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I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the drive up to Manchester. It took over an hour just to get out of London. I think leaving on a Friday night at 8pm has something to do with it. We were in good company, with all the other cars trying to escape for the weekend to anywhere other than London.
It’s draining and I’m not even the one driving. Who knew being a passenger on a 200-mile journey could be so taxing?
Still, I mustn’t whinge. I have the following reasons to be glass half full:
I guess the last point should be first, but I was listing chronologically rather than in order of importance. Plus, that service station burrito was quite something.
Before I get to see my mum, however, there is another pit stop. We’ll be staying at my in-laws. I guess it’s kind of an unwritten rule that I’d be with them first when going up north. I wouldn’t have even thought of asking just to stay at my mum’s, or to see them first. Anyway, the good thing is I’m managing to have an extended stay for a few days at my mum’s, under the guise of working from Manchester. It’s not like I have a reason to be in the northern office, but the beauty of having a boss like Bernadette, who is very hands off, is that I have autonomy when it comes to where I work from. After all, she agreed to the rather big ask of being based in London after marriage, not to mention the piss-taking requests to go part-time in the run-up to the wedding and having time off for my honeymoon afterwards.
“We’re nearly home now,” says M, as we get off the M6 and go through Tatton. Though he’s actually referring to his home, not mine. “Are you excited?”
Should I tell him that I’m nervous about what to expect? This will be my first official visit as a new wife. Not counting the time just after we got married, as traditional Bengali rules dictate that I wasn’t to lift a finger the day after the wedding day. Instead, I was waited on by M’s sister-in-law, who seemed to spring into action like a pro, heating up multiple pots and pans full of different curries. It was quite intimidating. When I made pretend gestures of help, she would simply reply: “Don’t worry, you rest. Your time will come.”
Her statement did the opposite of what was intended and made me very worried indeed. Would I be expected to become a domestic goddess, dishing out dozens of dishes for my new in-laws?
It’s hard to gauge what’s the norm as all families are different, with their own way of doing things within the constraints of what tradition allows. I found this out very early on when I made my first marital mistake.
According to Bengali custom, the bride is expected to rustle up a breakfast spread for her new family. Both big sis and middle sis warned me about this and, together with mum, they primed me for the event, preparing a beautiful gold glittery gift box containing teabags, vermicelli, sugar, and a selection of pastries.
I remember calling big sis the morning after the wedding, as I had absolutely no idea how to make the vermicelli dessert / breakfast / snack so beloved by us Bengalis.
“Oh lady,” she began in judgement. “Did mum not teach you how to do these things?”
“When did mum ever teach me anything domestic?” I asked. “You know how she is. She’s the first one to complain and say ‘how you get on with your in-laws and get married and blah blah blah’, but when it comes to actually preparing us for married life, she’s rubbish. She just expects us to figure things out the hard way. I only learnt how to make curry because I lived away at university. Before that, I was chief salad master and assistant samosa folder.”
Big sis huffed and agreed to text me the recipe and method and also insisted on speaking to M, to throw some obligatory pleasantries at him. As the eldest in our family and the only one who got married in Bangladesh, she feels she must only speak in mother tongue. This is much to M’s distress, as his hand-me-down Bangla is as woeful as mine.
“Before I go, lady, just be aware that you might have to cut some fish.” Big sis then proceeded to recount her experience as a newlywed in Bangladesh, where she had to pose with a sizeable fish while leaning over a daa, which is the scariest hooked knife that only a mother of adult children should handle. I’ve watched with baited breath as my mum used it to carve a watermelon. It was touch and go as she leaned her body weight onto the fruit to split it open on the blade.
Anyway, my eagerness for the vermicelli recipe was futile. It turned out that not all Bengali clans are the same.
I hoarded around my gold, glittery box, bringing it up at every opportunity, asking when I should unbox the goodies, like an influencer who’s just received the world’s crappiest haul.
After a couple of confused looks from M’s mum, her response was: “Okay, maybe later.”
Even M’s older brother, who seems to go to great lengths to avoid conversing with me through what I can only assume is acute shyness, smiled nervously when I offered a vermicelli dessert. He politely declined but took me up on my offer of a morning cup of tea. It was down to M to put me out of my misery.
“We don’t really do that sort of thing,” he said after seeing me travel around the house with my glittery box.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this time?” I asked, finally setting down my precious box on the table of his parents’ kitchen the morning we were heading to my mum’s.
“I’ve been trying to tell you but you’ve been so hell-bent on making us breakfast that you’ve not been listening.”
Me? Not listening?
M’s mum then came into the kitchen, as if like clockwork.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes. I just wondered if I could make you some shemai?” I said as I lifted the lid on my breakfast stash, safe in the knowledge that I didn’t know a single Bengali mum who didn’t like buttery, milky vermicelli.
