What is a discussion on contemporary Pakistani society without a discussion on the relationship of mother in laws and daughters in laws. Though this unique relationship is a bitter fruit in all cultures across the globe; regardless of race, class and ethnicity; in few other places it is as prominent as it is in Pakistan.
May be few other countries, where the concept of joint family systems still exist, can also lay claim to this eternal tussle. The MIL-DIL (mother in law-daughter in law) configuration is not only the sore of our society but also the core of the juiciest scandals in any given household.
The most hilarious part of this ‘comedy of errors’ is to note is that rarely does any unmarried girl ever believe that these stories could ever be repeated by her. After all she is educated and has the mental stamina to ignore the jahalat her married friends and female family members tell her that MILs are capable of pulling off. Above all she has the wisdom and patience to ignore the usual abhorable tactics observed by MILs to make the lives of their DILs miserable.
In my guestimate eighty percent of these newbies sign the marriage contract with an; in their opinion; unyielding resolve and uncompromising determination to make their new home,
‘the envy of all the bickering, wrangling, backbiting and squabbling two-some known as MILs and DILs’
Sadly it takes just a few months for this part of the contract to fall through. Even if they are not living in a joint family system, they lose their patience and become part of the time old crowd of women who have fought since time immemorial over one thing alone; the guy they marry.
If you are wondering about the remaining 20%, they enter the contract with gung-ho.
They are in no mood to give the MILs any kind of leg room to start exerting pressure on them and plan to capture the enemy from day one. Whether part of the optimistic 80% or the growling 20%, the end result for all is the same. The 80% just get there a little later than these 20% who are there from day one. It needs to be mentioned here that there is a breed of DILs out there who croons praises of their MILs. Upon a deeper inquiry it is however revealed that either their MILs are far, far away in other countries to be visited by these crooning dils once every two or three years or they are dead. There is no third scenario!
In the highly educated Western society, where there is no concept of joint family, the DILs are equally flabbergasted over the antics of their MILs hence proving that the joint family system cannot be deemed the primary reason for the war between the two stalwart figures in any man’s life. The cold war between Diana and the Queen was hope to millions in Pakistan. Thousands of heartbroken DILs were comforted by their counterparts with,
yar tu dil kiyoon chota kartee hai….jab Diana kee us kee sas say naheen bun saki to teri kiya banay gee…!!!.
This war is time tested and there is no reason to believe that it is going anywhere in near future or even the far future. MIL and DIL have not learnt to co-exist in any culture; our society just has a larger chunk of this bickering as part of our social setup.
The jokes on the relationship are as endless as the war itself. For instance, a man’s rich MIL was kidnapped presumably for ransom. The kidnappers called two days later and told him,
‘pay us this amount of money or we’ll send her back’.
The guy responds,
‘I’ll pay you this this amount if you’ll agree to keep her’.
Here is another classic. A guy’s mother in law dies and at the funeral his friend comes to him for condolence and says, ‘
So sorry about your mil. So what happened to the poor lady’ The guys says, ‘Well I recently got a dog and he bit her and she died’. The friend looks around carefully and then says, ‘Um…could you lend me this dog of yours for a day?’. The man says, ‘sure…just get in line’. .
So why do they fight?
The common notion is that they fight over the man that one has married and ‘taken away’ from the other. Women are known to be highly possessive and territorial. Unfortunately, the ‘territory’ in this case is the bone of contention as well so there is no peace at all. This is not a sharing problem. After all the MIL has no issues when her son spends time with his male friends before or after the marriage. The problem is when he spends time with the wife. She is the thief who has stolen her ultimate treasure. It can be assumed that it is a classic case of one woman against another woman, a form of fight that has gone on for ever and has given rise to the popular view that a woman is a woman’s worst enemy. Some DILs see their hopes in him, he belongs to them. Sure they bring the ultimate hoor-pari (fairy princess) for him to marry but that hoor-pari is to stay in the background and should make no emotional claims on him. She is to be as obedient and as meek a servant to the MIL as the son is expected to be. The moment the hoor-pari starts displaying her ‘par’, ‘let the wars begin!’.
