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?

The

Mother-in-Law The other woman in your marriage V E E N A

V E N U G O P A L

PENGUIN BOOKS USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia New Zealand | India | South Africa | China Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com Published by Penguin Random House India Pvt. Ltd No: 04-010 to 04-012, 4th Floor, Capital Tower -1, M G Road, Gurugram -122002, Haryana, India

First published by Penguin Books India 2014 Copyright © Veena Venugopal 2014 All rights reserved 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by her which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same. Names of some people have been changed to protect their privacy. ISBN 9780143419877 Typeset in Adobe Caslon Pro by R. Ajith Kumar, New Delhi

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Contents

Introduction

1

How I Met My Mother-in-Law

24

Carla Hates the Word ‘Adjust’

44

The Family That Eats Together

67

You Are (Almost) like a Daughter to Me

86

The Unforgiven

108

The Centre of the Universe

124

The Peacekeeping Mission

144

The Ugliness of the Indian Family

156

Occupational Hazard

181

The Missing Link

202

A Full Circle

223

Conclusion

242

Ten Ways to Survive the Mother-in-Law

253

Acknowledgements

254

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 1

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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 soonto-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 motherin-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

Introduction

3

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

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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

Introduction

5

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 was struck by the strangest sight. Mummy and a much-muscled man, with a bald head and a baseball bat, were calmly seated and watching Telugu television. ‘This is the bouncer,’ Mummy introduced us and I didn’t know whether to laugh or kiss her. The next morning, I thought she

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would have a list of complaints about our bad behaviour and rowdy friends. When husband emerged from the room, all she asked him was if the belly dancer was still inside the bedroom. He said no. She had no further questions. So we were equable, in that sense, Mummy and I. Still, we were careful around each other. Overall, I would say that at least for a few months we managed to be the anti-cliché. Then the small irritants began. I hated the fact that mother-inlaw was a fan of deep-frying everything. First, I provided feedback. Then I took to chanting the health implications of fried food at each mealtime. When that wasn’t heeded, I began serving myself minuscule portions. When she, encouraged by my opposition, deepfried curd, I simply stopped eating anything other than the basic chapatti and dal. In return, mother-in-law boycotted the Sunday treat I cooked—pastas, grilled fish, stews and salads, which she had relished earlier. Mummy began to talk more and more about how casual we were. It took me a few weeks to realize that when she said casual, she meant careless. I had lent a music player to a friend. Two weeks later, the friend called and apologized for not returning it before we asked for it. ‘Who asked for it?’ I was bewildered. ‘Your mother-inlaw,’ she said. I went home and told her she should stay out of my transactions just like I stayed out of hers. So that became an issue. One year passed and then the next. And our annoyances with each other began to grow. We went through phases of snapping at each other. Then we went through weeks when we wouldn’t speak to each other. The husband stayed out of much of this. If I complained to him about his mother, he would either nod his head in absentminded agreement or annoyingly ask me to ‘take a chill pill.’ The one meal that the family ate together was dinner. Mummy pulled her endgame for this. She began to converse with husband in Telugu. The toddler, who was by then almost five, and I, had no idea what was going on. The toddler asked for explanations, I

Introduction

7

refused to let on that I cared. They may have been talking about the weather or what was on TV. But I was certain it was about me and that they weren’t being complimentary. My simmering tensions with mother-in-law spread to husband too. I asked him why they were speaking in a language I couldn’t follow. ‘Arre, we were just talking about nothing, certainly nothing about you,’ he would say. But I was convinced it was a conspiracy. Finally, late one night, there was a rare occurrence of marital passion. The dog, which usually liked to be a semi-passive observer of his guardians’ sex life, was locked out of the room. Since he knew something was up and was reluctant to miss any of the action, he began to bark. It was a yelp a minute at first. But soon he worked himself into a frenzy of noise and spit. And right there, while we were in flagrante and trying to wrap up our business, mother-inlaw opened the door to let the dog in. There was nothing we could say to one another after that. I resigned myself to a life of never making eye contact with her. Ever. Nor would I ever be able to have any kind of nocturnal excitement without eternally worrying about how many locks on the door were engaged. Mummy had won. In the last year, I spoke to scores of women about their mothersin-law. The stories I heard were so insane and so weird that my own account of Mummy seemed like fluff. Most of the time, my story merely ended up annoying the listener, like when thin people say they don’t diet and are just genetically disposed to be skinny. From Kolkata to Mumbai and Delhi to Chennai, I met women who occupied some point of the cliché scale with their mothers-inlaw. No matter whom you talk to—new brides, old wives, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Anglo-Indian—just about every married Indian woman is engaged in close combat with her mother-in-law. Their stories just needed the slightest prod to bubble up to the surface. Get a bunch of married women together, any bunch, and simply say, ‘Goodness, you won’t believe my mother-in-law.’

