Book Review: Monster-in-Law

“Yes, life could be better. But it could also be worse. Don’t believe me? Allow me to introduce you to my mother-in-law.”

A penny for your thoughts in Jarod Kintz’s 99 Cents For Some Nonsense

I was at Delhi airport when I picked up The Mother-in-Law from a bookstore in the duty-free area. It was timely, though not serendipitously timely. Because in Delhi, just the previous evening, I had spent too much time with a friend who couldn’t stop talking about her colleague’s ‘Mummyji’ — aka, mom-in-law. The colleague is, allegedly, in awe of Mummyji; what’s more, her husband’s approval appeared to be directly proportionate to the awe the colleague could muster up for his mother. Since my friend has plans of tying the knot sometime soon, this phenomenon of mother-in-law in the mix is bothering her no end. What if…?

My friend also ranted on about how the ‘mother-in-law issue’ is a peculiarly south Asian one, and how, by itself, was a deterrent to her marrying an Indian man. But then, she fell in love. With an Indian man. Yada yada yada.

My paternal grandmother, in her avatar as mother-in-law (to three daughters-in-law), was a gem (she was the sort who considered daughters-in-law more “precious” than her sons). So I’ve only heard fulsome praises for thamma (what I called my grandmom) from my mother and my uncles’ wives. Never a harsh word.

But I’d always wondered why my mother expostulated ever so often, “We’re so lucky… blessed… that we have such a great mother-in-law.” Like her case was an aberration.

On reading Veena Venugopal’s book — The Mother-in-Law — it quickly becomes clear why. Indian society seems to have an age-old agenda: morph one-time regular women into monstrous mothers-in-law. Why these ladies become twisted — particularly significant is how it’s only the sons’ wives who are the bull’s eyes on the family dartboard — is an abiding mystery, but if one were to go by the name of an Indian telly series, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (translates into “because mother-in-law was daughter-in-law once”), it could perhaps offer an insight.

The book is a collage of 11 accounts of married Indian women — spanning age brackets, class structures, religions, geographies (there is even an ‘expat’ daughter-in-law). All of them have a common grouse: their mothers-in-law. For some of them, the marriage is falling apart/has fallen apart, thanks to Mummyji (the author has a compelling lead-in chapter about her own mom-in-law — a mixed bag of behavioural traits, but she manages to take over the reins of her own marital life into her hands, sometimes with pleasant surprises even).

Circa 2014, it may seem incomprehensible how and why the boy’s mother has a make-or-break role in a husband-wife equation. But, according to research — and Venugopal has backed her non-fiction with plenty of stats — things in the third millennium have gotten worse. ‘The other woman in your marriage’ — the tagline of The Mother-in-Law — could have well acquired a sharper cutting edge. The book says, last year, the Supreme Court of India used its super serious powers to give ‘Mummyjis’ a special instruction: ‘A daughter-in-law is to be treated as a family member, not a housemaid.’ Case rested?

Here are some samples of the goings-on in many desi households: “First up, she [mother-in-law] wants to control the decision of who becomes her daughter-in-law. There is often a long list of qualifying criteria that puts an admission form for Harvard University to shame.” Then, “There is no fashion police stricter than the Indian mother-in-law.” Then, “Even before they agree to the wedding, most mothers-in-law categorically state that the daughter-in-law should quit her job.” And then, “The most curious aspect of the sordid mother-in-law saga is the man at the centre of it. The son/husband is the epicentre of the troubles. Yet, he himself remains rather unruffled through them.”

Venugopal further argues that the very construct of the mother-in-law relationship is lopsided. It is built to be awkward. “This can be gleaned from just the nomenclature. In north India, mothers-in-law are often called Mummyji. If mother-in-law were Mommy, it would imply that the daughter-in-law could interact with her with the intimacy and honesty that a relationship with Mummy implies. The ‘ji’ in the Mummyji forces respect, decorum and a definite imbalance in the power structure of the relationship.”

One of the women fleshed out in The Mother-in-Law, the Austrian wife of an Indian man, who took the trouble of relocating to her husband’s country, city and home, says, “‘(I) never thought a mother-in-law would be the source of troubles in a marriage. But here in India, (my) mother-in-law has been a problem even before my marriage. That’s why (I) want to do something about it, making people aware that this is not good. Or right. In fact, this is wrong. Very wrong’.” She, of course, dreams of “moving away”, with hubby, to start a new life. One day.

But hang on. Life after marriage cannot be extrapolated in shades of black and white. Turns out, it’s not in India/South Asia alone that mom-in-law wields her heavy baton. “In Italy, a study found that the odds of a marriage surviving went up for every hundred yards the married couple put between themselves and Mummyji. The farther you stayed away from Mummyji, the better were your chances if having a healthy marriage…” Taking note of this, courts there have ruled that ‘meddling by mother-in-law’ is a valid reason for divorce. And, “In Japan, a study of 91,000 women over a seven-year period threw up another startling fact. Women who lived with their mothers-in-law were three times as likely to have heart disease compared to women who didn’t.”

On a bookish note, The Mother-in-Law is a collection of cautionary tales that could take the magic out of a marriage. It’s a functionally written book, not in diary format, but in the tenor of one. It also punches in some dos and don’ts a wide-eyed bride needs to keep firmly in mind. And, it offers peeks into the changing — and rigid — landscape of urban — and urbane — Indian society.

sushmita@khaleejtimes.com