My mother lives in Kerala and I stay in Bangalore. I wait for each one of her visits anxiously. I have so much to tell her. I wonder how I’ll fit it all in, considering she seldom stays long. And I tell myself I am so lucky to have a mother with a sense of humour. A mother who can laugh at life, if not herself. But after the first 24 hours, we are at each other’s throats. ‘Brush your hair,’ she tells me when I wake up from a nap. ‘I am 41 years old. Not four,’ I snap back. When I see the hurt on her face, I feel like a monster. She brings out the disagreeable side in me; a few minutes in her company and I turn into this shrew who can’t stop raving and ranting.

Once I confided in L, a close woman friend. Much to my relief and astonishment, L narrated a tale of similar turbulence. It’s not as if we don’t love them. It’s just that we are not like them. And, they would like us to be so, we concluded after swapping stories of mother-daughter upheavals. And, so began my voyeuristic study of mothers and daughters. The fascination of the interaction, the currents that flow between and the power struggles. Where, when a mother and daughter differ from each other, there are loud voices, stormy outbursts and tears.

A difference nurtured by what a mother teaches her daughter. What does a daughter learn from a mother? Simply: whether to respect herself or the interest of the men in her life. Whether to feel comfortable and productive or weak, insecure, alone and terrified when bereft of a male presence. These are complicated times for daughters. Most women are taking seriously the business of building a life for themselves. In this climate, a mother who shrinks from the world is an anachronism, an embarrassment. A daughter’s struggle with her mother is what fertilises her journey through childhood. It moulds, strengthens and makes her a woman. But what kind of a woman is the moot question.

It is believed that a mother always teaches her daughter to maintain the status quo and is responsible for her femininity. When a daughter rebels against the rules, the mother is blamed: ‘You didn’t teach her the role in her life. You let her stray. Hence you are a bad mother.’ A mother fears this statement the most.
Boundaries, that is what a mother is responsible for. Boundaries she draws in the subconscious of her daughter. Boundaries that’ll make her docile, submissive and a clone of herself and a line of mothers before her. So when a daughter decides not to be like her mother, she is not fighting just against the system but her mother’s mental make-up too. Sometimes, the mother, no matter how bewildered, goes with the tide. At times she doesn’t. She fights for the right to create and shape. She fights for what she has believed in all through her life. The result: conflicts that leave both the mother and daughter exhausted and sorry for themselves.

Midge mothers do not lay eggs. They reproduce their young from the inside of their bodies without the benefit of even any informal male assistance. And, the baby develops inside the mother’s body not in a uterus but in her tissues and eventually, fills her whole body, devouring it from the inside. When she is ready to be born, she breaks out of her mother, leaving behind only a chitinous shell. They never have mother-daughter squabbles; midge mothers may sacrifice themselves entirely for their young, but the young never have to hear about it.