I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, Twinkle Khanna and Rishi Kapoor are my favourite celebrities on social media. Twinkle especially, not only because her tweets are hilarious, but her columns are something I really look forward to reading. From the AIB roast to the books she bought to her thoughts on the Fab India fiasco and the My Choice video – Twinkle is hilarious and Akshay Kumar is a lucky man. Check out her take on these topics and their correlation to the news of that daughter-in-law who peed in the tea she made for her in-laws. Yes.
Storm In A Chai Cup
10am: While I am in the middle of sending frantic emails, trying to get all the four thousand export procedures processed to get my candles on board a ship that will sail tomorrow with or without my wax wonders, my mother-in-law calls and she wants me to come over to her apartment at this very instant.
The pros of living in the same building as your mother-in-law are numerous — from baby-sitting services at odd hours to getting free deliveries of delicacies like kheer and dahi bhallas. The cons are that she knows exactly when you are at home and can summon you at a moment’s notice.
10.07am: I am such a good daughter-in-law that I have reached her bedroom even before she has managed to disconnect the phone.
Mummyji is in a bad mood, she eats a piece of her papaya and thrusts the newspaper in my face and says, ‘Look at this nonsense!’
Though at this distance the newsprint is slightly blurry and I am getting cross-eyed trying to decipher the words, I see the headline: ‘Smriti Irani caught changing!’
My mother-in-law has taken this to heart and exclaims, ‘These people nowadays have no respect. In our time we knew how to value our elderly.’
I gently remind her that Mrs Irani can’t really be considered elderly, that was just a role she played on TV and is probably younger than me, but yes it is very disturbing to know that innocently walking into a wholesome store like FabIndia can lead to being unknowingly filmed and perhaps finding yourself on some online site doing a striptease.
She shakes her head sadly at this and then asks me to help her plan a lunch for a family get-together on Saturday, which is the reason that I have been summoned. I tell her that I will ask my cook to put together a nice menu and he will also make a few dishes. She nods agreeably, adding, ‘Beta, now if I tell you that you should also know how to cook a little, you will start with this new ‘My Choice’ thing.
‘I went to the club yesterday and all my friends were saying that their daughters-in-law have recorded this video and play it at full volume. They were showing it to me; Hai Bhagwan, all these big words, ‘I am a snowflake, you are dandruff, I make brain freeze, you make head itch’. Beta I want to ask you, is this all you girls think about? Sex before, sex after, when do you find time to work or look after your children?’
I interrupt her, ‘Mummy, at the very least it makes people think about women and their choices.
What choices did you have when you were younger? You had to stay at home, then get married, have kids and by the time you were forty, life was at a standstill; at least women can try different things now.’
‘Yes Beta,’ she says, ‘But in my time…’
‘Mummy,’ I sigh,’ It’s not your time and it’s not even my time anymore, this is the next generation where they are infinite in all directions except one direction because that direction has changed after Zayn Malik left.
Forget all this na Mummy, let’s have some tea and I want some Marie biscuits also please.’
She rings the bell and her maid walks in. ‘Aarti, please make some masala tea and get biscuits also.’ The maid suddenly says, ‘Madamji I will not make tea today.’ ‘Why?’ Exclaims my horrified mother-in-law .The maid narrows her eyes and says, ‘Meri marzi!’ And storms off.
Wondering if she has seen some Hindi version of the ‘My Choice’ video and feeling decidedly sorry for my mother-in-law, I offer to make tea but just as I get up to go to the kitchen, she yelps, ‘Nooo! I will make my own tea, I just read in the paper, this woman from Indore, Rekha Nagvanshi, has been urinating in her mother-in-law’s tea for the past two years but God was kind and she got caught by her in-laws as she was squatting over the teapot midstream. Girls nowadays, no culture…’
I look at her in shock and she continues, ‘Uh..Beta I know you would never do such things but..just came ..uh..to mind and..I ..’ And she trails off.
I mull over this rather strange news item and come to the conclusion that this storm in a teacup must have made quite a few mothers in-law wary of upsetting their daughters-in-law as they may get figuratively and literally pissed off.
Lakhs of Indian women must also be secretly thanking this Nagvanshi woman, as scores of Mummyjis start making their own tea in fear of having their insides contaminated by well disguised waste products.
I, of course, say none of this to my mother-in-law and just keep passing her cinnamon, milk and sugar while she curses new-age feminists, her maid and all daughters-in-law (hopefully) excluding me.
-Twinkle Khanna (this column has originally featured in the Times Of India)
She is amazing, isn’t she?