11
SILENCE IS SACRIFICE
I was just married and brought my newly wedded wife home to live with my parents in my extended family. She was my College girl friend and we were in deep love. This extended family was made up of my mother, father and two sisters who would soon be married and depart for their respective homes. We were not only Indians but traditional Hindus.
For Hindus, marriage is a sacrosanct union. It is also an important social institution. Marriages are between two families, rather two individuals. There are stringent gender roles, with women having a passive role and husband an active dominating role.
My wife was a university graduate and was raised by her parents in an urban environment. On the other hand my mother had never seen the door of a school and had lived in her small village all her life. However, she was a woman with adequate religious, social and cultural knowledge all because of the daily discourse that my father conducted using his scriptures such as Ramayana and Bhagavat Gita.
The relationship of a mother-in-law (MIL) and (daughter-in-law) DIL has always been a complicated process and requires a lot of positive attitude, patience, understanding and empathy on both sides of the field. I have known of major conflicts between the two and have also experienced the MIL and DIL relationship become so full of love and understanding that there generates a total mother and daughter feeling between them.
Initially I had a frank discussion with both the important women that were there to make my life better.
Firstly, I had a heart to heart talk with my mother to explain her different backgrounds of my wife. I asked her to take things easy and gradually accept her daughter in law as her own daughter. I explained to my mother that in the end she would find that she has a more educated and wiser daughter.
On the other hand although I did not have to do this, I managed to have a very frank and useful discussion with my wife. I did not have to give her any academic spills but I prayed to her to be conscious of the fact that my mother was an uneducated rural based lady and needed to be treated differently and understood with a lot of empathy. I emphasized that at the end of the day we had to realize that this is the woman who had given birth to me and if she did not exist then I would not exist as a husband.
I finished off my discussion with my wife by saying that the nagging, meddling mother-in-law is often the cause of worry and the central idea that can help better the situation is to have a positive attitude, learn to be patient and to show respect to the older woman.
Whatever I could do I had done to ease the expected clashes and then I decided to keep my silence because I firmly believed that the two adults would be able to sort their differences out amicably.
However, an urge to stay with the married son, stems from a strong possessive feeling on the part of the mother. Slowly, the tentacles of possessiveness started spreading around in every aspect of the adult son's life, throttling the daughter-in-law. My wife started gasping for breath and was forced to look at her choices. I knew that if nothing was going to work out, she would finally opt for peace of mind maybe by walking out of the marriage. On no condition I was going to let that happen. So I began to look for alternative solutions from as soon as I got the messages of confrontation.
My wife who had experienced the pleasures and thrills of urban living all her life found it hard to adjust to the rural amenities and environment but she did try to accept the hardships of the situation. My mother on the other hand could not understand what the real difficulty of my wife was because my mother had never had any experience of the urban living.
As a consequence of these different standards of living we began to witness the beginning of a sort of family feud between the MIL and DIL. My father could not and did not want to intervene because of various reasons. Firstly after the hard day’s complex and time consuming farm work when he came home he needed time for other social and religious activities. Secondly, he wanted the responsible adults to learn to sort their differences themselves. Thirdly, a lot of this adverse information did not reach him because he was busy with a lot of public service.
Even after my early interventions I had to concentrate on my own business which was getting very competitive and cumbersome. I used to leave home very early in the morning and arrived back late at night. So what transpired at home between the MIL and DIL did not fully come to my notice as well. In fact both my father and I were of the understanding that everything was hunky dory because we used to get all the needed services and care. However, one specific thing I noticed about my wife was her tiredness and her withdrawn behavior. She never ever made any complaint to me or informed me of any mistreatment by her MIL. Naturally then I too thought that everything was running smoothly between the MIL and DIL.
Time kept moving and the relationship between MIL and DIL began to deteriorate and cracks began to appear openly for us to notice them. However, for various reasons as already explained my father and I let the sleeping dog lie and maintained our silence thinking that the storm in the tea cup would soon subside and peace will prevail in the home. This was one of our misjudgments.
It was election time in the country and since I was one of the hopeful candidates of my political party I was extremely busy in my campaigning. In fact I had to succeed in two elections; one on the national level to enter the parliament of the country and one at home to sort out the domestic disturbance.
