People

My Beautiful Mother-In-Law

PURNIMA JAGANNATHAN

A Note From S. Sangat Singh, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Just a few days ago a young woman wandered into my satellite station when I was writing a comment for sikhchic.com in reply to Fatehpal Singh ji’s trials and tribulations with his 'patni'. I showed her what I had written and her eyes brightened. She forgot about the Planetarium next door that she had come in to visit. She introduced herself and spent a good hour with me. She and her husband had just recently arrived from India to their new job in Malaysia.

I introduced her to sikhchic.com --  the finest online magazine, I believe! -- and shared with her some of the pieces I had written. She promised to come back with her husband and two kids. In the meantime she asked me to put her on my mailing list.

Inspired by Fatehpal Singh ji’s latest columns, she sent a lovely piece she had written on her mother-in-law. Here it is:






When we walk together in a public place, I usually get the comments, “Oh, she is so beautiful …,” or “She looks so hot and sexy”.

Now, if you think I am talking about my 17 year old little sister, hold your breath. I am referring to my 63 year old mother-in-law.

I come from a Type A kind of family, where everyone in our house has the ego the size of a football field and everyone has to have a say in every single decision. It is typical of high achievers sometimes.

When I first got married into my new family, I was amazed by the Zen like calmness that my mother-in-law possessed. If she asked me to buy, say, a tomato and I forgot, she would say “No issues, I can still make something else”.

I have never known her to lose her cool or control things. My first impression – this family is not ambitious enough and people are too laid back, so how can they be super achievers in life?

Over the years, my mother-in-law continues to manage the cooking and household accounts. I have known her to be very thorough in both – never have I seen her flustered and, mind you, I can count hundreds of frustrating / surprising moments each day. She still has to cut, cook and pack four boxes each day before allotted times and take care of the kids once they are back from school.

I do help her but she is like a Project Manager and assumes full responsibility even if I forget (which happens quite often and she never pulls me up for it.)

Any woman who has cared for a house can tell you how frustrating it can be. An office has a deadline and we are free to work around and plan it. A home has hundreds of small deadlines. Bag has to be packed at 8 am, kids picked up at 11 am, taken to class at 4 pm … And when you think you finally have a moment to rest, a carpenter or courier will come to spoil the last vestiges of your “me” time.

It is a 24/7 job with no perks, salary or bonus. Let me tell you that it is not easy to handle all these with Zen like calmness. We never did manage to find household help (it wasn’t in our karma, I guess). I was frustrated like a PM with no resources and like a typical professional hiked the price and worried about it no end.

She simply said, let us do it ourselves!

I had a hectic schedule and she had to help take care of two kids (both below the age of 5). I thought she was super crazy. I did not agree with her idea of hand washing clothes each day and thought she would come around when she saw the load. For 3 weeks, I would come home to see my bucket too hand-washed, sorted out and folded. Not one word about it!

I gave in. Come on, if she could do it at her age, I should be able to, right?

Now, replace this episode with X.Y, Z task and you get the bigger picture. Slowly I realized I could extract so much more work from a day provided I did not fret thinking about it. Hard work never killed anyone, only thoughts about it do. I know I am fitter than most other people and I have been mistaken for an Entry Level Graduate many a time at my workplace.

I found out the secret to her beauty did not lay in elaborate cosmetic rituals or going to the beauty parlour for treatments. It lay in her Zen like calmness and ability to take things as they come.

And as I rightly know it now – of course, she is ambitious. And ambition does not have to come at a price. And now when people tell me she is Beautiful, I say with a smile “Yes. She is beautiful … Heart, Mind and Soul”.

June 8, 2015
 

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