Ms Eve was the luckiest woman; she had no mother-in-law. Women “tormented” by their mom-in-law love this statement. So did 32-year-old Dimple who met me about two years ago. When I made the remark, she burst into laughter and said: “I wish I were Eve.”

Well, Dimple is not the only one aspiring to be the First Woman; I know many — both as a handwriting analyst and also as the only brother of five married women. But Dimple’s case is one of the most interesting.

I distinctly remember the evening Dimple met me. “You’re looking very fresh today,” I told her as soon as settled herself across the table at a coffee shop where I was waiting for her.

“Oh yes! I’m coming straight from the railway station,” she said and paused and looked straight into my eyes: “I went to see off my mother-in-law. She won’t be around for three months.”

We laughed uncontrollably. It was a good start. Soon, Dimple got to the point and explained to me at length how “dominating, authoritative, imposing, stubborn, interfering, critical, unsympathetic, heartless, cruel and mean” her mother-in-law is. “She will even cancel her funeral to make sure my plans for the day are spoilt,” Dimple said.

As long as she was talking, I did not say anything. I just listened to her. I had no choice. When she realised that she had exhausted her stock of spiteful adjectives, she became quiet. I then signalled her to hand over to me the handwriting sample of her mother-in-law.

Along with her own handwriting sample, Dimple had brought along a note written by the lady on a small piece of paper. My analysis said the lady was indeed a little stubborn, but she definitely did not deserve most of the adjectives Dimple dedicated to her.

On the contrary, her handwriting reflected that the senior lady was quite friendly (connection between letters), generous (ending stroke), open-minded (lower case ‘L’), disciplined (left margin) and organised (line spacing). Her handwriting had some minor problems. One of them was her obstinacy (shown by braced ‘t’).

I asked Dimple for her own handwriting sample. Now, here I saw the root of the problem between the two women. Let me tell you a few things Dimple’s handwriting showed. She was unsystematic (shown by overall disorganisation of handwriting) and she did not like to listen to anyone (closed ‘e’). She believed that every negative comment made by anyone was “aimed at proving her inferior” (shown by low bars on t stems) and therefore she thought that the “only way to deal with such people is by being nasty”. Also, Dimple imagined that some people (in this case, her husband and mother-in-law) often discussed her behind her back and bitched about her (shown by certain loopiness in d stems).

I really can’t say that whether her husband and her mother-in-law bitched about her behind her back. Maybe they did. But the loops in Dimple’s d’s reflected that most of the “demeaning discourse” between the mom and the son took place in her imagination.

Secondly, Dimple t-bars showed that she considered that her mother-in-law was out there just to prove her wrong and also make her feel that she does not know how to do things. And every time she was “made be feel” less about herself, she used to get defensive and use caustic words that often led to an altercation between them. I am a bit sure about the sequence of events in their frequent fights because it was clear from their handwriting that the more impulsive of them was Dimple who was very sarcastic and she lost her temper at the slightest provocation.

Well, moms-in-law may be nasty in some cases, but in Dimple’s case, it wasn’t like that. When I made her aware of the facts, she realised that some of the problems did originate from her side as well. Dimple said she was willing to effect improvements in herself through graphotherapy. The major changes she had to carry out were in letters t’s and d’s. I suggested her to eliminate the loops from the two letters and diligently raise the height of t-bars. I also gave her exercises in order to rid her of her temper and sensitivity. The changes, I informed her, were aimed at removing her low opinion about herself, because of which she thought others were trying to undermine her and make her look incompetent.

The handwriting analysis session was over and Dimple was getting ready to leave. She stood up, lifted her hand bag, slung it over her shoulder, picked up the handwriting samples from the table, gulped the last bit of coffee in the cup, leaned towards me and said with a very naughty smile:

“You know, Mr Heathcliff, you may be right and I think I’ll surely do the exercises. But I am ambivalent as far as my mom-in-law is concerned. Love ‘n’ hate and hate ‘n’ love. And, as they say, the best definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Honda City. (Laughs) But I don’t believe in that. I’ll try to make things better between us. That’s all I can do.”

She winked at me and left.

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