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The Mother-in-Law

Then, shut up and listen. Out come stories of control, betrayal and harassment. After the first few meetings, I stopped being surprised by the fact that everyone seemed to have a dispute with their mothers-in-law. But what continued to shock me was how intensely damaged most of these relationships were. Most daughters-in-law, it seemed to me, were huddled at the extreme end of the cliché scale. Within minutes (minutes!) of posting a Facebook request asking if someone knew anyone who had had a typical arranged marriage (yes, that was the only qualifier I published, since I did not want to reveal the reason why I was asking) not only did I find someone who had taken the matrimonial ad, horoscope route to marriage, but one who had a mother-in-law so rotten, just listening about her gave me a migraine. ‘It can’t be,’ I kept hearing myself, ‘it just cannot be so easy!’ But it was. And I’m sure if I had cast my net a little wider, I would have heard stories that would have given me not just a migraine, but a whole brain tumour. It’s true, a monster mother-in-law is a national affliction. Even women who told me they were lucky to have a decent mother-in-law often proceeded to recount a really bad story about their Mummyji. That’s how bad the situation is. Mother-in-law maladies are neither new nor are they restricted to India. In the West, the mother-in-law is an endless subject of jokes. But in South Asia, even in popular culture, the mother-in-law has traditionally been a source of much angst and villainy. Yet, the more people I talked to, the more it seemed to me that in India the mother-in-law dynamic has worsened over the years. We now live in a society that was unimaginable twenty years ago. There is no doubt that our lives have improved since 1991. We don’t have to suffer Krishi Darshan, Campa Cola or multi-year wait lists to buy really badly made cars. Economic liberalization brought with it social liberalization, too. We have a surfeit of options and ample liberty in choosing

Introduction

9

what we wear, the kind of degrees we want to pursue and the kind of places we would like to visit. We are far more open, liberated and in control of all aspects of our lives. The only exception, to me, seems to be our relationship with our mothers-in-law. In the last twenty years, there has been an utter breakdown in the Mummyji–daughter-in-law dynamic. In urban India, pretty much all daughters-in-law, across all demographics, are more educated than they were twenty years ago. The middleclass daughter has been raised with the notion that she is capable of doing everything her brother is. They have been educated with a career in mind. And when they graduate, a large majority of women seek employment. If they work in fields like IT, it is more likely than not that they travel abroad on projects. So when they are ready to get married—at twenty-four on an average, or twenty-five—they have lived a bit, formed their opinions and decided on their choices. Mummyji, however, is stuck at Mughal-e-Azam. She has raised her daughter to be independent and liberal, because that was the cue she got from others around her. She thinks of the freedom she allows her daughter as a short vacation. She constantly tells her daughter that she shouldn’t expect to be allowed to behave in a ‘modern’ fashion once she gets married and goes to her husband’s home. And she hasn’t thought about how liberated her daughterin-law should be. She assumes the husband’s home is the place where cultural control is maintained. So even compared to her own daughter, she tends to have stricter rules for the daughter-in-law. That right there is the reason why this is the worst generation for Mummyji conflicts. Daughters-in-law who expect to live modern, postliberalized lives are finding themselves stuck with pre-liberalized Mummyjis. Expectations are asymmetric. It is a mismatch made in hell. This is the reason we were watching Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi on TV in 1989 and we are watching one or the other descendant of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi now.

Cover illustration by Jori Bolton Cover design by Aashim Raj

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