Indian society has always prided itself upon its system of family support. However, this support often comes at the almost prohibitive price of avid interference, intrusion and imposition, not to mention the never-ending power games. While cases of exemplary support from in-laws do exist (albeit rarely), and those of exploitation of elders by the younger generations are publicized far and wide, the travails of young couples locked in the stranglehold of family pressures, guilt trips and unreasonable expectations often go unsung. Almost the only place these are aired is on family soap operas on the idiot box, to be treated with disdain by ‘sensible people’. So, it is quite on the cards that a number of readers might find the incidents discussed here either improbable, or even exasperating, just like people’s reactions to the movie ‘Patiala House’—while most positive, go-ahead people panned the movie in unequivocal terms, the story of the depressive, defeated, dutiful son struck a chord with a number of people who are themselves unable to break free of similar situations due to a (maybe misplaced) sense of filial duty.
The anecdotes referred to here are real life stories. However, the names have been changed, as have some minor details, since the protagonists have put their duty towards their family foremost all their lives and have agreed to let this story see the light of day only under condition of anonymity. And while the cases mentioned here have successfully navigated the shoals of family pressures and expectations, there are many, many others who have been forced apart … either into the divorce courts, or into legal separations, and sometimes, even to suicide.
Sadhana from an affluent Delhi-based business family relates how she and her husband were startled by an urgent banging on their door, minutes after they had entered their room on their wedding night. It was her husband’s sister, furious with her brother for wanting to spend time with his bride, and with the ‘usurper’ Sadhana for suddenly becoming so important in his life. The lady and her mother continue to do their utmost to wreak havoc in the couple’s married life, even after almost 15 years of marriage!
Incredible as it might sound to a rational mind, there are innumerable such cases that no one talks about—in metropolitan cities, no less. Bela from Mumbai shares how her extremely orthodox and ritual-loving mother-in-law brought her into the house after marriage without performing any of the traditional threshold rites. Thereafter she stood guard over her for about 12 hours, refusing to let her son be alone with his bride, till she was forcibly evicted (laughingly) by some helpful relatives. And in this 12-hour period of vigil she even managed to plonk herself in the middle of their marriage bed and take a two-hour nap, while the newly-weds and all the relatives stared at each other in shock!
Rama, the daughter of an affluent Delhi businessman married her college sweetheart after seven years of waiting for him to become ‘self-supporting’ and started her married life in a two-bedroom government quarter in South Delhi—the bride of the second of her parents-in-laws’ three sons. In spite of the fact that the sons were all earning well and could very well afford larger living space, the in-laws were adamant about ‘living together’. Rama and her husband were assigned a ‘bedroom’ made of plywood boards in a corner of the lobby, with a queen-sized bed and a rickety wardrobe. And to add to it, they were not allowed to shut the door—if they did, the in-laws would start hammering at it hysterically!
Aruna was married into a ‘traditional north-Indian joint family’—in Detroit, USA, of all places—in the late 1990s. She was expected to cover her head in the presence of elders, not speak to her husband in public (much less, touch him), and to take over the entire running of the household (albeit without any authority or decision-making power) from the day she got married. To top it all, her father-in-law, a cancer patient for the past seven years—a fact that Aruna’s parents had been unaware of—succumbed to his illness within a year of her marriage, earning for her the stigma of ‘manhoos’ (inauspicious), and causing untold misery in her married life.
The couples in these cases—and innumerable others like them—have managed to find their equilibrium after the inevitable misunderstandings, heart-burnings and tumultuous times, sometimes lasting as long as 10 years. Some have found their answers in spirituality, others in a blind adherence to astrology and the occult sciences, and yet others in mastering the art of ignoring irrelevances. Life goes on, and people learn to work their way around the most difficult situations. However, an interesting observation in most such cases is that the elders are usually people who migrated to metros from small towns or to Western countries from India. While never having lived in joint families for any length of time themselves, they are, nevertheless, determined to cling, limpet-like, to the lives of the younger couples.
Says noted Delhi-based psychiatrist Dr Kamal Kumar, “It is usually their fear of finding themselves ousted from their sons’ lives, the way their own parents were ousted from theirs, that makes them try to maintain a stranglehold on the young couples from the day they get married.”
“Another factor that comes into play,” he adds, “is the fact that the parents have always lived by their own rules and upon their own terms, and are thus, unable to tolerate any signs of individualism in the younger couples. They want to rule the roast as always and deny their children even basic acceptance as a couple”.
However, economic factors too are often seen to play a role in such situations. Dr Kamal Kumar agrees: “In quite a few families, mothers and sisters are actuated into their destructive behaviour, not only by possessiveness towards the son/brother and intolerance for the ‘outsider’, but also by a determination to retain control over the next ‘earning member’, as the son is perceived in traditional societies.” As an Economist friend remarks: “You can call it ‘primitive capital accumulation’ in its most elementary form: absolute control over the means of production, both monetary and human.”
But despite the exponentially rising rates of divorce and legal separations, it is to the immense credit of these innumerable couples that they, even today, in these ‘changed times’, cling to their commitment to each other in the midst of such conditions … for them their love is, indeed, forever.
