Dear Mothers-in-law

Epilogue: I sometimes wonder what happens to girls when they become women. I mean I am yet to discover how the metamorphosis materializes for I still yearn to feel like a complete woman and give up on the crazy girl in me. But then I can’t even begin to fathom what transpires within the entire female specie when they turn into monsters-in-law...er...mothers-in-law. Damn you Hollywood movie titles playing on my mind and mouth/fingers.

Dear Mothers-in-law (yes, all of you all over, unsparingly),

Really, what genetic alteration occurs during the seven rounds of the holy fire taken by your doting sons that upshots your ghastly malfunction? You have to explain me that. It can’t be insecurities-for how can anyone even deem to stand in any competition with someone who beds a man every day at least initially and often several times in the same day. Maybe she is prettier and younger than thou, but then your aren’t a sex object for anyone anyways now and least of all for your own khoon-your son? So quit making life difficult for all of us and let your pseudo-beauty ego go for a hike.

I think the onset of wrinkles occurs in women post their promotion to this unenviable position. So much constraining of nerves to show ‘Who’s the boss!’ naturally could lead to some lines forming somewhere! And as if those obnoxious pressing of lips and scrunching of eyes and inflating of an already fat nose are not enough, you soon discover-why there’s even a tongue that can wag with unending zeal to utter some of the choicest of taunts, to put even sarcasm to shame. Aww....nobody allowed you to participate in the school debates and so in the second childhood read that as your darn old age you decided to refresh the latent skills. How charming!

But really, you need a refresher’s course in reality check. These stupid soaps you watch all day on the idiot box yes, even the damn re-runs for apparently one sob/crap watch ain’t enough for your sadistic tendencies show techniques that are long given up even by Ekta Kapoor. I mean the idea of tampering with my door closer, just so that the door remains ajar and you can overhear when I bitch about you is so lame; I have decided to do it in bed when we are tugged in a blanket together and just before sex. It ensures not only you being in your bed too by that time but also I would get an attentive hearing because of His anticipation for what may follow thereafter.

And please, please stop asking him if he wants water when you see me getting him a glass on a tray or suggest he should measure his temperature after you sly watch me washing the thermometer. Ah, the genuine concern just prior to the wife’s is so touching, it makes me weep. Please don’t force on me that he would eat the bitter gourd in dinner when I insist he won’t, just because he did when you eyed him in his days of virginity. He has better taste now, metaphorically speaking. And when he refuses like I anticipated, please shorten the always ready-to-brim-over sermon of how children these days don’t listen to their parents-yours grew up along with his manhood.

And also explain to me dearie, how on earth can he be spoilt if we go out three times a week and not spoilt if you serve him the third bowl of halwa just because it was made by you? It is so amazing that you remember to ask me such concerned questions about my health and well being only when I sit with him on the dining table or do all sort of cootchie-cooing with our baby just as his daddy returns home and ensures he gets a private viewing of this trailer that never materializes into an actual movie otherwise.

And so enlightening are your discourses on responsibility-aah, talk about how the daughter-in-law ignores the house, after you stay out of it for most of your waking hours. Talk about how you don’t get enough money to spend after you ordered a brand new pair of fat diamond studded bangles. Talk about how “we” waste money, when the clothes you got stitched in the year’s beginning are adorning the frame of the maid’s by new years. And before you find fault with the way in which I am raising my child, please don’t even let me start with the faults so glaringly apparent in the ones you did. ‘Appreciation’ I know is the toughest word to grasp in your dictionary just as ‘expectations’ is the easiest.

So now that we are sailing in the same boat, let’s stop rocking it before we both fall. Please come to terms with it that it is not YOUR age to dress up and gallivant around town and instead give us, the lesser mortals a chance too. And also let me bring to light that there are more gadgets in the house which you can use like dishwasher, washing machine and iron so that you think beyond the television and mobile phones!

How amazingly nice it would be if you would just stop staring at my “Pepsi” glass at social dos and not wonder why that glass or its refills were in my hand all night long! And when we get you gifts, kindly don’t judge them by the price but by the sentiment behind it before we lose all our sentiments to do so. While I know I suck at cooking, you aren’t doing a good job of it either by the drama you churn out instead*sniff, sniff*

I guess this is enough “bonding” for this time. Until next time then...please be good and if you can’t be, please be human!

Yours almost lovingly,

Daughters-in-law the world (India) over.

Disclaimer: This is based on a one hour chat I just had with a suffering female friend who painted a picture of her mom-in-law thus, after breaking her monologue with sobs and expletives simultaneously yes, we are weird in our sources of getting inspired. So much she cribbed and moaned that I almost felt for her poor hubby-not in THAT way of course. Any similarities to my own mother-in-law are coincidental and purely unintentional. She’s a darling-of her husband of course. Please take this in good humour or else if I get burnt with kerosene in my kitchen soon hereafter, you’ll be blamed for lightening the fire.