Fifty shades of aunty

Neelam was twenty three when she got married to her childhood sweetheart and moved in to our housing society. A year later she was blessed with a bouncing baby and everyone under the age of eighteen in the neighbourhood dutifully started referring to her as Neelam aunty. I’m 33 and unmarried. My children are cats. Yet everyone from toddlers to the building watchman, call me didi. Baffled, I asked the most talkative kid in the building to explain to me why he called someone a decade younger “aunty” and me “didi”. His mother, who was riding the elevator with us offered the explanation, “It is not about age, but about marriage” she said. “When you get married everybody will have to call you aunty out of respect,” she continued.

I wondered if “didi” was therefore to be construed as disrespectful. Also, was a woman’s respect linked to her marital status even in this day and age in a posh neighbourhood such as mine?

This wasn’t a one off thing. I teach a journalism course to post graduate students and some of the girls in my class are married. As many of us live within walking distance of each other’s homes, we often carpool or take the same bus. Whenever we alight at the bus stop and the girls introduce me to their children, their first instinct is to call me aunty. Given how I’m often a decade older than their moms, it makes sense. But often someone’s mother-in-law would ask me what my husband did and when I said I didn’t have one, they would dutifully ask the children, “Didi ko hello bolo”.

Back when I was in school there was this hair dye advertisement where a woman feels traumatized after being called aunty by a young man in her neighbourhood, even as her husband is called “Bhaiyya”. She gets herself some hair dye and proceeds to colour her premature grays. When she steps out with jet black locks, the same man calls her by her first name! This somehow heals her shattered self esteem.

My client, a friend’s mother and veteran theater actress, recently made her movie debut. I went to the premier and hugged and congratulated her, “You made it aunty”, I said. A film maker standing next to us looked at me in disbelief, unable to utter anything more than, “Aunty???” My client, one of the most confident and secure women I’ve ever met replied, “What else do you expect her to call me? She is my daughter’s colleague!” The film maker countered, “But you don’t look that old,” now establishing the link between age and the word “aunty”. Interestingly, her daughter who is five years younger than I, magically went from didi to aunty overnight as she got married, while I am still didi.

I reckoned I needed some alcohol in my system to process this. A cameraman friend joined me at the bar. I decided it was time to get a man’s perspective on the subject. He threw me a sly smile, men reserve for locker room conversations with other men and said, “Deborah madam, I’m surprised you don’t know what aunty really means.” An almost evil glint appeared in his eye at the end of the sentence suggesting a strong sexual dimension to my aunty conundrum. He explained how it was not polite to call someone aunty in public because that word was reserved for “Bhabhi type” women. I distinctly remember being reprimanded by my male friends when I called their wives Bhabhi. I did it to assure these women that I had no designs on their husbands and thought of them as brothers. This would prevent them from suspecting anything inappropriate when I met their husbands even if the wives were not around. But a friend had told me that the word Bhabhi was a throwback to Savita Bhabhi and was therefore inappropriate. I asked my cameraman friend if that was the case. He gave me an evil wink and disappeared into the crowd with his drink. My head ready to explode with the multiple layers of sexism I had just discovered, I ordered my second dirty martini for the evening.

This was odd. I grew up in a generation where all of us kids called each other’s mothers aunty. My mom was an exception because she taught at our school. She was always Rita Miss. At 59, she is still a “Miss”. Somehow, despite being a teacher, I never got to be “Miss”. I have always been Deborah Ma’am. Sometimes when a faculty member doesn’t know me and comes across my name in the schedule, they ask for Mr. Grey. This is probably because Deborah is not a very common name in India. As someone who doesn’t give a rat’s left testicle about the gender binary, I don’t mind being called Grey Sir as an office boy called me just last week when he came to the staff room to deliver a message from another faculty member. My three year old niece still calls me Uncle or Bhaiyya as do all her friends. It might have something to do with my short hair. My dream is to be knighted by the Queen of England as Sir Deborah, Knight of the Rainbows! And don’t tell me I can’t be Sir or Lord Deborah because I have a baby bar, a baby bag and a baby door (breasts, uterus and vagina respectively). I don’t have a single maternal bone in my body and have no desire to procreate (unless is it an alien, meta-human or a ninja-turtle).

I read The Telegraph’s headline and while it was a play on the word Anti-National, you’ve got to admit… it backfired and how! Calling Smriti Irani “aunty” is unacceptable for the same reasons as calling Hillary Clinton a “witch”. You want to take down somebody, use facts, reason and logic to blow holes into their arguments. Taking potshots at one’s age and gender just go one to show how your artillery is ineffective and that you are basically a sexist douchebag! Meanwhile, we in India, need to start calling women something more appropriate like “ji” or “madam”. Also, please stop diluting my brand value by calling me didi. I’m way too cool and sexy for didi. My last name’s Grey (Thanks to EL James, that sentence is now a pick-up line). Call me Grey, just Grey.