Posted by It is often said workplace trauma bonds colleagues. You gain friends for life when you face the same bad boss. The same can be applied to our personal lives as well. A very strong indication of how cousins are often your closest in a large family. But what if I tell you the same policy or binding factor applies to daughter-in-laws too?
These are women who are not related by blood but they married into the same family. For the longest time, mass media has massively maligned this relationship. Que any Indian soaps. They are always pitted against each other and weaved into the crabs inside a bucket paradigm. But I witnessed something very different recently.
My paternal aunt visited us. My mom was more than eager to finally see a face from the family other than me and vice versa. They were meeting after more than 2 years. Talks were shared, updates on bodily pains exchanged and the woeful state of their locked up homes was relayed.
Since my mom shifted with me in my current city, our third floor Calcutta home has been under lock and key. The same holds true for my aunt’s ground floor residency in the same house. After my uncle passed away, she shifted to a smaller apartment that is easier to maintain.
They are both now women fresh into retirement, living lives away from the house they married into. The house where they raised their daughters into strong independent women, flexed their financial freedom as teachers with over 25+ of experience, and saw their husbands take their last breath. At the same time,they also experienced a little bit of their attachment to the house chip away along with the peeling paint on the walls.
In the warmth of my Gurgaon apartment, they unraveled like two peas in a pod. I quietly watched them share updates on relatives and neighbours as the residual dal dried on the lunch plates. My aunt even cooked her famous ultra spicy fish curry that comes in bridal red gravy. This was the curry they cooked for each other in the common kitchen of the joint family, after food had been made for the whole family. Even my grinder made them recall how during festivities, long before the mixer grinder entered Indian kitchens, they had to make posto paste by hand for curries. A time consuming task that only stood up to my connoisseur grandmother’s standards after multiple redos. I saw them exchange pillow talk, well after lights out as my aged air conditioner drummed away. The machine being a third party in their conversation amidst the Gurgaon heat.
It is sad that we rarely appreciate such nimble relationships. Relationships that you end up savouring as you age. Yes the two of them had their domestic tiffs, as most do while traversing the snarls of a joint family. But somehow at the end of the day, they also wiped it off. Never letting those tiffs damage their relationship or the relationship between us cousins. It takes courage and bravery to do so. But that little effort goes a long way in building a lasting relationship.