She peered into my glittery box and smirked. “No, no. There be no need for that. You can just do toast, maybe? Oh, you got teabags there? We just run out, so I take them.”
I don’t look at M, though, in the corner of my eye, I can see him smiling smugly with an I told you so face that I will not get accustomed to.
So it turns out that they’re a pretty chilled out family that are more into egg on toast. I didn’t even need to cut any fish, either. I’m glad for the latter, though I do feel like a bit of a twat having brandished the glittery box that nobody wanted for two days. At least the teabags came in handy.
“Well... are you excited?”
I totally forgot what M had asked me.
“Yeah, I’m excited,” I reply after deciding that was the most appropriate answer to his question. “But I am a bit nervous about what to expect at your mum’s house.”
“Don’t be. It’ll be fine. Plus I’m there,” says M.
“I guess your mum will be asleep anyway, given that it’s so late.”
“I don’t know about that. She’s a bit of a night owl. My dad will be asleep.”
Even in the dark of the car, M sees the look on my face and adds: “Don’t worry, you’re not gonna be expected to be Cinderella.”
Despite his words of reassurance, I feel my heartbeat quicken as we pull up to his street. It’s gone 11:30pm. Would I be a bad daughter-in-law if I was hoping that everyone would be asleep? That way, I could take my exhausted arse straight up to bed.
I remember auntie Jusna telling mum the story of a girl who got married and her mother-in-law hung up her apron, (metaphorically) and the daughter-in-law picked up the domestic duties. In another extreme, Sophia, my modern-minded Pakistani friend, said that on the few occasions she stayed with Adnan’s family, her mother-in-law had taken it upon herself to wash, iron and put away her clothes. I think that’s wishful thinking but I’d be grateful to be somewhere in the middle with my relationship with M’s mum.
M turns his key in the stiff lock, which jolts the door open just a crack. He has to kick the bottom of the PVCU a couple of times to nudge the door along to open fully. The hallway is unlit. As we cross the threshold, I see a saree clad silhouette slowly coming towards us. I tug at the hem of my unfortunately ochre salwar kameez. I wish it was longer. I wish it was ironed.
“Kitha khoro?” says M’s mum.
Despite this meaning ‘what are you doing?’ in Bengali, she really means ‘how are you?’ Don’t ask me why, I don’t make the rules. Of course, I answer in the literal sense and say: “Nothing much.”
I lean forward to offer a hug. Not the full-on, tight squeeze I give my mum but a more formal embrace, with one hand around the neck and the other around the arm. I don’t want to be overfamiliar. Thankfully, she giggles and reciprocates. I’m not sure if she’s used to hugs, being a mum of three grown men and a teenage girl.
As I see her eyes crease up, I wonder what I was intimidated by. She is about the same height as my mum. Her white scarf is decorated with pink stitched flowers. She’s wearing an aqua-coloured cotton maxi dress, not the sort you’d see on the high street. It’s the type I’ve seen in Bangladesh and on one visit to Whitechapel market with uncle Tariq and auntie Rukhsana. She’s wearing thin gold bangles, which I assume is part of her daily uniform. She’s even wearing 22-carat gold drop earrings, in the shape of flowers with a single leaf dangling from each of the bottom three petals. My mum barely wears jewellery, except for two bangles, which is apparently necessary for all married women. I don’t think that’s a Muslim tradition but more of a Hindu cultural thing that we’ve nicked. Just like the many other customs we stole back in the day, like touching people’s feet out of respect, which thankfully died down as a trend.
I look down at my bare wrists. Shit. Why am I un-bangled? Why didn’t I think this through? Will M’s mum notice?
“Come, you must be hungry,” she says.
I follow her slow, gentle pace through the magnolia living room (must be a mum thing), to the olive green kitchen (that must be exclusively my mother-in-law’s thing) which is much bigger than my mum’s galley equivalent.
What did she make? I wasn’t expecting her to cook for us, especially as we were coming back so late.
M’s mum uncovers the various pots on the large seven-hob cooker. She’s made chicken curry with potatoes, a fish dish that I don’t recognise, though on closer smell-spection it may be shutki, the fermented delicacy loved by her generation. It’s something I’ve never even tasted as the smell is too pungent.
She lifts the lid on one final dish, which is in a black, well-used frying pan in the corner of the kitchen on a cooling rack. It’s sautéed spinach with browned garlic. And there was me fretting I’d have to do all the cooking upon arrival.
M looks at me and smiles with a second I told you so face.
The three of us sit in the cosy living room, with the fire blazing and the TV blaring.
Now that the house has been stripped of the wedding paraphernalia of fresh flowers, crêpe paper fake flowers and market bought garlands, I can study the place properly. The living room is not dissimilar to my mum’s, or any other Bengali house I’ve visited.
