***************************************************************************************************************
Yesterday I was talking about the tutorial relations between mothers-in-law and their sons-in-law.
And I quoted a comment I got from a Bengali bhadramahila who calls herself, 'Wanderlust', for inscrutable reasons. Apparently she wanders in the blogosphere from blog to blog like a butterfly flitting and sipping from flower to flower with ease, and then forgetting. This lady rebuked me that I was talking from my own bitter experience as a son-in-law, and I said there is little truth in her insinuation.
Today however I shall talk from experience...not only my own but of dozens of my friends, colleagues and contemporaries as well as my father and his friends. You see, we all belonged to what can be called the 'arranged marriage' generation unlike the 'love marriage' generation of today (not that it really matters...roses smelled the same for centuries).
In general the typical mother-in-law used to treat her son-in-law as an unfortunate intruder...a necessary interloper.
Even though ours used to be a fairly closed space of South Indian brahmins with very few eligible bachelors who met the stringent requirements of subcaste, gotra and lineage, each family had its own customs and traditions like eating habits, bathing habits, sitting habits, reading habits (if any), and rituals. And every mother-in-law used to feel superior to her son-in-law's traditions and habits.
And then on every mother-in-law felt that they should have waited for a better specimen to arrive before latching on to the current one. It was a gamble in which she always felt an unlucky loser since there was no going back those days.
Her complaints were many and varied:
The chap eats with his arms on the table, starts his meal with pickle instead of the curry, talks with his morsel in his mouth, stretches his palm when the ghee arrives, slurps his sambar, eats not with his fingers but his entire hands, drinks up his rasam with his open palms dripping so that the liquid flows down his arms, eats fast, gets up and goes away in a hurry to wash his hands before her own husband is through with his meal....sings in his bath in a loud raucous voice as if he resents getting wet, leaves his socks as and where he removes them, polishes his shoes with his socks, insists that her timid daughter get on to the carrier of his shaking pushbike after it takes off, sleeps with the table lamp on, and refers to her by name instead of 'your highness' (or its equivalent) prefixed to it...
And when the kid arrives and he visits them to look the thing up he gifts her only a cotton handloom sari instead of the pure silk one that is their custom, dandles the kid with his office hands before cleaning them, feeds it toffees and junk food, spoils the brat, and shouts for her when it dirties itself instead of himself doing the needful...
And so on and so forth...
The son-in-law, on the other hand, tries his best in vain to win a word of appreciation or two during their lifetime. He walks the extra mile and asks his wife the secret of how exactly to please her mom without spending too much precious money on her, tries several things like buying cookery books and placing them in her hand, tries to praise her accomplishments like in music without inviting her to sing, takes her to the next grainy Telugu movie in the Netaji Auditorium and late night Kuchipudi dance programs in the shivering Tagore Open Air Theater...all to no avail.
With such irreconcilable attitudes between the two species, can there ever be true learning or teaching?
The loud answer is:
"Perhaps Never"
...Posted by Ishani
***************************************************************************************************************
Yesterday I was talking about the tutorial relations between mothers-in-law and their sons-in-law.
And I quoted a comment I got from a Bengali bhadramahila who calls herself, 'Wanderlust', for inscrutable reasons. Apparently she wanders in the blogosphere from blog to blog like a butterfly flitting and sipping from flower to flower with ease, and then forgetting. This lady rebuked me that I was talking from my own bitter experience as a son-in-law, and I said there is little truth in her insinuation.
Today however I shall talk from experience...not only my own but of dozens of my friends, colleagues and contemporaries as well as my father and his friends. You see, we all belonged to what can be called the 'arranged marriage' generation unlike the 'love marriage' generation of today (not that it really matters...roses smelled the same for centuries).
In general the typical mother-in-law used to treat her son-in-law as an unfortunate intruder...a necessary interloper.
Even though ours used to be a fairly closed space of South Indian brahmins with very few eligible bachelors who met the stringent requirements of subcaste, gotra and lineage, each family had its own customs and traditions like eating habits, bathing habits, sitting habits, reading habits (if any), and rituals. And every mother-in-law used to feel superior to her son-in-law's traditions and habits.
And then on every mother-in-law felt that they should have waited for a better specimen to arrive before latching on to the current one. It was a gamble in which she always felt an unlucky loser since there was no going back those days.
Her complaints were many and varied:
The chap eats with his arms on the table, starts his meal with pickle instead of the curry, talks with his morsel in his mouth, stretches his palm when the ghee arrives, slurps his sambar, eats not with his fingers but his entire hands, drinks up his rasam with his open palms dripping so that the liquid flows down his arms, eats fast, gets up and goes away in a hurry to wash his hands before her own husband is through with his meal....sings in his bath in a loud raucous voice as if he resents getting wet, leaves his socks as and where he removes them, polishes his shoes with his socks, insists that her timid daughter get on to the carrier of his shaking pushbike after it takes off, sleeps with the table lamp on, and refers to her by name instead of 'your highness' (or its equivalent) prefixed to it...
And when the kid arrives and he visits them to look the thing up he gifts her only a cotton handloom sari instead of the pure silk one that is their custom, dandles the kid with his office hands before cleaning them, feeds it toffees and junk food, spoils the brat, and shouts for her when it dirties itself instead of himself doing the needful...
And so on and so forth...
The son-in-law, on the other hand, tries his best in vain to win a word of appreciation or two during their lifetime. He walks the extra mile and asks his wife the secret of how exactly to please her mom without spending too much precious money on her, tries several things like buying cookery books and placing them in her hand, tries to praise her accomplishments like in music without inviting her to sing, takes her to the next grainy Telugu movie in the Netaji Auditorium and late night Kuchipudi dance programs in the shivering Tagore Open Air Theater...all to no avail.
With such irreconcilable attitudes between the two species, can there ever be true learning or teaching?
The loud answer is:
"Perhaps Never"
...Posted by Ishani
No comments:
Post a Comment