Dealing With A Controlling Saas (Mother-in-law) – Episode 02

Continued from Episode 01

The girl had all kinds of plans to dress up and had even planned all her makeup looks for her wedding dinners and dawats, the couple had certain plans for their honeymoon but alas! Before any of that could happen, something terrible happened. To be particular, “the nand” happened.

In the early days of their marriage, the couple was happy, and was trying to enjoy their newly-wed selves and understand each other better. Because let’s state the facts, for every couple the engagement period is way different than the actual wed-period. You get to know the petty to big unknown details of your spouse. This is the time you get to argue over real stuff like closing the toilet lid or taking too long to get ready. To be honest it’s a beautiful phase that every couple should get to enjoy.

However, here comes a plot twist: the sister-in-law had some kind of mental disorder and had gotten involved with some guy in her university who had been using her but had no plans of marrying her. Deep down in her mind, she knew she could never achieve her happily ever after with that guy as her brother and sister-in-law had just done and their happiness would burn her to the core. So she started displaying her hatred, she would complain about stuff like, “Why do these two eat food together?”, “Why does the bhabhi always dress up?”, “Why are they being given so much attention?”…“Uff ALLAH! Koi sharam nahi kese chipak kai beth jate hain,” etc. She started feeling ignored and jealous.

So one day she called her brother to her room and both the siblings had a huge fight which the newly-wed girl was unaware of, but after leaving the fight the nand attacked the bhabhi. Abused her parents and called out to her “tarbiyat”. To which the latter, as any educated person would respond, made herself clear that she would never tolerate such a tone and rudeness for no reason. That the quarrel between the siblings should remain between them and that her and her family were not to be dragged in between such a mess.

Later the sister-in-law apologized (since the brother took his wife’s side and the aunties suggested that if the nand didn’t apologize at such an early stage they would end up losing their son). She then disclosed her actual problem, i.e. the guy whom she could never get and the fact that she was jealous of the couple and couldn’t bear the thought that she couldn’t marry who she wanted to marry. She kept on saying stuff like, “My brother has always gotten everything”, “He was always treated with more love than me…”, “I hate seeing you both so happy and that again he has the ‘happily ever after’ life that I can’t ever achieve”. The bhabhi was surprised and amazed at whether this was an apology or some kind of blame game session but she just kept quiet to end the issue.

Even though the nand had apologized, the mother-in-law was fully indulged in calling people and portraying her daughter as innocent, mocking how the daughter-in-law spoke up for herself and didn’t tolerate her daughter’s yelling at her. This was her usual self – backbiting and mocking the daughter-in-law.

They started making up false stories about how the son had slapped his sister and mother for abusing his wife; however, none of this was true. And every time the wife complained that she was being defamed, the husband would just get more upset because the wife was an outsider. But he was their son and they were defaming him even. He would keep on thinking and upsetting himself over why families start hating their sons if they stand up for their wives. 

The couple started to become depressed and they would just stay quiet and upset during their private time just because they wanted peace. The peace that had now become impossible during the day due to the awkward house quarrels going on.

Time passed and the family wedding dinners started. But the couple was upset about what had happened. The time they were to spend understanding each other. These fights had turned it into the time they had to fight for each other. 

They dropped the idea of going for the honeymoon since they wanted to avoid any quarrels or highlights on them altogether.

Stupid stuff kept on happening in the house- plotting, scheming, and manipulating was at its peak and the girl who hated to watch irritating saas-bahu soaps had shifted into one.

She’d just go to her parents’ place for months when she’d get fed up with her susral, and the in-laws would be as happy as ever when she’d leave. They’d pamper their son; start talking to him and involving him in their discussions. However, the son wasn’t happy with what was going on and how they kept defaming him and his wife throughout this time.

When she’d return, the mother-in-law would create a scene and then the nand would put in add fuel to the fire by screaming and yelling, breaking things and cursing the couple. On the other hand, the girl had now been instructed by her husband not to ever fight back. So, she would just lock herself up in a room.  However, she would tell every detail to her husband since that was the couple’s ritual; they used to share with each other whatever happened with them all day.

After six months passed and the heat wasn’t cooling, the couple finally planned to move to another city in a rented house. They planned that both of them would get a job there and would meet their in-laws every weekend. The morning they were about to shift, a whole group of people including the mother-in-law came to stop them from leaving. They apologized for their behavior and promised nothing as such would ever happen again. The son didn’t agree but the daughter-in-law accepted the apology because she didn’t want to ‘snatch’ the son from his family. But she didn’t want to start over and live a struggling life. She believed things would change now that they had apologized. Also, because she had doubts that another big change was about to come in her life. She had doubts that she was expecting…

Keep reading because this is a story of how she finally dealt with her over-controlling in-laws.

To be continued… Episode 03