There is the standard showcase taking up the alcove. It’s full of everything except what it was initially intended for. There are some books, some old school photos resting on their side so we can’t see the faces, lots of little trinket boxes and some face creams, because, well, where else would you put them?
On the back of the door there is an array of cardigans amidst the coats for that impromptu trip to the supermarket. Then there’s the pile of folded washing which didn’t quite make it upstairs. The room isn’t messy, it’s busy. A mishmash of upstairs and downstairs, just like mum’s. Julia’s parents have another sort of busy. Multiple pictures framed on each wall, from scenic art to family portraits. A vintage record player that’s more decorative than practical. A piano that never gets played. More chairs, ottomans and stools than bums. As a small family of four, they’re busy with furniture. We’re busy with people and the necessities of said people. We’re so similar yet so, so different.
We eat in the usual way, with our hands, though, somewhat unusually for me, without a dining table upon which to rest our plates. At home, or should I say my parent’s house, we would always sit at the dining table as a family. It’s something mum always insisted on. I’m not quite at ease balancing the plate on the spread out fingers on my left hand, though I’m sure it’s something I can get used to.
“Have you heard about Alamgir son?” M’s mum asks.
“Which one?” asks M.
“Tanbir.”
“What about him?” M breaks down a curried potato by pressing it into his plate.
“What about him? Where to start? He been caught by police. Driving too fast on Manchester road. Then when stop, police find ganja in car. His mum going crazy with worry.”
“They’re all like that,” says M, with a hint more judgement than I’m used to seeing (though I must say I don’t hate it). “Even his older brother Ajmal is no different. I remember he’d nick other kids trainers from the mosque.” M turns to me, realising I might be feeling slightly left out. “They’re a family we know from Oldham. The youngest lad’s been in and out of trouble.”
“Ah, okay,” is all I have to say in response.
M’s mum continues: “She call me yesterday so stress. They kept him in prison one night! Maybe shock will make him be good. Then she start saying, at least my boys at home so I can control them! You know she judging about our family, because you and your brother no longer live here. So her bad news and bad sons she turn around to make me look bad. I tell her, she can say what she want, I don’t need my sons live here to control them. My boys good, never touch drugs. Never speed car. She need them near because she have no trust. You should hear her afterwards. Not happy with my answer. Hmmph!”
“Then why do you call her?” M’s voice is raised. “You know they talk shit, so I don’t see why you keep in touch.”
“I no call her again. Never!” My mother-in-law sits up defiantly in her armchair.
“That’s what you always say! You’ll be back on the phone next week. If people try and say bad things about us, you should cut them off.”
M’s mum takes a gulp from her tall glass of water. “I know but it hard. She from your dad’s village but I try. I tell you all this because I want you talk to your younger brother. Make sure he be good and stay out trouble.”
“He’s old enough to know that for himself,” says M.
“No! You must talk to him. He come home late and I don’t sleep! Anyhow, you hear about Shefali getting married?”
“No. Why? What about it?” M leans in for more gossip.
M’s mum sits back as if to settle in for a long story. “Listen to this...”
As she recounts her stories of people I’ve never heard of, I notice how M’s ears prick up with interest. Having never had a brother, I’ve rarely seen a mother-son interaction. I always assumed it would be like the relationship I have with my dad, where there is little to talk about beyond niceties. However, M seems to enjoy hearing the gossip as much as his mum likes dishing it out. It’s also interesting being privy to the scandals that hit Bengali communities. It seems that everyone’s got their stuff going on.
As they’re chatting about everyone while the high-pitched screech of a Bangladeshi drama punctuates their pauses, I’m exhausted, ready for bed but also enjoying the moment. Coming from a home where it’s lights out at 10.30pm or risk the wrath of a verbally abusive mum in the morning when we wake up late, being up with M’s mum is a bit of a novelty.
“You need to get some chicken tomorrow from shop,” my mother-in-law tells M.
“How many?” M asks as though this is a familiar errand.
“Eh, let’s think. We all home. So maybe two medium? No, two baby? What you say?” she asks me.
I have no bloody idea. “For curry?”
“Yes! What else?” M’s mum laughs.
“Hmm. Two should be enough,” I reply, though I have no clue how many chickens would be required to sustain them. “If we add potatoes, two baby chickens might be okay?”
M’s mum smiles and nods, satisfied with my answer. “Good, good. You get two baby chicken. And take money!”
“There’s no need,” says M.
“What you mean, no need? You always do this! You listen, I put £5 on fireplace, so take it tomorrow. Why you spend your money?”
“It’s fine, I’ll pay. I’m going to eat it as well, aren’t I?” says M, squeezing his green, Bangladeshi lemon slice all over his curry.
“Tell me, what else I cook while you here? Shall we have soy fita?”
M looks tempted, then looks at me, aware that any cooking will involve my input. I look down at my plate so as not to influence his decision.
