The Saas Bahu saga, an everlasting soap which fills the lives of most South Asian homes and families. This Soap has not been airing for 10, 20 or 30 years, it has been on air for possibly centuries. As I hear people’s stories and observe the lives around me, I hear the same repertoire of complains, grievances and mismatched expectations. This is not to say each and everyone has had a bad in-law relationship but the fundamentals of this relationship I believe are flawed, hence always making it a fragile alliance. This relation starts when you sign on the dotted line and from then onwards try to fit into the blood line of relations.

As time passes I have stopped judging or analyzing the characters of this soap. I don’t believe it is the characters at fault, I believe it is the script that is flawed. I first want to congratulate every South Asian Saas and bahu who despite having a bad script, little reward and huge expectations still attempts to act out her role, and sometimes succeeds, often fails but continues to try generation after generation. So to all those who blame it on the nature of women, please know it is only with women that you can have a poorly scripted story continue being on air for so many centuries. If this had been attempted with males the script, expectations and rewards would have miserably failed or long been modified.

Some would argue this system has worked for centuries, and the burden of its failure lies with the modern role and new found freedom of women. The truth is the system was only made to work for centuries due to male dominance.  A 12 or 14 year old bride who was married off with the parting words being ‘thumhari doli jaa rahi hai, ab arthi aaye’ (you are going as a bride on a palanquin,  only come back on a pyre), what choices or for that matter exposure did she have to change or question her circumstances. This system could only work by one party oppressing the other, the only reward or respite at the end being that one day the oppressed will get to be the oppressors.

Now going back to me blaming the script. The reason I blame the script and not the characters is that this is a fundamentally flawed set up, which is inherently designed for failure. Its best case outcome can be mediocre success. The reason being you cannot transplant a foreign object into a host setting. Just like any transplant there is always a high chance of rejection, which one often sees in the whole daughter in law and in law dynamics.  The failure is not because the part was faulty or the host was bad, the chance of failure comes from fundamentally trying to introduce something foreign, which causes the host to reject or the part itself to fail.

Even today in most eastern cultures daughters are handed over to another family at the time of marriage. In more modern families where young couples lead independent lives, daughters-in-law are still duty bound to their in-laws and not their own families. Whether in-laws can enforce their expectations or not, the relationship still starts with a myriad of expectations. Some daughter-in-laws try to take on the daunting task of meeting these expectations only to give up or fail miserably, some don’t even attempt or could care less and some having no choice spend their lives endlessly try to meet these expectations.

Mothers-in-law  and daughters-in-law who can sympathize, justify and identify with their daughters or mothers  predicaments, are unable to relate to each others predicament. The same mothers-in-law who spent their whole lives complaining about their in-laws, seem unable to understand why their daughters-in-law would have complains. Each one believing they treat their daughter or mother-in-law just like a daughter or mother, yet competing, comparing and complaining about the difference between blood and in-law relations. Each one trying to find answers in the characters and individual instances and settings but no one daring to question the fundamental flaw in the system.

Let us stop pretending to be parents to daughter-in-laws and daughters to parents-in-law, why are we trying to enact roles and replace relations and bonds which naturally exist. We suppress the natural bond and emotions of a parent and daughter only to spend our lives recreating a forged bond with in-laws, each party role playing the part of a parent or a daughter.  I often wonder why the terminology itself dos not set the expectations straight for both sides….”IN-LAW”.

In a kabbalah class my sister had gifted me, I found particularly interesting  the concept of the light and the vessel. Kabbalah describes a woman to be the vessel and the man to be the light. How much light is received, reflected or it’s direction are contingent upon the vessel. Without a vessel to reflect the light, the light is dark. I started thinking about this principle and how it relates to the whole in-law dynamics in South Asian societies. If the vessel is responsible for guiding, reflecting and directing the light, then why for centuries have we chosen to hand over our own vessel to be in charge of someone else’s destiny and hand over our own destiny into the hands of a foreign vessel.

Being a woman from South Asia I have often heard the phrase “aurat ghar banathi hai” (a woman makes a home), however this statement is not used to empower woman, on the contrary  it is used in most cases to chain women down with societal norms and expectations. Ironically other woman are chosen to carry out the task of passing down and enforcing these norms and expectations. If women are the home makers does it not make more sense for them to make homes, run households and raise families surrounded by their own families, in a similar,  familiar, and more cooperative environment. We raise our daughters and teach them how to run homes, how to raise a family, only then to have them spend the rest of their lives trying to unlearn their ways and as in-laws spend the rest of our lives trying to impose our ways. This completely redundant exercise not only reaps mediocre results but in the process creates frustrations, unfulfilled expectations and life long grievances for both sides.

We are in the 21st century and we continue to discuss the saas-bahu dynamics. I keep hearing ” things have changed now”, but have they really? This topic still fills most of our conversations, governs most of our family lives and provides most of the content for our television programs. So clearly it is still very much a part of our lives. I strongly believe that a joint family can function much more effectively in matriarchal set up. Even in nature most animal which live in herds are matriarchal, it is the females of the pride or herd that stay together and raise families. If the joint family system or even an extended family structure needs to continue to function in South Asian societies it cannot continue being a purely patriarchal system. It will have to become more matriarchal and move from far right to at least center.

This debate needs to move away from blaming the characters, we cannot trivialize the issue by reducing it to individual differences. The problem is deep rooted and its solution will also require a deeper change………we need to stop expecting a dotted line to replace the blood line.