The residents of our home, like the many guests who migrate randomly in and out, come and go of their own will. Some days there might be a half-dozen people at the dinner table, on another day none. Some like to leave toothbrushes and spare razors and slippers behind, so they are saved the bother of carting them back and forth, only to find them purloined by other birds of the same feather. Laundry is a chancy issue: there is cribbing about missing blouses, or socks. Shoes that disappear mysteriously on someone’s earlier visit pop up magically on the next, placed carefully beside the bed. An entire cupboard is devoted to lost-and-found objects, which is useful when you need a tie, or a pair of cuff-links, but can’t be bothered to look for your own.
My mother’s new pair of stilettos, she claims, is still missing, though my father complained of a pair of brogues he had mislaid, then found two, which, he said, were both his. I haven’t lodged a complaint about missing my slippers because the only pair I own is grist to everyone’s mill. My son, when he visits, wants them (he has several pairs of his own); my wife will insist on wearing them (they are an improvement over her fluorescent pink ones); and these days, as a permanent-guest-in-residence, my mother-in-law has claimed them as her own.
That, though, is the least of my in-law woes, my wife’s mother having staked her claim widely through the house. I no longer read in the living room because she has made my reading sofa her own. On the dining table, she will insist on sitting on my chair, which my wife says I should not fuss about; or my wife’s chair, which makes her — my wife, not my mother-in-law — go catatonic. She is a light traveller, so it is understandable when she makes use of my wife’s saris to wear, but it’s less understandable when she borrows the gold chain my mother gave me for my birthday, but forgot to return the last time she went away for a few days, so no one any longer knows who has it. And no, it’s not in the lost-and-found cupboard — I looked — but someone’s left lacy underwear behind, so I’ll be keeping a giggly eye out to see who claims that!
It’s okay that my mother-in-law has to stay, but less okay that my wife finds it convenient to flee. Now that she can no longer be left alone — and not just on account of what she might next pinch — one or the other of us has to be around always. For some reason, my daughter and my wife have both voted me to the task. My daughter has increased her “night stays” with friends; my wife is out like a bolt barely seconds after I’m home from work.
On Sundays, she disappears for all-girls’ lunches. In the evenings, she’s usually wearing fleets, so you’d think she’s gone for a walk, deliberately leaving her cellphone behind, obliterating any possibility of tracing her before she’s willing to come home — usually long after I’ve served my mother-in-law her tipple, put up patiently with her tirades and litany of complaints, sat her down to chew her dinner on my chair, and seen to her medicine and bed.
Last night, my son called from Mumbai, where he’s doing a summer internship programme, to apprise me of his taking a week’s leave from work at the end of June so the family could go on a vacation. “Fine,” I said, asking, “Where are we going?” Turns out, I’ve to take off to mind my mother-in-law at home while the rest of the family heads for the hills for a “well-earned break”.
