Not many people know this but there is a Mother-in-Law’s Day that you celebrate because you honour the one who gave birth to your spouse or partner. My mother-in-law didn’t know about it and instead of keeping quiet I called her and wished her, last Sunday.

“That’s nice,” she said and then told me that the housemaid is stealing her lentils. After a long discussion on how to keep her groceries safe (one way was to keep the rice and pulses locked in her bedroom), she wanted to know whose idea it was to celebrate her Day, and I explained that an editor of an American newspaper had started it back in the 1930s.

Apparently he had felt that mothers-in-law need to be honoured just as much as mothers and fathers are commemorated every year, and so it came to pass that every last Sunday in October is marked for the other woman in your life. (Incidentally, my kids now just ignore Father’s Day despite reminding them a week ahead).

This is just between you and me, but I think the editor must either have been henpecked or he had a seriously warped sense of humour.

Then my mother-in-law threw the bombshell; she wanted to know when would it be a good time to come and stay with us in Dubai. One has to be very careful when answering such a question, and you can’t be flippant about it and say, “You know you are welcome anytime,” because that raises suspicion in my mother-in-law’s eyes.

Before I could say, ‘Let me check my diary’ and get into even deeper trouble, my mother-in-law, answered the question herself and said, “December is nice there. I remember the friendly Pakistani gentleman who gave me his seat at the mall. He looked admiringly at my sari,” she said.

I think my mother-in-law invented Bling and most of the Rap artistes seem subdued in their taste of clothes. She once wore flip-flops and explained saying that she can’t wear regular shoes to the malls here as the floors are very shiny and slippery.

When she said that, I could imagine her slowly skating away from us as we window-shopped, just like Shahrukh Khan skating at the skate rink in Dubai Mall for a movie shoot, while his fans screamed wildly.

My mother-in-law has this wonderful way of conjoining two different streams of thought together and they jell perfectly, according to her. But what’s a December visit got to do with a Pakistani gentleman who must have been startled when he saw her barrelling towards him at the mall and got up to get out of the way, is beyond me.

I quickly told her that December is really bad because as the weather changes from burning hot to well, warm, everyone gets this horrible flu and hacks and coughs horribly in malls and movie theatres.

I told her that people’s personal hygiene is bad here despite the tiny hand-sanitisers people carry in their handbags and that she could be down and out instead of enjoying the city.

The one thing my mother-in-law hates and dreads are germs. One day I was driving her around and I sneezed. Suddenly I heard the whoosh of air rushing into the car. My mother-in-law had pushed down the button and slid down the side window.

We do not have that superstition about the soul rushing out every time you sneeze, and the need to say, ‘Bless you’ to cram it back again. But during the whole trip the window next to her went down every time I sneezed and I felt a cold draft on my head.

Lastly, I am sure you must heard of this silly mother-in-law joke: “Behind every successful man stands a devoted wife...and a surprised mother-in-law.”