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.
