Something happens to her husband when his in-laws come visiting. Richa Jha tries to contain the madness

SOMETHING happens to most normal men in the presence of their in-laws.
Ever since my parents came visiting us at our tiny Mumbai apartment, the hubby has been behaving, to put it mildly, asininely.

Two days before they were to arrive, he got his tattered jeans cut off into hot pants.''But you can't wear this in front of them!'' I exclaimed, but he shrugged it off saying, ''So what, your father also wears shorts when we visit them. Plus, they have to accept me the way I am.'' Ah, hmmm!

Anything You Can Do
Needless to say, there is an unspoken tussle of who-dunnit-with-greater-verve between the two men. So if my father says he likes prawns, the young man will eat only squid. If the father-in-law boasts about his six-K walk, the hubby will be seen joining all the health clubs in South Mumbai that same day. If the old man sports a yellow shirt, son-in-law will receive parcels of fuchsia and neon lycra tops from his friends!

And of course, there are other hubby quirks that surface only when my folks are around. He's nursed his rusting bike back into rideable condition, and now insists on biking up and down to his office. In a way, it suits us both. He is able to spend that extra hour away from the house, and for me, it is the only 'sensible' thing he has done since his in-laws arrived.

In The Middle
It is difficult for me to be fully at ease when the hubby and my parents are together. Most husbands lack the expertise required to deal with their wives in the presence of the in-laws. It's like the discomfort of not knowing what to do with your hands at an interview. So they alternate their interactions with the wives between fleeting patronising, lordly acknowledgements and the mush-melony hopelessly smitten act.

In our case, with the former charade, he wants my parents to note how well he has been able to 'tame' me; no one's been able to point out that no parents like to see their child bullied. With the latter, the hubby unwittingly falls into the trap of competing head-on with the pop-in-law for the master-of-romance title!

The only way out is to let them spend as little time together as possible. Which is where his sudden urges to bike and hike feel like divine interventions, the sudden illness of his closest friend's wife's brother seems like God's way of telling me that there is a non-combative win-win solution to every problem under the sun, and the most crucial meeting of his life (hence this terrible delay) doesn't annoy me a bit.

But as with everything else, the hubby goes slightly overboard with this too. Yesterday, he shaved thrice, bathed five times, and visited the loo a few more times than that. The trouble is, we have only one toilet in the house, and spending hours on end in there searching for answers to existential quagmires ('Sophie's World' is what he carries in there these days) is not a terribly polite thing to do. If he only knew where to stop...

From The Expert: People! People!
"For most men, dealing with their in-laws can be quite stressful," writes psychotherapist, relationships consultant and author Dr Vijay Nagaswami, "simply because the norms have not been as well defined as they have been for the 'saas-bahu' equation. A lot does depend on how well his wife gets along with his mother and also what his parents think of hers. Often, he ends up asserting himself in unnecessary situations and doing everything possible to keep them at arm's length. A pity really! For he is reacting not to who they are but to the roles they play in his life."
Take a cue: Help your hubby get to know your mom and dad as people rather than just your parents.


Lawfully Yours
`Toxic In-Laws: Loving Strategies for Protecting Your Marriage' by Susan Forward and Donna Frazier (HarperCollins) is obviously only for situations worse than the one detailed here. Is your in-law the Critic, who can't wait to tell you what you're doing wrong; the Controller, who tries to run your life; the Engulfer, who makes constant demands on your time; or the Master of Chaos, whose numerous problems inevitably end up in your lap? Just don't allow this book to make you imagine the worst about them the way numerous women think about their m-i-ls after watching the 'saas-bahu' serials!

In 'Meet The Parents', Ben Stiller plays a guy visiting his to-be in-laws who is put through the grind and to a lie detector test by Robert de Niro, the guy who will be Dad-in-law, and who is using all his experience as an ex-CIA man to check that this is not a rotten apple. Watch it; most probably, it will make your experiences seem mild in comparison; if not, what can we say?
Warner Bros Online - www.wbwebcards.com/ - has some good e-cards for in-laws (click Just Because\Family).