Mother-in-Law

Veena Venugopal

Description

In this witty, acute and often painfully funny book Veena Venugopal follows eleven women through their marriages and explores why the mother-in-law is the dreaded figure she is. Meet Deepa, whose bikini-wearing mother-in-law won t let her even wear jeans; Carla whose mother-in-law insists that her son keep all his stuff in his family home although he can spend the night at his wife s; Rachna who fell in love with her mother-in-law even before she met her fianc only to find both her romances sour; and Lalitha who finds that despite having had a hard-nut mother-in-law herself, she is turning out to be an equally unlikeable Mummyji. Full of incisive observations and deliciously wicked storytelling, The Mother-in-Law is a book that will make you laugh and cry and understand better the most important relationship in a married woman s life.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351186946
• Langue: English

Extrait

VEENA VENUGOPAL


The Mother-in-Law
The other woman in your marriage


Contents
Introduction
How I Met My Mother-in-Law
Carla Hates the Word ‘Adjust’
The Family That Eats Together
You Are (Almost) like a Daughter to Me
The Unforgiven
The Centre of the Universe
The Peacekeeping Mission
The Ugliness of the Indian Family
Occupational Hazard
The Missing Link
A Full Circle
Conclusion
Ten Ways to Survive the Mother-in-Law
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright



PENGUIN BOOKS
THE MOTHER-IN-LAW
Veena Venugopal is the editor of BLink , the Saturday edition of the Hindu Business Line . She is the author of Would You Like Some Bread with That Book?


