The Perils of Aunty-hood

It's confirmed. I may think I'm a glamorous feline given to spouting pearls of wisdom when the whim takes me but all I really am is a boring old cat they call ‘Aunty'. Gulp. In India you know you're growing old when everyone from the neighbourhood kids to the grocer start adding an ‘Aunty' after your name. Unlike others who speak English we use the word as a suffix instead of a prefix, so that just when you think it's safe to breathe, along comes the dreaded ‘Aunty'. Depending on who is saying it, the tone varies from reverent to frankly vicious.

We do a lot of that here actually. Everyone is an aunt or uncle, whether they're a blood relative or just someone with a more tenuous link to your family. We may never have met a person before but if we happen to step on his toes or poke him in the ribs while boarding a bus we turn around and say "Sorry Uncle" and smile apologetically. Or at least the better mannered of us would do that. Others less inclined to such social niceties would just glare at him for being in the way and give him another jab for good measure before grabbing the last seat on the bus.

My husband shaved off his carefully tended but prematurely greying beard when he realised the number of ‘Uncles' coming his way had increased alarmingly. It didn't help. His balding pate was evidence enough of his ‘Uncle' status! He's resigned himself to the inevitable now especially since he has such an unpronounceable name, most people fumble over it anyway. Better an ‘Uncle' he can decipher than a mangled sound that ends with a sheepish ‘err...'.

But I digress. So here I am faced with the fact that my Aunty-hood gets more deeply entrenched with each passing birthday. Though I cringe every time anyone over the age of 16 calls me ‘Aunty' I'm learning to be brave about it. I manage to paste a smile on a face almost frozen with despair and mumble something in return. Which they can't possibly make sense of but I presume they put it down to my impending antiquity. "Poor Aunty, maybe she has problems with her teeth?"

Perhaps the next time I get called ‘Aunty' I can feign hearing loss and rapidly fading eyesight as well?