When a son-in-law became a son
Till my marriage I had an impression that no mother-in-law on earth can take the place of one’s mother. I was terribly wrong. My mother-in-law lost her husband in a road accident when she was 38. My wife, her only daughter, was then 15 years old. Their world came crashing down. My mother-in-law got a job in her husband’s office. The emotional setback coupled with her strenuous office work started taking its toll. She developed hypertension and even contracted pneumonia that was almost life-threatening. She recovered and was thinking about getting her daughter, doing her post-graduation in English literature, married. Her indifferent health had made her anxious about her daughter’s future.
Marriage negotiations began between our families. Since my wife’s house is not far away from ours, it was agreed that my wife could visit her mother when she wanted. After marriage, things were smooth for some time. But soon, my parents started feeling uncomfortable with my wife’s regular visits to her mother’s house. My parents didn’t like the idea of me visiting my mother-in-law’s house frequently since in our culture, it is demeaning for a jamai (son-in-law) to do so.
Finally, after a year of marriage, my wife and I took the extreme step of shifting to my mother-in-law’s house lock, stock and barrel. She felt happy that I was sticking up for her. But very soon, from a considerate husband, I morphed into an indecisive, Hamlet-like figure pondering whether I was right to walk out on my parents. But my wife made it be known that she wasn’t willing to go back as she wanted to look after her mother. A miscarriage caused her to turn in on herself.
After many years, when my daughter was born, a change came over me. I realised my meanness in running down my mother-in-law who had done nothing to deserve such treatment. But there wasn’t any scintilla of bitterness in her. She quit her job to take care of my daughter. Her happiness knew no bounds. Over the years, she kept investing in various schemes for her granddaughter from her salary. When we suggested that she spend some money on herself too, she just laughed it off.
This year, one wintry morning, my gutsy 67-year-old mother-in-law died of kidney failure in a Delhi hospital. But being made of sterner stuff, she refused to genuflect before death for four consecutive days just as she had always lived cheek-by-jowl with the tragedies of life. She was my mother in the true sense of the term. Till her death, she had our betterment in mind. I still wonder why it took so long for me to turn from a son-in-law to a son.