Sickening presence

A married woman tells her friend that she has maintained her weight within a healthy BMI range. She lives a comfortable life in a ten-marla house with her in-laws, while her husband works abroad. The other woman, in a self-satisfied tone, says that she has gained a healthy amount of weight while living in a three-marla house with her husband, who holds a government job. The second woman had, in fact, taken the mention of the ten-marla house as a sideswipe at her. She then told a story to the first, claiming to reveal the secret behind her weight loss.

Once, a king, wishing to test the acumen of his ageing wazir, gave him a goat and ordered that it be fed continuously without gaining any weight. The task seemed impossible. If the goat was fed, it would gain weight, and if it was starved, the wazir would fail the king's command. Puzzled and under pressure, the wazir was at his wits' end. In the final hours of the night, as he lay staring at the starry sky, he found his eureka moment. After one month, the king visited the wazir. The wazir greeted him with an equally triumphant smile, which unsettled the king. The king was baffled to see that the goat appeared somewhat emaciated and demanded that the wazir swear under oath that the goat had been fed a constant supply of fodder. The wazir calmly affirmed that the goat had indeed masticated the fodder and chewed the cud throughout the day.

As kings are never accustomed to suspense in the presence of courtiers, the king appreciated the wazir's acumen but wanted to know how he accomplished the feat. The courtiers surmised that it must have been something unnatural with the fodder that couldn't be assimilated, or that the goat must have been sick with loss of appetite. The wazir declared nothing was wrong with the fodder or the goat. Now, the king was running out of patience. He announced royal perks and privileges for the wazir, provided he would divulge the secret first.

The wazir apprised the king and courtiers that a lion was tied at a place from where it was visible to the goat. Though the goat munched the fodder all day long, she ate it in fear. The fear didn't let the digested fodder be assimilated into the body. The assimilated food builds up the musculature, but the body consumes a major chunk of it to generate energy to cope with the physiological and psychological changes brought about by fear.

Likewise, despite all the apparent comfort, the constant presence of the second women's overbearing mother-in-law did not allow the woman to gain weight. The mother-in-law continues to manipulate her daughter-in-law as per her whims. The son, who, in being excessively obedient to the mother, becomes oblivious to taking care of his wife. The daughter-in-law, bound by traditional expectations, waits for her husband to rescue her from the suffocating grip of her mother-in-law but the son shirks his responsibilities toward his wife, leaving her with no real recourse. She can only hope that her mother-in-law's meddling softens into wiser guidance in managing the household, or wait for her husband to recognise his duties.

The daughter-in-law often turns to her parents and protests or even contemplates a divorce, but then hopelessly shuns the idea as there is little hope of change in her fate. She nurtures the hope that a day would come when every family member would respect the existence of the other.

Being obedient to the mother doesn't entitle the son to be indifferent to his wife's rights. Ambits and limits. The mother-in-law must understand that the survival of her family depends upon her daughter-in-law's survival.

Disclaimer: Dear readers, you must be frowning at me for portraying a mother-in-law as a nuisance, but it was the requirement of the allegory. In a broader sense, if a woman wishes another woman to endure the same ordeal she herself experienced, she becomes a mother-in-law. if she does not, she remains a mother.