I clearly remember I used to cringe visibly every time I had to listen to this clichéd one liner in the TV serial HUM PAANCH. This is more than a decade back. Those were the initial days of ZEE TV and having access to satellite channels and being able to watch those ‘then’ new wave of TV serials was no less than a status symbol. (With a little exaggeration, I can safely say – Amitabh’s mere paas maa hey was soon coming to be replaced with mere ghar me ZEE TV hey). Of course we were one of those less fortunate kids growing up in one of the sleepy towns of Orissa and were far from having a cable connection. However, one of our rich relatives (having relatives like SP aunty and collector uncle) had the connection and we used to visit them every once a while just to get awed and watch ZEE TV with naive wistful eyes…
Ok, enough nostalgia, I do not intend this post to be one of those hydra kinds so I better stick to the topic, which happens to be the aunty business today. So like I said, suddenly I realize after more than a decade this ‘aunty mat kaho na’ is staring me at the face. (No, no teenager has called me aunty yet and thus so far I am spared from having to utter this cringy dialogue.) It’s my 4 year old daughter. She just refuses to call anyone aunty who very rightfully deserves to be called that way. She prefers calling everyone by their first names in the age group of 1-45 years.
What do I do now? In a fit of imbibing the right values in my daughter I have been telling her the usual things my mother told me when I was a 4 year old - respect your elders, don’t call the elders by their name, we always address them in a certain way. But she just won’t listen. The way it happened is thus - when she was just starting to speak, upon my instructions, she called a casual friend aunty and my friend went ‘aunty mat kaho naa’ in a playful way, just for laughs. Soon we had a brilliant topic for discussion, the evening was gone in a jiffy musing over the growing up years and zee tv’s contribution to it, and all was merry. Or so we thought. My 2 year old daughter understood more of it than we intended her to and the result – till now she refuses to call anyone aunty no matter what. And actually no one seems to mind it too. And with time, I have come to accept it too.
And I have tried finding a truce. I find there is much more 'apnapan' in ‘Maasi’ than in aunty so all my close friends and sisters are Maasi for her and the rest – well, she calls them the way I call them. In the big picture, I hope this in some little way solves the problem of generation gap..