Introduction
I got married at twenty-three for reasons related to real estate. My boyfriend and I graduated from business school to discover that we didn’t make enough money to pay auto fares between his place and mine to see each other every day. We were forced to live together, there was no choice. In Mumbai in the late 1990s, you had to pretend you were married if you wanted to rent a house. So I bought a black, beaded mangalsutra from a store outside the railway station, boyfriend negotiated a house with a low deposit and we were in the business of false matrimony and authentic cohabitation.
We were very happy. For a few weeks, that is. One evening, boyfriend came home from work and asked that I pack up all my stuff, including ‘the three dozen tiny bottles of indeterminate purpose in the bathroom’.
‘Why?’ I asked, incredulous.
‘My father has filed a suit against someone in the Mumbai High Court, he is coming tomorrow and staying until Tuesday. Mummy is coming with him, just to meet me.’
I spent all evening packing and hating at first the man who bounced a cheque and forced my boyfriend’s father to file a case. As the minutes ticked past, I managed to transfer all that anger to my boyfriend’s father and, for good measure, his mother. I moved out and stayed with a friend and, on Tuesday evening, arrived bag and baggage to resume my life. This carried on. Every couple of months, there was a hearing in the court, or a meeting with a lawyer or some other, what I thought as inconsequential activity but which absolutely required that my boyfriend’s parents visit Mumbai.
By the end of that year, I knew we had only two choices. Either he rent an apartment he could move into while his parents visited or we get married and live legitimately in this one. The first option was financially unviable and so, just like that, even before I had time to think about ‘other opportunities’, real estate forced my hand into marriage.
Once we decided, though, I was determined to forgive my soon-to-be in-laws’ frequent jaunts to Mumbai. Friends asked me how I planned to ‘deal’ with my mother-in-law. Other than as a reason to get married, I hadn’t really thought about her. When I did, I was certain that I didn’t want my relationship with my mother-in-law to be reduced to a cliché. I did not want to be the sort of person who began all conversations with ‘you won’t believe what a bitch my mother-in-law is’. I told myself we would be cordial and pleasant. Yet, even then, flushed at the prospect of matrimony at twenty-three, I was sensible enough not to answer, ‘Why, she’ll be like my own mum of course!’
After the wedding, Mummy and I settled down to a comfortable indifference. We didn’t live in the same city, so we met rarely. Since I was legitimately married by then, I saw no sense in wearing a mangalsutra. She raised this matter a couple of times, but in a defeated, I-don’t-want-to-make-an-issue-out-of-it kind of way. ‘My own daughter does not wear one, how can I ask you to,’ was her standard strategy. I suppose a better daughter-in-law would have immediately slapped the mangalsutra on and demonstrated how she was better than the daughter, but despite the fact that I had three of them (one their way, one our way and one fake) I just smiled and agreed with her that she couldn’t ask me if her daughter wasn’t wearing one.
We didn’t speak the same language, although she does speak reasonably good English, and I used that as an excuse not to take on the responsibility of calling and checking on her. I did remind the husband every once in a while that he was supposed to call his mother, though. For the first five years of my marriage, to be honest, Mummy was a benign presence with potential for trouble far away somewhere, like the threat of an asteroid collision or nuclear warfare.
When I was about to have a baby, Mummy became a more prominent player in my life. Since my gynaecologist had said she would have to induce labour, it gave enough time for two sets of grandparents to assemble in our tiny apartment in Mumbai. As things turned out, the baby, when she was born, weighed precariously little, and was moved to the neonatal intensive care unit for about ten days. By the time, we came back home, I was already a guilt-ridden, harried mum.
Then started the grandmothers’ regimen. There were some forty must-dos and never-don’ts in my mother’s list and some hundred things in mother-in-law’s list. Between the two of them and a frail baby who had to be fed every three hours by the clock, I was a mess. That was when trouble began. My mother, I could yell at. If she rebuked me for not eating the boiled root of an itchy tuber that was supposed to help snap my uterus back into shape, I could ask her to shut up. She was my mother, it was my right.
But when Mummy wheeled out her instructions, I had only two choices. I could follow them or I could pretend to follow them. I chose the latter but after the first week realized I didn’t even have the energy for duplicity. So she instructed, I ignored and resentment built up rapidly on both sides. Every time the baby cried or didn’t poop or threw up, Mummy told her son the list of things I had neglected. I complained to him about her endless harassment. Husband did the only thing he knows to do well, he dived for his BlackBerry and buried his nose in it.
Eventually, some five months after the baby was born, Mummy left. By this point, we were barely talking to each other. Despite myself, I realized, we had become the cliché. I found it hard to muster the courtesy required to even say goodbye. And when I had friends over that evening, after we’d opened the beers and cheered loudly, it felt different. I felt a lot freer, like an actual physical weight had been lifted off my shoulder. I couldn’t pretend to be sad, not even a little bit. I was being a bitch, I realized, but then so was she.
Over the next few months, our relationship improved. She would often call to inquire about the baby, and I managed to revert to an earlier time when there was more respect and dignity in our conversations. She was careful not to nag me with instructions and I was careful not to let her feel like she wasn’t a part of her granddaughter’s life.
Two years later, when the baby was a toddler, we moved to Delhi. Well, the husband moved first, when he took up a new job. I had a work-from-home gig, which wouldn’t be valid in Delhi, and more importantly had managed to lure the best nanny in the neighbourhood. Safely ensconced in these two hope-affirming life conditions, I refused to move. The husband pleaded, he was missing the child and it was getting too expensive for him to visit every weekend. By then I was smart enough to know that in a toss-up between being with the husband and retaining a good nanny, the latter is the wiser choice.
So I declined the prospect of wider roads and ice creams at India Gate. Eventually, after months of heavily dropping hints, the nanny said that she was ready to move with us to Delhi. Once the nanny blessed the deal, I began the process of negotiating for a transfer. The transfer came through and we quickly got our stuff packed and were ready to move. With three days to go, the nanny had a change of heart. The place was too far, she said, and her family wasn’t ready to let her go. I cajoled her for a bit and then cried. But there was no moving the nanny. I did the only sensible thing I could think of: I got the husband to call his mother.
‘But you swore you’d never live with her,’ he pointed out, helpfully.
‘I also swore we’d have sex every night. Things change, now dial the number,’ I snapped.
So it was, that when I landed in Delhi it was with Mummy in tow. In a few weeks, we settled into a better rhythm. Setting up the house, finding a play school, not to mention hiring an army of domestic help were team activities and we managed to negotiate these well. I went to work, she supervised the house. It was all rather pleasant. On Fridays, without fail, she instructed the housekeeper to keep the beers in the fridge. If I stopped by to shop on my way back from work, I always made sure I picked something up for her.
In the early months, Mummy was the epitome of cool. One night our friends upstairs threw a massive party. The man was turning forty and the wife, as modern wives are expected to, hired the services of a professional belly dancer for the evening. When I went up at ten for the party, the wife pulled me aside and asked if it was OK if the belly dancer changed into her costume at my house. Of course, I said, that shouldn’t be a problem. At eleven, the wife told me the belly dancer had arrived. At eleven forty, worried about what the hell was going on at home, I went downstairs to check.
In the flat, I noticed that my bedroom was locked. The belly dancer was either going through my stuff or getting into hers. When I peeped into the family room, I wa