What do you call a place where you live, eat, shower and sleep for free, but don’t necessarily call home?
(No, not jail!)
It’s called Sasuraal... the place where suddenly after you get married, all the bharatiya sanskaar decides to move in with you. The wellspring of intolerance that can put the rest of the nation to shame. I’ll tell you how. Once, while thinking out aloud I mentioned I wanted a study table for my room. What my dear mother-in-law said to me threw me off my chair!
Study table? But you’re married now, look at my room, I don’t have a study table.
If you too deal with such absurdities everyday, here are five ways you can keep your mental balance and live with your in-laws.
Everything Is NOT About You
If the queen of mood swings is in a bad mood, you are not to be blamed. Don’t take it upon yourself. For all you know, she might just be upset with the king of indifference and hence venting her anger at everybody else.
Don’t Watch Hum Saath Saath Hai
It’s sexist and as unrealistic as it can get. Watch the Pretentious Movie Review of it to get a reality check, instead. A family that lives together need not always eat together. Cook dinner just for you and your partner sometimes. Go out on dates. Just the way you did when you were both not married.
“Tum Sab Aise Ho!”
Don’t say that to your partner. You married the person you married for a reason. You love him/her, irrespective of whether you love their family or not. Don’t begin to judge your partner for how his/her family is behaving. The poor thing will have nowhere to go otherwise.
Isolate your relationship with your partner from the one you share with the rest of his family.
You Are Not Tulsi
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Don’t try to be either. The ideal bahu, Tulsi, was the figment of a patriarchal imagination. You did not marry into that house to solve everyone’s problems. There are electricians, plumbers and psychiatrists for that. Focus on yourself and your space in that house and make the most of it.
Don’t Stop Being Yourself
When you live in a hostel, you don’t become like everyone else living there. When you live with your in-laws, you need not start believing in things they do, unless you want to. Live by your own principles, disagreeing is not disrespecting.
As my father-in-law always says, nobody is ever right or wrong, people are just different. That perspective has made my life much simpler. I apply it to them as much as I apply it to myself.
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