My Name is Mummyji, writes Twinkle Khanna

8 am: In the midst of stifling a yawn and pulling my dog out from his favourite hiding place, my phone rings. It's my mother-in-law and she has a complaint, ' Beta, he came up to the house yesterday, he has become so thin, why are you not feeding him properly?' I am a bit confused because I have been feeding the dog the same thing for years and he seems to look pretty much the same size to me. As I start protesting, she adds, "His favourite dish as a child was makki di roti and sarson ka saag, I will make it for him today, he is looking very kamzor. ' Ahhh…I get it . She is talking about the man of the house.
A Punjabi mother, her son and food form a triad as sacred as Brahma, Mahesh and Vishnu and cannot be interfered with; as I have learned in the early years of my marriage.
I want to tell her that the man of the house has deliberately lost eight kilos for his next role as a wiry boxer but it's just nicer to let her send the makki di roti and the saag, especially since it's been my all-time favourite dish as well.

11.30 am: The regular rut - Get to the office - try to do three days' work in three hours - fail - look around - drink coffee - look around - try again - drink coffee and so on and so forth.

5 pm: An old friend from my boarding school days is in town and she drops by for coffee. I don't see her very often, though we catch each other on Facebook occasionally, but that comfort of having known each other our entire lives never seems to go away.

I giggle and tell her about my morning makki ki roti story and she just starts ranting, "Last week on Zee TV I saw Modi is asking everyone to sweep places, all these movie stars and all…so exciting na? I went to Star Bazaar to get the monthly ration and I also bought two new brooms, but mummyji snapped at me saying that I don't understand anything, it is only a symbol to clean India. I told her 'Then why are we not using symbol to clean the house, 'Tell me, mummyji, why are we using big vacuum cleaner to clean our house if symbol can clean the whole of India.'
Mummyji always wants to show everyone how we are so modern with all these different machines and all, if we are modern people, we would use only iPhone 6; not all these other cheapo phones. She thinks from my room I can't see her in the balcony, but I can! Always sitting , drinking coffee and reading Economic Times . At this age, she should be reading Bhagavad-Gita or newspaper, you tell me?"

I am staring at her in shock and horror because...
I have this vision where our son will finally get his wife home. She will place hideous red cushions on my sofas, never polish my silver tea-set, will feed my son his favourite fried-chicken by actually deep-frying it and not in the Philips (oil-free air fryer) machine like I do and she will stare at me when I am sitting in the balcony, drinking copious amounts of coffee and reading my Asimovs; because one day soon enough I will be a mummyji too.

One always looks at this age-old mother-in-law, daughter-in-law battle from the-daughter in-law's point-of-view, but I realise it must not be easy to be mummyji as well...
I hastily whip out my phone and delete the (suddenly unfunny) mother-in-law joke that I had made up had posted on Facebook: 'God could not be everywhere so he created mothers and the Devil could not be everywhere so he created mothers-in-law' and upload my new motto ' Do unto another as you would want the (future) other to do unto you.'
Amen