Monsters-in-Law

A hilarious yet serious look at the indefatigable Indian mother-in-law tells us why she is a national problem

‘It was love at first sight. Rachna Sethi’s mother- in-law wanted her the minute she clapped eyes on her. It’s a fact that only a few people find strange, but Sethi met her mother-in-law even before she met her husband.’

Thus begins one of the funniest and most unlikely love stories. Of course it has a tragicomic ending; this is a book about mothers-in-law. Long documented through saas-bahu TV dramas, the mother-in-law versus daughter-in- law conundrum is a dependable source of humour—as well as a source of devastating news items. Fortunately, these 11 tales battle the banal and the dire evenly and provide consistent entertainment.

Some of these case studies are startling; Deepa has a cool, bikini-wearing, former air-hostess mother-in-law who encourages her to go out and have fun—until the honeymoon ends and poor Deepa is banned from all kinds of freedoms including jeans, even. Some tales are wearying, and slightly unbelievable; Carla, the young Austrian whose marriage to an Indian you bet will end, given the culturally alien restrictions placed on her. Or Keisha, who puts up with physical abuse and rape to stay with an ugly man—inside out—purely due to childhood trauma and insecurity. Some make you giggle—Seema’s mother- in-law is a proper Tam-Brahm patti, whose demands turn intransigent when it comes to that Tam-Brahm staple, the nine-yard sari. And some accounts make you cry; Arti has survived the ravages of Kashmir-in-crisis only to be treated like a servant, her children appropriated by her in-laws.

‘I have to confess I wasn’t prepared for the dark turn these stories would take,’ says author and journalist Veena Venugopal. ‘After all, the idea was to meet other women like me, I thought—educated, urban and empowered. In many ways, the Indian family is a pressure cooker—one that is likely to explode before it releases steam. The number of things the Indian mother-in-law tries to control is both baffling and comical at the same time.’

Stalking would-be brides and weary wives online; charming her way into homes on intros from aunts, colleagues and friends of friends; keeping early morning filter coffee assignations in Chennai and taking clandestine interviews on Mumbai train rides—Venugopal infiltrates the lives of these women with great empathy. Her yields are not particularly surprising; these women are territorial and seek supremacy; neither can trust the other. But the book is a sociological treatise that looks into the reasons one person desires control over another—not always as obvious as you would think.

In this slim book, Venugopal, who can write about anything with wit and a Hadley Freeman-like candour—she is also the author of another funny, slim volume about bibliophilia, Would You Like Some Bread With That Book? —tells us why the mother-in-law issue is not just a woman’s problem. It is also the man’s. ‘An often overlooked aspect of the conflict between the saas and the bahu is that of the man in the middle,’ the author says. ‘If the son/husband were to step in and make clear where his mother’s influence ends and where his wife’s begins, a lot of fights can inevitably be avoided. Alas, the Indian man would much rather pretend there is nothing wrong than proactively play a role in diffusing possible tension.’ He is, she tells us, the forever absent Godot.

And conflict is only mounting with the increased pressures of modernisation. ‘The All India Mother-in-law Protection Forum offers legal help to those it feels are falsely implicated under Section 498, dealing with demands for dowry and harassment of the daughter-in-law,’ Venugopal continues. ‘While it is true there is some misuse of the law, the fact that it exists endorses the truth that Indian daughters-in-law are often harassed, even killed. According to data computed from the High Courts, in 2012 over 340,500 cases were pending trial; the number of accused implicated in these cases is close to a million!’

While some of the misery in these stories might seem repetitive, statistics only bear out their relevance. This is not a book for that much maligned group, ‘bored housewives’. It is for anyone who reads about the issues that matter. Though there is hope yet—in the daughter-in-law who is also a mother-in- law, the gentle, devout Tam-Brahm Lalitha (a great potential combo together with sweet Tam-Brahm husband Srini!). Even for those of us who don’t dream, with silly optimism and understandable trepidation, of big, bad Mummyji.

The mother-in-law: The other woman in your marriageVeena Venugopal