CAN YOUR MOTHER IN LAW EVER BE YOUR MOTHER?
Every Indian wedding comes with two marriages. One is between the bride and the groom. The other, far more complicated, is between a woman and another woman who never chose each other. We grow up believing that mothers love unconditionally and mothers-in-law judge unconditionally. Films reinforce it. Television serials celebrate it. Family WhatsApp groups discuss it. Every newly married woman receives the same unsolicited advice. "Remember, she's not your mother." Curiously, no one tells the mother-in-law, "Remember, she's someone's daughter." And somewhere between these two warnings begins a relationship built not on trust, but on caution. It had been ten years since Aditi married Neeraj. They lived in Gurgaon with Neeraj's mother, Rekha, a retired schoolteacher in her sixties. Their eight-year-old son Aarav filled the house with noise, cricket bats, forgotten school shoes and impossible questions. From the outside, they look...