Mad Mother-in-law
Saturday morning . Just half a day of work . Then free for the weekend . Only one surgery pending . I was very much looking forward to attending my son’s fourth birthday party , for which my wife and I had invited a few friends home for lunch . Then came the difficult news that the patients blood results were not yet available . This patient was a hemophiliac who had bleeding tendencies , and would need appropriate coagulation factors to be injected prior to his operation , and then those factor levels assessed prior to being taken into the operation theatre . The person responsible for giving the factors had messed up big time, had forgotten about it and given the injection quite late . The factor level assay was not yet ready , the lab would need some more time. For me , the writing was on the wall . Whether my son remembers or not , for the rest of my life , I would feel guilty that I didn’t finish in time for lunch that Saturday . I couldn’t really ask any colleagues to cover for me in the last minute . I wanted to cancel the surgery , but this patient had been given factors , which meant if the levels were to come back as satisfactory , the surgery would have to go ahead . Or else all those factors would go down the drain , an expensive affair . I don’t normally do that , but that day I somehow wanted the surgery to get cancelled and prayed for a miracle that the levels would come back inadequate so that surgery would need to be postponed to a later date .
Three decades ago ,we had gone to attend a family function . My two brothers were just a year and two older to me , and I didn’t particularly enjoy being given instructions , or being always told that I’d either have to bowl first or bat last . I flatly refused to join them both and my cousins in their game of tennis-ball cricket , coz everyone in that group was older to me . I had decided to wait for my other younger cousins to arrive , so that I could be the boss . There were two floors in that house , ground floor was full of all the moms , and upstairs was all the men . I kept going between the floors , impatiently waiting for my younger cousins to arrive . Upstairs , all men , snacking on some cookies and kara -mixture , with a crate of ‘ The Zing Thing ‘ Gold Spot soft drink bottles . Downstairs , all the ladies were getting various ingredients ready for a large family meal discussing sarees , and gold chains , and cooking recipes . Level 1 was pure politics , and all the men were fully into it . Except for one name Indira Gandhi , nothing else seemed familiar to me . The fact that there was an eight year old kid next to them went largely unnoticed , so deep was their conversation . I decided politics was not for me , so headed downstairs to listen to some gossip about sarees and gold chains . All the women were excitedly discussing all these – silk vs cotton sarees , mangalagiri vs kancheepuram , how the gold prices were ridiculously going up etc etc all of which again made no sense to me . I just wanted to play !! As I sat there dejectedly , at one point there was pin drop silence among the ladies , and everyone temporarily stopped their work . I wondered if some major catastrophe happened . Someone had mentioned the word MIL Mother-in-law .
The complaints started . A short time that we as a family spent in the UK , I don’t particularly remember hearing so many MIL DIL complaints , maybe because there most couples would stay independently , as opposed to in-laws staying with or close to the son’s family in India . Complaint after complaint . How one certain MIL thinks she’s the lady of house , and orders the daughter in law around. Another said however well she makes the tea/coffee, the MIL always has a complaint to make , but never wastes even a drop . A MIL behaved as if by letting her marry her son , she has done her a great favour , and she should consider herself luckier than the gods coz her son was the best person ever to have been born on this earth . Someone wished her MIL would go to be with her ‘maker’ at the earliest possible . The complaints started getting weirder and louder , the assembled DIL’s were now booking their turn to speak on the subject . I didn’t know where to run . Upstairs , Indira . Downstairs DIL-MIL tug of war , with all MIL’s in absentia . MIL-bashing was at its fiercest best . Many of those stories I was hearing for the first time . Then came a big statement ‘ You know , I cant wait for Jim to grow up and get married . When I get my own DIL , I’ll show her how my true colours .’ There was no clapping , no applause but everyone there seemed to have a spark in their eyes . And then I heard a line that I can never forget , something that has stayed with me to this day ‘ You know , you have the typical MIL-A Mother in law attitude . Standard MIL is an easy-peasy job , being a bad mother in law is very easy . You just vent out all your frustrations on your DIL . But becoming a MAD mother in law , therein lies the big challenge . And unless you become that , you are no different , part of the same boring crowd ‘ Again all work stopped , pin-drop silence followed by an air of expectation all around with regards to this new found tips to becoming a ‘ Mad MIL’ .
