My husband’s mother is an unusual woman. Our relationship has had many ups and downs – the first two years were good, the next two were like living on the brink of an active volcano currently dormant, the next six were bad (so bad that I cannot bring myself to write more) and now we have a sort of unspoken truce and get along reasonably well. I find things I can respect about her – I can look at her a bit more objectively and can throw up a defensive shield whenever she is in one of her barb-throwing moods. In short I have matured enough to adjust to her on the few occasions when I have to actually stay in Kerala.

My mother-in-law has a lot of physical stamina and believes in leading an almost Spartan existence. She is sixty. She does all the housework herself and also cares for the many coconut trees, areca nut trees, jackfruit trees, mango trees and banana plants that grow in their yard. The yard is a misnomer really – it’s actually a half-acre plot. She gets up at five in the morning and lights the lamp. Then she sweeps the courtyard and backyard and then the inside of the house. This is a huge task and if I were to do it (I have done it a few times actually) I would be bedridden after two days. The house itself is huge with four bedrooms and various smaller rooms and two halls on two floors. She then takes a bath in cold water no matter what the weather and sometimes goes to the temple. Then she makes breakfast from scratch as is the case in most Indian households. No packed items for her. Even the rice flour used for preparing breakfast dishes is home-made. She grinds her own turmeric powder, chilly powder and coriander powder. She grows her own pepper. She gets coconut oil made from her own coconuts through the local mill. And she even de-husks and freshly grates coconuts at least three times a day. She also will not keep anything from lunch as leftovers for dinner and we absolutely have to finish all the rice and curries she makes at the main meals – nothing is to be wasted but nothing is to be left over either – she doesn’t use the fridge for anything more than storing vegetables for at the most three days. Her utensils are always scrubbed clean, her floors are spotless and every cotton shirt, mundu and sari is starched to perfection by hand. I don’t know how she does it all. She also has to water the coconut and areca nut trees, make sure the coconuts are plucked on time, dry them to get copra and take them to the mill for oil. She has to dry the areca nuts as well and sell them. My father-in-law helps with none of this because he is the man of the house. This is my mother-in-law’s current routine now that she is retired. Till three years ago, she also used to work from ten to five as a schoolteacher in addition to running the house.

So she has many laudable traits. However, she has never been happy in all the years I have seen her. She sucks the joy out of life and can never be cheerful. It almost seems as if her heart is a black hole of despair where every happy thought perishes and where even the laughter of children cannot reach her. She thinks her actions perfect and herself to be beyond reproach. Assuming that is the truth, why is she still unhappy? She believes in her way of doing things. I am considered lazy and luxury loving because I have a maid. It doesn’t occur to her that everyone here in Bangalore has domestic help – my having it means that I lead a sybaritic life and have absolutely nothing to do. If her way of doing things is right, why is she still unhappy?

I often wonder what hidden sense of guilt makes her fear happiness. She thinks all other families are happier than hers. Her daughter lives barely fifteen minutes away and yet it is as if she were abroad. My in-laws won’t trouble her meaning that they don’t visit her for fear of causing their daughter more work because she is so hard-working and of course (as she tells me often) she has to work as a teacher and she doesn’t have a maid. So even if they are invited, they act like guests and not family. They have so many self-imposed restrictions that they cannot give or accept love at all. No one gets close and anyone who ever did retired hurt – I am a walking testimony to that.

I admire her strength and her tireless will to work till her last breath. I admire the fact that she doesn’t complain about her heart troubles or soaring cholesterol levels to anyone – she simply grits her teeth and continues even when in pain which is quite often these days. I only wish she could learn to smile – that she could let herself love at least once more because I am sure she loved once and could not bear the pain of her son moving far away or the pain of loneliness and has hardened her heart to such an extent that it has become a true black hole.