On Being Called Aunty

Six year old girl: Aunty, will you see my colouring book?

I: Yes! I’d love to!

Female acquaintance (also, mother to the girl): I was actually telling her to call you didi, instead of aunty.

I: Oh, don’t bother. She sees me as a friend of yours, I’ll be aunty to her. I am absolutely fine with it.

Male acquaintance: We should tell her to call you ‘young’ aunty.

I: What does 'young' aunty even mean? I am fine being her aunty. I grew up calling everyone in my mother’s age group aunty. She is doing the same.

I was at a seminar in Hyderabad when I met the girl. As much as I like well behaved kids, I tend to stay away from them because I find it difficult to go beyond, 'What's your name?' This kid I met had all my attention for a simple reason: colouring. I cannot recall the last time I held a crayon. She was adamant about making me colour in her colouring book. In fact, she went on to review my work as better than hers in good spirit. I think I liked listening to something like that without any sense of flattery or jealousy involved. If this wasn’t enough, I found her wanting to sit beside me after a while. This I considered flattery. Was I that likeable? Seemed so!

I was neither shocked nor surprised when she called me aunty. I was never called so before. It was different, it was new. I was okay. It reminded me of a childhood experience. A woman used to travel in the school bus when I was a kid. I used to save her a seat in the front because I guess, I always got along with people older than me. When she got married, I asked her, ‘should I call you aunty now that you’re married?’ She laughed. She said that nothing changes between us simply because she has a new relationship. I was left wondering, ‘Am I not supposed to call married women aunty? All the women I call aunty are married.’ Neither did I understand social conditioning back then nor was I aware that marriage can be optional. With all my mother's friends in the neighbourhood married, I had associated marriage to be the criterion for women to be called aunty. 

I also remember one of my roommates in Delhi crying about the fact that she got called aunty by a kid in the park. As much as I tried to sleep that night, I had to listen to her complain about it to her boyfriend. I didn’t know then whether I disliked having roommates who believed in talking for hours at night with their boyfriends or the ones who won’t stop crying about being called aunty by a kid at 3am.

Aunty can be/has been a scary term. We have all had nosy neighbours and our image of aunty derives from the ones we disliked the most, the ones we saw as gossipmongers, the ones who were more concerned than our parents about who we went out with, the ones who asked us about getting married, the ones who body shamed us, etc. We do not want to be associated with people we spent our whole childhood loathing. 

A still from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham; Source: abplive.in

Moreover, at the dawn of the twenty first century we heard Poo from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001) tell her nephew to not call her aunty. In that statement, she associated beauty, outfits/clothes and age with ‘aunty’. This is where we are stuck. Loving the self, loving one’s own body, etc are online phenomena. Beauty is constantly being redefined as a more inclusive concept than one body type or skin colour (On this note, please watch Nandita Das's 'India's Got Colour' if you haven't yet). Simultaneously, there are also many panic posts about turning twenty five or more (Didn't we all have a deal with god like Joey from Friends (1994-2004)?). The fear of getting older is more malignant than the cancerous cells in bone marrow.  It derives from the fear of not being beautiful or having a few ‘good years left’. As much as we criticise turning thirty as the endgame for women, we tend to fall in its trap nonetheless.

The question is, despite our awareness, why do we tend to associate ageing with beauty? Why don’t we look at experiences? One of the hard pills to swallow is that sometimes women in powerful social positions tend to fall for flattery based on looks or clothes. I have had a terrible (and occasionally verbally violent) history with accepting compliments on the way I look. I now say a polite thank you knowing that the comment/compliment says more about the speaker or the way s/he looks at me instead of telling anything about me.

I am not saying that compliments based on other things are better or worse than ones based on looks. In fact, I am trying to figure it out. I am definitely not impressed when I am told about my ‘intelligence’. Maybe, someday I’ll see the point in being 'intelligent' in isolation. In the present day, if my thoughts and words aren’t useful enough for others to want to question or think, then what's the point? To be honest, I tend to see being called 'intelligent' as a way to end conversations by most people. 

However, it is exhausting to live in a world where age has been interwoven with beauty and marriage. Awareness, consciously trying to get out of social conditioning, is a process. Should we settle? No! Am I out of the conditioning? Hell no! I am so used to, ‘Which class are you studying in?’/ ‘You don’t look like your age, you look like a class 8 girl!’ that I am elated to know that there’s a section in today’s population that will call me aunty upon meeting. 

Looking young doesn't seem like a compliment, honestly. It feels like turning a blind eye to my experiences and struggles, much of it has a lot to do with my body and its shaming. From making self deprecating jokes on what I call ‘having crocodile skin’ to openly shutting people (albeit in a polite manner) who express their uninvited, unasked opinion about how I won't be able to wear sleeveless dresses (which I do wear), I have come a long way. 

In the end, being called aunty by a kid is nowhere near the tragic incidents in my life which include recently being puked at by a completely drunk stranger in Rajiv Chowk metro station while entering the yellow line metro. Thankfully, that metro station has washrooms and my friend, who brought me her clothes, lives three stops away in the blue line. From where I stand, being called aunty is an absolute delight. I love growing up and I absolutely do not mind growing old, so far.