Women! Women!

Quite a long time ago I was an ardent follower of the saas-bahu serials. It always was a yummy thought provoking half an hour of the grinding relationship between two women in a single man's life, his mother and wife. Teary eyed I would cry at the plight of the poor daughter in law who always had to submit to the whims of her always in the arrogant role mother in law. And in another hour, in a different serial I would be scoffing at the vamp of a daughter in law who treated her mother in law with sheer disrespect.

Indeed this relationship between two women can be really tricky. Only a woman can understand a woman is what I always feel but when it comes to a mother in law and daughter in law I guess the case gets topsy turvy. Weird!Maybe it has all to do with women and their role as a home manager. I guess there can only be one queen in a beehive, what else could be the reason for the tussle for power.

I was cleaning dal, squatted on the floor facing my three friends. Deki who lives with her hubby's family remarked," let your mother in law be the boss.Always!" she said the 'always' too loud. Maybe she wanted to put stress in the importance of that word. She narrated an anecdote of how she lets her mother in law be the boss:

She was watching Druk star and seeing her enthusiasm in it I went to cook the dal that she had soaked for hours. I started cutting the onions, garlic and ginger. My style of preparing dal is to fry all these first and then add the dal and then put it to cook it in pressure cooker. I had been in the kitchen for about twenty minutes when my mother in law appeared in the kitchen. "Mathang, pressure cooker tey jik mala ko"

Seeing her dal still drowned in the bowl filled with water, she exclaimed,"yala, why didn't you put the dal on stove yet?" I explained my recipe. "No, no.." she shook her head. "you have to cook the dal first in the pressure cooker. Fry the onions and garlic in another pan and add at the end. "I see," I nodded and walked away to watch her unfinished Drukstar while she started putting the dal in the cooker.I allowed her to cook it in her own style.

"That's how you give the upper hand to her" Deki explained. But the way she explained had us , her audience, rolling on the floor.
"I never come on her path," another friend added. On my way back from the office, I always make sure to take one glance of my mother in law, if she is sullen, I walk to my room quietly and stay there. If she is smiley then I quickly change and sit with her." Roars of female laughter filled the room. "ong ni, on the days when she is extremely happy I even take my tweezers and uproot her grey hair!" Tears started streaming down our cheeks.We laughed holding our aching tummy.

Definitely this is one relationship that will never be understood or interpreted in plain terms. Who knows while we the daughter in laws sit talking about how not to cornered by our big boss, somewhere in some houses there might be team of mother in laws plotting how to keep their daughter in laws in proper shape.

Well! Women! Women! Who can understand them??

It's a strange relationship

He was nine and I was nineteen when we met for the first time. Wearing specks with lens as thick as an old man's, he would smile at me from under it. Sitting right under my nose he won my heart with the first ever comment he made. In all my glory I was delivering a speech on how I am gonna be a different kinda teacher for my li'l ones and inorder to ensure they synced with my idea, I told them to take me in whatever form they wanted," a friend, aunty, or mother!" Too much for my glorious speech. This li'l guy put an end to my speech with his cute innocent remark," stepmom miss?"


Since then he has been very close to my heart. Somehow I always felt that motherly love for him. Now, don't get me wrong here people, I never intended to become his stepmom, not at any cost. But every morning as his smile greeted me I felt that exulted feelings only a mother is capable of feeling. I was his class teacher for two years. In those two years we got very close. I wasn't biased, I was good to all my students but this particular li'l boy somehow took a larger chunk of my heart for his home.


Occasionally I visited his mom and sister too and his li'l sister who was barely a toddler developed instant liking to me. Even she would squirm," Miss, Miss!" whenever she saw me. Such was our love.


After those two years, we drifted apart. I left that place. After joining that new place I never got any mails from him but I knew he would think of me for I thought of him a lot. I would talk about him to anybody who was all ears for my blabbering.


After a decade we met again. Well, not physically. We met in FB. He had somehow found me. That proves he had never forgotten me too. Chatting for the first time, we caught up on the lost years. He told me he is in an Engineering college in South India and told me about where all he had been in a decade's time. I told him about my kids and the schools I had served. We promised to meet when he came for vacation. That was agreed.


Call it our destiny, he is currently in the same place I had to be in owing to some untoward circumstances. Again we meet in FB and too excited to know we are in one state,we exchange our phone numbers. He calls me immediately after I punch my numbers. "I don't know what to call you, Miss or Madam?" is the first line he says in his not the voice that I remember. And we both feel the connection that we have always felt.

Dear Ugyen, this is for you. I am immensely happy to have talked to you yet at the same time deeply sorrowed by the present state you are in. My li'l one, this mother of yours mothered you before I mothered my real kids. I know God knows my motherly love for you and this love will turn into sincere prayers to get you back to the Ugyen I always remember, smiling cutie pie, as I always called you.

I just want to cry.

What do I write about? What is my imagination cooking? what thoughts are running in my blood?

Well, I pinched myself!Ouch! that surely hurt! But Why am I feeling so dead? I walk outside in the sweltering heat and try to sweat out all my numbness. I return red in the face, stinking like a pig. Now let me take a bath. The cold water might do me good. I soap and scrub all the last bit of sweat and grime yet I don't feel the freshness I want to feel.

Illusions of emotions is what I need I think. I pick up my book and start from my bookmarked page. Nope! I can't relate to the character. The characters are dull puppets, they evoke no feelings in my heart. I throw the book with a vengeance. Thud! it lands on the floor. I don't even give it a second glance. There is no guilt in discarding my favorite book.

I turn on the TV. Some songs might do wonders I wish. The music blares loud, yet it doesn't touch my soul. I put off the TV but do not throw the remote, can't risk breaking that.

I switch on the laptop. Click on some friends. I find the same coldness from my friends too. Either they are too busy with others or I have suddenly turned invisible I am yet to learn. Not wanting to tax anybody for my deathlike numbness; I clank on the keyboard.

But what do I write about? What am I feeling? Surely i must be dead already for I feel no emotions running inside me today. Suddenly I feel a warm tingle down my cheek. I find myself crying. I see my tears. It makes me cry more. So I cry.

I think I badly need to cry today...so, maybe I should stop typing this and get back to my crying. Atleast I know I am not dead, not today, for I am crying! Yes I am.