It Was Never About the Tea (The Daughter-in-Law Audit Nobody Wants to Talk About)

Sometimes, the toughest expectations placed on a woman don't come from the men in the family. They come from other women.

The mother. The mother-in-law. The aunts. The sisters-in-law.

Somehow, the daughter-in-law becomes everyone's favourite project.

'I don't like the way you make tea.' 'Do it like this.'

'That's not how we cook pork.'

And if she doesn't? She's labelled as someone who 'doesn't listen.'

I remember my first few years of marriage when I barely knew anyone or understood everyone's personalities. 😅

Some aunts from some planet came over. They walked through every room almost as if they were inspecting whether I'd arranged the house the 'correct' way.

Then it was time to make tea.

I was holding the sugar jar when one of them simply took it from my hand and added the amount of sugar she thought was perfect.

There were ten people in the room.

Some may have liked less sugar. Some may have liked more. I preferred it differently too.But none of that mattered.

Because the tea wasn't really the issue.

It was about making sure I did things her way.

Looking back, I realise it was never about tea.

It was about control disguised as 'teaching.'

That's how patriarchal expectations survive not only through men, but also through women who were taught to enforce them on the next woman.

Not every tradition deserves to be passed down.

Some deserve to end with us.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let’s pretend it’s the 90’s

 Let’s pretend it’s the 90’s and we are reading Arundhati’s article on the morning newspaper. A long column, the kind that demanded your attention over chai, not a hurried look between two beeps of your phone. We are living in an ultra-fast world. A world that boasts itself on speed of delivery, of data, of consumption. Every day something new evolves, something transforms. Yet, in this acceleration, our lives are being reduced to those ten-second scrolls of distraction. We move too quickly between work, notifications, schedules. Always clearing schedules, never lingering.  No time for the real people around us. No time to pause, No time to read and truly absorb anything that exceeds three sentences because attention itself has become a luxury.  There was a time, not long ago, when friendship meant the freedom to knock on someone’s door without any notice, when affection was not measured in emojis but in cups of tea shared on lazy afternoons. Strangely, today we must fir...
Read more

It’s OK Not to Be OK: A Reflection

Sarah Allen’s It’s OK Not to Be OK is a gentle, heartfelt reminder that all emotions , even the difficult ones deserve space. The book beautifully tells children that feeling sad or upset doesn’t make them weak, it simply makes them human. Too often, we unknowingly silence the emotions of our children. We tell them to stop crying, to “be strong,” without realizing that strength can also mean being honest about how we feel. Especially in our Naga style of parenting, we normalize certain phrases that carry deep emotional impact. When our sons cry, we tell them, “uno eloe ane undo kya la?” (Are you a girl? Why cry like one?) And when our daughters are bold or outspoken, we ask, “eboe esua hetata khunga la nung?” (Why are you being so strong-headed like a boy?) So then, we don’t just correct their behavior, we shape their understanding of emotion and identity. Our words slowly teach boys to suppress their feelings and girls to silence their strength. No wonder we’re raising another stereo...
Read more

India through my lens

 As I traverse the length and breadth of India, I'm constantly reminded of the deep-seated regional biases that permeate our country. The tendency to judge fellow Indians based on their geographical origins.  I feel media stance has amplified prejudices that has long being ingrained,and fueled divisions which isn't even necessary. The Blame Game: A Two-Way Street When deregotary incidents  occur in any  states, we often resort to blaming entire communities or regions.  Unfortunately, people from the North-East , including me, are not immune to this behavior either, frequently stereotyping every Bihari, every Punjaban, every Bengali, every Miyas and to an extent that every one from UP, MP, Maharashtra,Rajasthan are all non-local Biharis 😄. We sensationalize and generalize, attributing negative traits to entire groups. But it's not every North-Easterners who do that. So are no mainlanders the same.  The weight of misconceptions is heavy.  I've lost coun...
Read more