Maybe a year ago, I got a call from the trainee registrar DD who was on duty “ I’m just too tired , I can’t do this . I’ve requested the anaesthetist to cancel the surgery , I thought I’d check with you as you are the consultant on duty and then ask the patient to have something to eat . But I’m really tired sir , I don’t think I can manage “ It had been extremely busy the last couple of days , I knew he had every reason to not do the surgery , but this was the lone remaining case on our pending list of surgeries .I told him to stay out of theatre , went and finished the surgery with a junior registrar . The surgery went off well , but more importantly my ego was now satisfied . I told the trainee never again to call me with such ‘ridiculous requests’ . “Tired ? Do you even know what tired means ?” I bombarded DD . “You guys have life so easy , we had to struggle during our PG days and you’re saying you can’t do a simple surgery just because you haven’t got decent sleep in the last 24 hours . I can never imagine saying this to a consultant . I’ve gone without sleep for >48 hours at times as a trainee and I never complained , not even once .” He kept quiet throughout , but I had to say whatever I had to say .
Realising I would get held up in theatre this particular Saturday for no fault of mine , I called up my good friend VJ , as I was waiting for the hemophilia patient to be wheeled into theatre . I explained to him the tough situation I was in , and asked him to somehow manage the home front and keep the handful of guests pacified . VJ , currently in Scotland , reassured me in his inimitable style ‘ You just don’t worry , I’ll sort everything out. Everything will be under control by the time you reach ‘
Finally , after what seemed like a wait for eternity , the patient was inside theatre . I had a go at the haematology trainee who had forgotten to give the factors on time . When we finally did manage to start , well beyond the planned time , things were not going as smooth as anticipated . He was bleeding a bit more than expected , and my hurry to get home was not helping matters. It was then that my boss walked in to theatre , and without saying a word scrubbed in to give me a hand . With a senior around , everything started falling in place , and it was all going smooth . I looked at the clock , past 1.45 pm . My few friends would have arrived home for lunch , and were probably getting ready to go back too . But this surgery would take atleast another hour, and I was sure I’d get home only after everyone was gone , and the last piece of birthday cake had been consumed . That’s when my junior AT told the boss ‘ Sir, today is actually his son’s birthday .‘ My boss looked at me , took the instrument from my hand gently and said ‘ Go Danny ‘ I wasn’t sure if I had heard him right .’ No Sir , I’ve started this , I’ll finish it fully and go ‘ He stopped for a second , turned towards me , tapped me gently on my gloved hands asking me to stop , looked at me through his visor and said ‘ This is an order , not a request Danny . Just go , right now !! ‘ I got out of my surgical gear , got changed and ran home .
VJ had done a good job but by now the wife and the handful of friends knew something was wrong . Just as he was trying to find new excuses to delay the cake-cutting , I barged in . And then everything went off well . I later called up AT and found that the rest of the surgery too went off well , patient had woken up , and was shifted back to the ward from the recovery room . All’s well that ends well , I thought .
Later next week , I wanted to ask boss how he could let me go away from theatre . But he seemed to understand from my puzzled look ‘ Danny I’m glad you could make it that day . Had I known , I would have asked you to leave much earlier . At your age , I missed quite a few birthdays because I was always working . I don’t want you guys to go through the same . Just because you’ve had a bad experience doesn’t mean every junior of yours should go through the same ‘ A great realization began to dawn upon me . Here was someone who’s been through difficult times , but is now magnanimous enough to not let his juniors go through the same experience .To be able to say ‘ I’ve been through tough times , let me make it easier for my sub-ordinates and juniors ‘ is not at all easy , I can vouch for that coz it took me more than a year to sincerely apologise to DD for my unnecessary rant when he wanted to cancel the surgery that busy week . I’m so glad the factors were given late , the surgery started much later than planned that saturday , and that my prayers for a miracle for the surgery to get cancelled were not answered – if not I may have never learnt the true meaning of being magnanimous and gracious .
And then I remembered the ladies’ discussion as a kid , downstairs . ‘You know , you have the typical MIL-A Mother in law attitude . Standard MIL is an easy-peasy job , being a bad mother in law is very easy . You just vent out all your frustrations on your DIL . But becoming a MAD mother in law , therein lies the big challenge . And unless you become that , you are no different , part of the same boring crowd . And you know what mad means – Magnanimous and Deserving . ‘
We all , at some point in time , may feel like vulnerable DILs , at some point like MILs in power – at home , at work , with friends , or with family. There is no harm in remembering the struggles of the past , but expecting DILs to go through those just because we went through them is not correct . Having typical MIL-A and behaving like a standard MIL is easy-peasy . True greatness lies in being supportive , selfless , magnanimous and helpful , only then can we be considered as commendable , meritorious and worthy MILs . Only then can we be truly labelled ‘ MaD ‘ mother-in-laws .’