vegetables. Some felt that instead of going through all that trouble, trying to discover a new recipe everyday just so her daughter would eat the damn vegetables, my mother should've just tried giving me one tight slap.

Well both my parents were non-violent creatures. So instead of a stinging slap, I'd get different, tasty dishes every single day.

As I sat there, in the restaurant, eating the veggies I wondered: what changed?
I could be forgiven for not fully comprehending the benefits of eating vegetables when I was young.
But then even when I reached the voting age, the marrying age, the motherhood-age and over-the-hill-age, where I fully understood the benefits of including salads in your diet, I still refused to eat it.

Then what has changed now? There I am sticking my fork into the salad in search of goodness and eating pleasure.

I think every man/woman reaches a stage in life when they realise what a fool they had been for to have done the right things in life.

Suddenly, you develop the ability to surprise yourself by indulging in activities and thoroughly enjoying those things which you always loathed and which you always thought that you wouldn't enjoy.

As I sit there looking at my empty plate in front of me, I realized how much we censor our own selves; how badly we judge ourselves; and how wrongly we perceive our likes and dislikes.

If only we give ourselves the freedom to enjoy all things in life at least once, we might just discover, how many things we like in life and how much we enjoy the varied experiences in life.

Every now and then, I think, we should let ourselves go!