The national election seemed a lot hopeful but to win the election on the home front and decide the winner was not that easy and straight forward. I had to elect and choose either my mother or my wife. My greatest obstacle was that I had a lot of love and affection for both of them. One had given birth and raised me while the other gave birth and raised my children. I found it extremely difficult to choose one against the other because both were my very own. But I was not that kind of person who would take defeat that easily. Therefore I was looking for a win-win situation.
I was confused and was finding it hard to reach an appropriate and compromising solution. It became difficult to maintain two sharp swords in one sheath. In my home one woman was fast becoming an enemy to the other and it had reached a critical stage.
My mother who had very enthusiastically planned and conducted my marriage so efficiently to establish a new relationship for me could not be deprived of her love and all the consideration.
On the other hand how could I deprive that innocent lady who had become my wife and we loved each other immensely. My wife who had left her mother was not being regarded by my mother as her daughter. Whoever was at fault was not my concern but my immediate wish was to find an amicable resolution to the problem.
I was naturally and definitely confused and my mind was not functioning well so that I could decide to easily elect one against the other. This was not a simple social battle and as such to find a peaceful solution was not that easy but something had to be done before the whole relationship gets shattered.
There were a few relatives and friends of mine who had begun to smell the rat to even blame me for my inability to act, my silence in the deteriorating dispute between my mother and my wife. They even went so far as to say that I was fighting an election for the nation but I was not able to elect and make decision at home.
My mother on the other hand was justifying her actions and conduct when she used to meet her village friends. She even went so far as to regard me as tied to my wife’s apron strings or in her language as ‘joru ka gulam’.
My wife had her own conclusions all because of my inaction and silence in the case. She began calling me ‘Mama’s boy’. I was neither good for my mother or for my wife and at every moment this situation kept my confusion deepening. I did not know that in the last three years I had gone from bad to worse and although the love and affection of the two most important ladies in my life had made me somewhat hopeless I still had not given up hope.
Before my marriage wasn’t I a brave, thoughtful and confident person but now my own had begun to cull out despondent names for me as if I was turning into an empty vessel stuck somewhere in the desert. How long could I afford this silence? My inaction and being quiet had not found any solutions to the problem at hand so I decided that I had to speak out and do something positive. Someone has to win in this worsening situation and predicament.
This morning when I woke up I conducted my usual prayer with my father and an understanding came into my thoughts. The arrival of my wife had caused some disturbance and diminished my mother’s love for me and she was feeling that it was now divided between my wife and her. Therefore this new and old love demanded that I broke my silence through further discussion with my father who was my mentor.
Before going to work and getting busy with my election campaign, I went to my father who was having his breakfast alone in the shed and put my suggestion before him, “Pitaji, I needed to protect my deep love for the two important women in my life, my mother and my wife. I cannot choose one against the other because both are equally adorable for me. Therefore, to avoid any further cracks in the family, I suggest that I move out of this house with my wife and children to my new house that has been completed and needs occupants so that the love and affection of my mother remains intact and my life partner and I are able to live together in a happy and affectionate family life.”
After listening to my suggestion with his open mind and dispassionately, my father completed his breakfast, washed his hands and face and wiped himself with the clean napkin. I was waiting in the shed anxiously in great anticipation for him to break his silence. After a while he stood up, hugged me with his wiser words thus, “Son, I am glad that you have made a mature decision and I am totally in agreement with you. Not only this after the national election is over we will help you settle in your new home with specific prayers.”
There was no end to our joy and satisfaction when I conveyed this news to my wife whom I had driven to her school before going on with my own business. Although our family had found a workable solution to our problem, our friends and relatives had other ideas and kept criticizing us. We knew that it was almost impossible to please everyone every time but we had broken our silence to please my wife and my mother.
The voting for general election had ended and the result was that our political party had won majority of the seats to form the new government. Guess what? I was honoured to be appointed the Minister of Education and Social Services. So I won both the elections when I was able to break my silence.
As an aftermath of our endeavours to find peace and harmony in the extended family my wife presented a medal to her mother in law.
Today it is the first anniversary of our move into our new home and my mother and my wife are the best of friends. My children are looked after, cared for and greatly adored by my parents. We have been spending most of our evenings with and at my parents’ home where we all would share our meals together only to retire into our own sweet home to relax and continue our family life.
Our greatest happiness is that the entire family is well settled with the love and affection that is second to none in our community. My advice to everyone is simple. When the situation and occasion demands we should be brave enough to break our silence and arrive at a solution that solves our problems. This remains the best family medicine for health, wealth and wisdom.