Some DILs point out the fact that the other in law wars are quite equally dynamic and forceful but no one can argue that the real and classic in law war is the MIL vs DIL war. In many homes, the curiosity kills the peace of house, the mental health of the guy and the hair on his head. From curiosity arises interference and from interference the feeling of lack of privacy and from lack of privacy the feeling of being psychologically invaded. It works similarly for both parties. In the end they both lash out in defense. The result is a cat fight that has the neighbors glued to their walls. There have been instances where the neighbors plant their ‘moles’ in the ‘juicy’ households on the street in the form of highly paid cleaning women who spy for them and work as the daily CNN and BBCs. One DIL suggests that our society needs a special education program for the MILs and SILs (sister in laws) before their sons and brothers get married.
The party who suffers the most in this battle is the poor guy. Most of them spend their entire lives trying to keep both these very important parts of their existence assuaged and happy. But few ever really succeed. Where the wife rages on about ‘your mother’, the mother refuses the let the fight out of her hand with ‘your wife’. I am sure there are times when a lot of poor guys wished they had neither mothers nor wives! There is little they can do to help the situation for the simple reason that they are the reason for why they are fighting. I feel sorry for the husbands but again, they are the reasons for the loving MIL and DIL relationships in the first place.
Needless to say the colorful MIL and DIL relationship are one of the things that makes our society so unique. The fighting is incessant and persistent; the reasons why they fight ceaseless; the ways to make peace non-existent; the fun the onlookers get out of it immeasurable and the misery it inflicts on the son boundless. Who said Pakistani society has so little to be proud of? We Pakistanis are very proud of the cultural heritage of the mother in law….!
Amjad Islam Amjad has said:
farq hai kuch kirdaaroN meiN
baqi khel puraana hai
To conclude I must say that for humor and satire sake I may have generalized the whole MIL population into one category but in reality they are all individuals. I am very sure there are ‘shafiq’ and ‘mohtaram’ MILs out there too who treat their DILs with respect and earn their own respect in return. I want to believe there is more good than evil out there.
I think SKM is right about , “Naturally , this is the root cause ……….. has a cost associated to someone elses life ” .
If only the Youth had Wisdom & the Wise had Youth !!
Irum’s article & the responses it has attracted makes healthy reading due to some unique perspectives .
Nice discussion, I see only a few are bold enough to discuss such a sensitive topic. Tina and Omar I think you raise some very valuable points. Marriage criteria, and men’s challenge in expressing their love to either relationship.
As for is couple search criteria is concerned, I think that is a topic on it’s own to discuss and criticize as it is amazing how clueless young couples and their parents are when arranging or setting up individuals. I think “maturity” and balance in both parties plays a significant role when dealing with challenges between MIL and DIL. This I’ve learnt only with experience the lack of both makes the man responsible in making both MIL and DIL suffer. That is not to say man is totally able to provide a peaceful resolve to this dynamic.
Lack of expressing your feelings in some shape or form both your wife and mom is imperative when you feel either party feels vulnerable for whatever reason.
Sitting back and doing nothing is absolutly “moronic” and immature and as Tina indicated and others you can end up paying a price for that.
Each relationship in this world has an entitlement to it’s privacy and understanding and providing all 3 parties understand this concept to some degree you will have peace and happiness at home.
The sooner both DIL, MIL and the son/husband understand this and extend this right to one another the better the home will be.
The fault lies in most couples being too immature, full of emotions, and energy to sit back and empathize of where the other party is coming from and how they would feel if they were in other’s position.
Naturally, this is the root cause of the problem, most couples don’t marry when they are all well balanced in their emotional, professional lives and possibly even spirtual life rather we marry young when we are still learning and more focused on our selfish wants not realizing our behavior has a cost associated to someone elses life .