“No, don’t make anything extra,” he replies with a hint of reluctance. “There’s no need.”
The stiff front door busts open again. Who could that be? It’s almost midnight. Then I realise, M’s younger brother or sister haven’t made an appearance in the living room. Not that they have to stand on ceremony or anything.
“Oh, you’re here,” M’s mum says in the direction of the door.
My unconscious bias tells me to expect M’s younger brother, as his sister is surely asleep now. I’m wrong. His teenage sibling comes into the room and stops in her tracks upon seeing M and I.
“Oh... hiya, I didn’t know you guys were coming today.” M’s younger sister lets out a nervous giggle. She’s wearing a short shift dress that highlights her tiny waist, with black leggings underneath. Her purple-streaked hair is worn in a scraped back ponytail, emphasising a rather impressive bone structure.
“Yeah, we just got here. Where you been?” asks M casually, before lining up the next ball of rice and chicken against the rim of his plate, ready to eat.
M’s sister darts a nervous look at her mum.
“She had end of college party,” says M’s mum.
That’s weird, I think. Surely college has just started?
“Have you sat your exams?” asks M, still focussed on his rice ball formations.
“Uh, no, not yet. Anyway, I’m off to bed. I’m tired.”
M’s sister is clearly desperate to escape the room. I know the feeling well. Growing up, we didn’t have too many Bengali guests, which was one of the few advantages of being the only brownies in the village. However, our auntie Jusna was an ever shit-stirring presence. She’d drop by unannounced every so often to check our house is in order. One time, I tripped into the living room at around 8.30pm. It’s not late by anyone’s standards except ours. Good Bengali girls don’t come home that late.
I remember stumbling in, just as M’s sister had done now and, to my horror, seeing auntie Jusna, gleeful. “You girls! Always out so late! I never get to see you!”
She didn’t give a toss about seeing us but she had to make a point, loudly enough for her brother, my dad, to hear, even from the other room. He came in clutching his newspaper and spoke in a tone I’ve never heard from him. “What time do you call this?”
Luckily for M’s sister, her dad is fast asleep and blissfully unaware of her coming home at midnight like Cinderella.
“Have you eaten? Make sure you have something?” M’s mum asks the default Bengali parent question. You could be in any state of emotional or physical harm but the main thing they want to know, whatever time of day it is, is whether or not your belly is full.
“Oh yeah, they had food there.” M’s sister walks backwards towards the door.
“What food there? Eat properly, I’ve cooked. There be chicken potatoes.”
“No, it’s fine mum. They had pizza.”
“Oh ho! Okay, feeza is it? You should brought some back in bag for us!” M’s mum laughs at her own joke and looks at me for a reaction. I do another smile as it seems like the polite thing to do.
“See ya tomorrow.” With that, M’s teenage sister, who is so similar to mine, escapes any further interrogation.
M’s mum brings her attention to the TV. The Bengali drama is full on. In between conversations with my new family, I witness some serious domestic abuse. A man dressed in a lungi is doing some kind of overarm wrestling move on his wife’s back. I can’t believe how inappropriate these programmes are. I can only assume it’s very old and hasn’t aged well. The mood changes when the husband sees, to his horror, the bruises on her back. This was inflicted by him just moments ago so I don’t know why he is so surprised. Like most Bengali programmes, they’re speaking in the official dialect of Bangladesh, which is so different to the Sylheti we speak at home. I don’t understand what’s going on.
The scene changes to a girl on the phone talking in breathy, borderline erotic tones. It’s what you’d expect on a pay-per-view channel.
My mother-in-law is watching, unflinching, at the X-rated scene in front of her. To be fair, I don’t think it’s meant to be as rude as it sounds, that’s just how these dramas are. M and I look at each other and in the moment, we both agree that these Bengali dramas are weird.
***
“That was actually really nice,” I tell M as I stifle a yawn whilst fishing out my nightie from the bottom of my trolley suitcase.
“Good. I want you to feel like it’s home. And well done for staying up after 1am! I know you’re not used to such late nights.”
I’m beginning to get used to it. Since marrying M, we’ve had Tesco shopping trips after midnight, 11pm cinema dates, walks around Soho in search of dessert at late-night cafes before getting a night bus back home. We’re out more than we’re in. I’m finding this new way of life liberating. Tiring, but liberating.
“It’s really cool the way your mum didn’t mind your sister coming home so late.”
“Yeah. I don’t think that’s the norm, to be honest with ya. It’s just coz she had something with college.”
“Oh, that old chestnut!” I laugh. “It’s not the end of college in October! My mum wouldn’t have any of it. And my dad, even though he’s quiet, would have a right old whinge if I came home late. We weren’t even allowed to go to the school discos or anything like that.”
“Mm,” is all M has to say in response.