In this witty, acute and often painfully funny book Veena Venugopal follows eleven women through their marriages and explores why the mother-in-law is the dreaded figure she is. Meet Deepa, whose bikini-wearing mother-in-law won’t let her even wear jeans; Carla whose mother-in-law insists that her son keep all his stuff in his family home although he can spend the night at his wife’s; Rachna who fell in love with her mother-in-law even before she met her fiancé only to find both her romances sour; and Lalitha who finds that despite having had a hard-nut mother-in-law herself, she is turning out to be an equally unlikeable Mummyji. Full of incisive observations and deliciously wicked storytelling, The Mother-in-Law is a book that will make you laugh and cry and understand better the most important relationship in a married woman’s life.

Veena Venugopal is the editor of BLink, the Saturday edition of the Hindu Business Line. She is the author of Would You Like Some Bread with That Book?