Defining a relationship

Addressing someone with suffixes like akka, anna, uncle, aunty etc is uniquely Indian.

I was in the middle of a chore when the newly married girl staying upstairs dropped in. “See, the first floor aunty has come,” I told my grandsons Aditya and Ayush, “Say hello to her!” “Aunty, let them call me akka,” prompt came the correction from the girl! I soon realised my faux pas as the girl was not yet old enough to be called aunty.

Though we hear of Uncle Sam and Aunt Mary in foreign cultures occasionally, it is most of the times Mr John or Mrs Lynda. Addressing someone with appropriate suffixes like akka, anna, uncle, aunty etc is a unique Indian way that creates a bond where none exists and strengthenes the one that already exists.

For that matter, every state or language has its own way of addressing people. In Kerala, every lady is a “chechi” (elder sister) irrespective of her age and every gentleman, an “aliya” (brother-in-law), “chetta” (elder brother) and “saare” (sir), and the more recent and decent “hello” that defies sex bias, too, are in vogue  to draw attention of strangers. While it is “ayya” and “amma” in Tamil Nadu, “behenjis,” “bhai saabs” or just “saabs” rule the roost in the North. “Madam,” “saar” and “aunty” are the urbanised versions of “ammas” and “appas” in namma Bengaluru.

Here, I am reminded of an anecdote  that is decades old. I was new to Bangalore then and not very fluent in Kannada. So, I would avoid conversations in Kannada as much as possible. On one such occasion, I was talking in Hindi to a shopkeeper. He, in a bid to show off his knowledge of the language, much to my amusement, started calling me “mataji.” In the North, the term is used to address very old ladies and here was a man using it to address a woman in her thirties, although for him it might have been a literal translation of Kannada’s “ammavare.”

Our neighbour’s children used to call my bachelor brother-in-law “uncle” and their mother did so too, much to the displeasure of the latter, who requested me to ask the lady not to address him thus. While children have an in born  knack of calling people around appropriately according to their ages, we adults often lack it. Give a  thought before using this affectionate mode of address if you are not to offend, hurt or irk the one before you! So much as far as addressing a stranger is concerned.

The Indian family does have its own norms to define a relationship and ways of addressing it. Yet, one could pick out many a funny anecdote or occasion within the ambit of the family in this regard. Even today, many conservative wives never call their husbands by their names or even mistakenly utter them. 

“Munnu’s pappa” or “Lakshmy’s appa” naturally have to wait for a while after marriage till the two make their entry into the couple’s life. But until then, it is “your anna” while talking to the husband’s siblings or “your maama” while speaking with the nieces and nephews. Directly addressing the husband is still funnier wherein, except his name, anything ranging from verbs like “look,” “see,” “hear” etc to short queries like “where are you?” “do you hear?” etc come in handy to draw his attention.