It must be an Iyer family tradition or the law of nature, but it is a known fact that mothers in law and daughters in law can never be friends. She did not expect a friendly Mother-in- Law, her mother had taught her well about that if not anything else. Her Mother- in- Law was not exactly a vile woman, but she was not an angel either. Be it in the kitchen about the true tamil sambar taste, or how sweet adirasam was supposed to be; Or her wardrobe on the colour of her sarees , and the length of her blouse sleeves; the woman had problem with everything she did And she always complied to her wishes only because Manu wanted her to. But now things had changed.
She now had the floors of the kitchen redone with vinyl flooring. The one that she always wanted and painted the kitchen in beige colour instead of yellow. Kitchen now looked sleek and modern and grinding stone now was replaced by the machine which saved her a lot of time. That was one thing her Mother- In- Law never let her buy. She believed that dosa batter was better if it was grinded in the stone with hand and made her grind it for hours together especially when her daughter and Manu's sister came down from US. While the family listened to her sister in law' stories with accent, she sat in the kitchen grinding.
Things were different now, she had things her way. Victory some how doesn't taste as sweet as she imagined it would. There was no regretting the decision she had made. Manu supported her this time. It was for everybody's good, thinking this she went to her cupboard and decided to clean it. Her Mother In- Law insisted on keeping the house spic and span and made sure she kept it that way. Guess, although her mother- in- law was gone, she has managed to stay on.
While cleaning the cupboard, something fell down. She looked at the beautiful brown hand embroidery patterns on the plain white cloth. It was a design that she seen on a cushion at the backseat of her friend's car years ago. She loved the design so much that she had copied it on the tissue paper and had to reproduce it on an old white salwar. It was an Egyptian Pharoah with intricate golden jewelery. She started it at the time she was pregnant with her Aditi, her first daughter. She couldn't finish the design and it was left lying in the cupboard for years until now.
People always asked her why not try the sewing machine that gave several options and made patterned stitches of several kinds and all you had to do was choose the type and let the machine do the rest. But she loved her Nani's method of hand stiching. Her Mausi wanted her to learn knitting. A true girl from Shimla must know knitting was what her mausi used to say. But knitting was never her thing. Her love was embroidery. She loved to watch her Nani meticulously prick and dip the needle and gently pull them out; in and out, in and out and slowly as if out of magic; flowers, elephants, peacocks, village women would appear. It fascinated how stitch by stitch, inch by inch, a form appeared out of nothing. It had been her passion for long. But being married into an Iyer household and learning the customs that were almost alien, she just didn't get time for it.
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