IT is always not easy living with a mother-in-law. It is especially hard if you have the old school type like Nyonya Mansoor as portrayed in P. Ramlee’s 1962 heart-rending film, Ibu Mertua-ku.
One cannot imagine the suffering one must endure if your mother-in-law has the heartless characteristics of Nyonya Mansoor. There are many adjectives that can describe your pain, but they cannot do justice. Living with such a “monster-in-law” is beyond words.
Those days, mothers-in-law could be as fierce as a tigress because they wielded power and influence over the family with iron-clad beliefs and expectations. Younger women in the household must adhere to the expectations and customs of their mother-in-law’s family, and sometimes there were unsaid rules that she made up to her whims and fancies.
In the old days, women in the household must cook and learn to cook the way of their mothers-in-law. They must learn to wake up early in the morning, earlier than everyone else, to prepare breakfast. They must learn the details of “table-setting” from laying out the saprah, a piece of cloth laid out on the floor before putting the dishes when the family ate their meals sitting down cross-legged. They must observe the practice of making sure a bowl of clean water was reachable for the men to wash their hands before feasting on the meals while the women stood by, watching.
The sad thing was that the women let their men eat first although they had laboured hard preparing the meals, from going to the market to cutting onions and chillies, and then there was the laborious cooking using firewood with the mother-in-law watching from behind. Apart from the chores, these women had to be subservient in raising the family the way their mothers-in-law agreed. When their husbands returned home from work, they were told to present themselves well. They should not be smelling of onions, curries or fish when greeting their husbands.
In short, they must do what most women did those days — accomplish what the previous generations of mothers-in-law had done before them.
But when a daughter-in-law entered her family, especially the ones who had been raised differently from how she was, the mother-in-law would slyly but purposely test her again and again. The test would be on everything and anything — from waking up early preparing breakfast for the family to using pestle and mortar the correct way, dish out sambal belacan to cook leftover rice into nasi goreng or to drawing bath water from a well.
Well, this was the period in the kampung when the blender machine and piped water were not yet available.
An old woman whom I know related a story to me that she was told off by her mother-in-law for waking up late in the morning and not preparing breakfast. Her mother-in-law also reprimanded her for pounding chillies so loudly that the neighbours three houses away could hear the noise early in the morning. These happened just her first month of living with her in-laws and the extended family of her husband.
Touching on extended family, it is often said the Malays believed that marrying to a woman or man was like marrying the whole family. That rings true, somehow. Imagine this scenario: a newly married woman is introduced to her husband’s siblings — a long list of Along, Kak Char, Angah, Alang, Teh, Tam and Ucu on the day she drops her luggage at her new home to live with the in-laws.
The list can be longer if the parents’ siblings lived in the same house. They can be the jobless Pak Ngah or the mental case Pak Chik and even Mak Ngah, the conniving spinster. Not only had she to assume housework for the family and dutiful wife to her husband, as well as filial daughter to her mother-in-law, she was also delegated the task of feeding the bed-ridden Mak Tok, the grand maternal of the family.
I’m not sure if these old school mothers-in-law still exist today, but I’m sure those horrific days are gone. Modern day mothers-in-law are cool. They are perhaps the next best thing to best friends forever (BFFs). They do not boss their daughters-in-law around or force them to cook their favourite dish, gulai kepala ikan jenahak. In fact, they will shop for new clothes together and have Sunday brunch at a fancy restaurant together.
Mothers-in-law these days can expect their daughters-in-law to continue sleeping even after the sun has come up. They can least expect her at the kitchen preparing meals. But it would be socially awkward for daughter-in-laws to keep these habits as they might be seen as discourteous. My daughter’s mother-in-law would always shoo her away whenever she enters the kitchen to help.
“Go rest somewhere or do something else,” insisted her mother-in-law, who always felt a second chef would spoil the broth.
Since the economic downturn over the years, many newly-married couples choose to live with their in-laws to be part of an extended family. It will be frugal for them to do so as it shaves off a chunk of their expenses if they live with their more financially stable in-laws rather than on their own.
Like me, I insisted my son-in-law live with me although I have to admit it is tight to live in a four-bedroom home with four remaining children under my guardianship. I told him that he can move out once he is financially ready.
The advantage of living away from in-laws is privacy and freedom. They can do whatever and whenever they want. Couples can choose to wake up late on weekends, eat out and watch television all day long. No one can reprimand them if they want to guling-guling (rolling their bodies) all over on the floor for that matter. Their in-laws will not know.
C’est la vie.
The writer is a former NST journalist, now a film scriptwriter whose penchant is finding new food haunts in the country