The softer it falls...

As I grow older, I am getting better at figuring out what I like, what I dislike and what I positively loathe. Loathe in the sense that one wants to kill or die (mostly kill) for a little while. Red hot, hopping maddening stuff. One of them - of which I've been getting a lot these days - is uncalled for advice.

I generally dislike advice - when I ask for it - and positively loathe it when people walk by, call, visit and simply throw it at my head. One of the worst offenders is Mum. Mum is a highly conscientious mother. She completely subscribes to the dutiful Mum theory and has always tried, in her own words, to "do her duty" by us - her family.


Somewhere along the way, someone has convinced her that her prime job was to proffer advice. She was not in the least like this when we were growing up. We always kept her away from unhealthy influences of this sort. But sis has been an NRI for almost a decade now and I have not been at home for a couple of years either. So, we take the blame and it has happened.

I can't call home without being loaded by advice. She offers some of her own and acts as a messenger for those of other members of the family. When she feels like I am not taking her advice, she suffers from the delusion that offering it again is effective. She offers it again - several times to me and sometimes to my mate.

We have both heard - several times - the story of the aunt who was resourceful enough during her pregnancies to prepare two glasses of milk, so she always has a backup when morning sickness ejected the first down the toilet.

I have also had plenty of advice on how to handle the mate - a horrible system that seems to be based entirely on deceit and completely lacking in integrity. If I ever say, "Oh, I was feeling sick today, so he took over the kitchen," I'd get "Try and exert yourself. He may think you are sickly." "Sorry, I can't talk to you now. I'm out with pals," is effectively met with "Spend more time with your husband, sweetie."

Advice about the child is even more plentiful. "You really ought to spend more time with him." "Send him to us. The schools here are better." "You make sure you buy him a book to practice him homework." "Perhaps we should take care of him. After all, he always enjoys it here." "Always be around when he's playing with other kids, or they may get into fights. They're mostly boys after all." "Anna Nagar aunty came over and was suggesting that Ken should be staying with us since you are both working and we are retired."

Health advice - especially now - is overwhelming and always has been. "Mum I have a cold." " Eat more. It's all these diets you follow. Your immunity is low." "Mum, sore throat." "You are weak. Eat more. Stop dieting." This would be followed by recipes for some pretty impossible, nasty tasting concoctions that seem determined to make you more miserable than the illness that you stop noticing it any more. I'm sure if I ever had cancer and called my Mum to tell her so, she would have a recipe. I also wish to put on record that I am a foodie and have NEVER in my ENTIRE life - attempted a weight-loss diet.

The mate says that since I know the range of advice, I should react less strongly to it. Considering that I talk to my Mum everyday and often get off the phone battered by advice, he thinks it would be more reasonable to handle it better or simply call less frequently. That is another piece of unasked for advice that I dislike. If either option was possible, I would have implemented them long ago. After all, it's been a few years now and the meanest intelligence would have figured out these options.

Loving analysis and myself equally, I do lots of self analysing. I have figured out that at some level, Mum's advice seems to rankle because it works on the premises that (a) I cannot figure it out for myself and (b) I am somehow not doing quite the right thing. Worse, it often unwittingly confers on me behavioural traits that I am completely not guilty of.

It makes me feel like the Mum doesn't know me at all or thinks of me as something I am not and I hate the idea that I am surrounded by deluded loved ones. It presumes - at some level - that I am a incompetent mother who cannot be trusted to raise a child, a horrible wife that my mate can't wait to get away from unless I cling to him like a leech, an invalid who can't be trusted to prepare or eat a square meal. Or an idiot who has no logical mind at all. See, I'm in a rage now. Not at her premises. But at the thought that at the end of it all, my Mum has no idea what my real faults are.