Wasim and Others,
Itnee buzdali achee naheen… You are giving up even before you play the game……! Haven’t you heard about marriage? Jis nay kee woh bhee roya, jis nay naheen kee, woh bhee roya….!
Hi Irum,
I’m not sure what you mean by “esteemed and highly educated purposes”…for those women who seek highly educated daughter-in-laws as a status symbol I’m sure you are right +10, since not many things are worse than to be highly educated to a profession you will never pursue. However it has not been my observation that those with work outside the family home are worse off–rather the opposite, because they are busy with something other than meddling with their loved ones. Yes, traditional types “stick it out” but is this really to mean they are better off? I guess I have been lucky in not having experienced the worst of this familial dynamic.
Also I would state again that if the mother has over the years built a decent relationship with her own husband and the father of her children, the perceived “abandonment” by her son will be easier to bear. I think too many women in Pakistan concentrate all their energy on their children because no bond of love ever develops between husband and wife–but this is a touchy topic.
My husband’s cousin was the closest I ever came to seeing the worst and it was a tragic case. The “MIL” became extremely jealous and never let the girl sleep–she violently woke her up every two hours with some complaint about housework and then made her do dirty tasks at all hours of the night. The son did nothing. After some weeks of this treatment the 17 year old bride was exhausted and crying constantly and she said she would burn herself alive. She said “Look! Watch! I’ll set myself on fire and I’ll do it like this…” She put the end of her dupatta in the fire to demonstrate and it caught, and the next thing everyone knew she was all in flames. After a couple of days she died.
Now I am sure she will go down in the statistics of Western sociologists as a self-immolation case but really it was a horrible accident–but how awful that it got that far and she was just a kid. So I know that it CAN happen in extremes but I just really have a hard time believing that well-educated families are worse off in this respect than less-educated ones.
And I don’t think a rising divorce rate means much besides that wives now have an option besides remaining chained to the side of a husband and family who abuses them. I don’t think there’s any special nobility in spending a lifetime being beaten and misused by some man–or his mother.
Unfortunately, until matches are based on something besides the girl’s looks, education, and social connections–with no attention being paid to the compatibility of the couple–the whole society will be filled with empty big-show weddings followed by farcical hollow shells of marriages, with the woman clinging unnaturally to her sons, followed in its time by the hunt for a “perfect” bride, fair skinned, having a degree, etc. etc., then followed by the “turn-about”, namely this jealousy and “MIL-DIL” issue–which really shouldn’t be any issue at all. Nature designed young men to fall in love with potential mates–not their own mothers. That this isn’t allowed to happen unhindered is a sign of something being very broken with a family at a very basic level. And may indicate some larger cultural/societal weak points as well.
Just my thoughts.
Tina, thank you for reflecting with your perspective on my opinion. It is really helpful for me to read your comments because no matter how hard I try, it is difficult for me to fully empathize a feminine point of view ;)
You are of the opinion that women can avoid being “so heart breakingly needy in the first place” by trying to find a reason for their existence besides their families and spouse. I agree to your argument to the extent that offering a creative outlet to DILs and MILs can definitely alleviate the intensity of the conflict.
However, I am a bit apprehensive for DILs; that too much reliance on other things like career, friends etc., might be synonymous to shying away from pains that come with the pleasure of a relationship.
I would say that MILs are a tiny bit less liable to be blamed because their family is their career and that is what they have been doing since the day their son was conceived. By saying that I do not mean MILs cannot be unreasonable; they can be and most of time they are. It is no different than dealing with difficult parents.
For DILs, the scenario is a bit different as they have a full life ahead of them and they have to be a MIL one day themselves.
“Kyoon keh saas bhee khabhi bahoo thi” ;)
So it may be just “karma” which has been repeating it self for centuries.
From a strictly male perspective, a man would hardly stay in a relationship where he is not needed or feels inadequate, therefore, any effort to find an alternate purpose by DILs, needs a patient and considerate thinking.
Solution: Girls, be good wives and everything will turn out to be fine in the end.
PS: Just don