Sense and Sensibility
‘Didibhai’ sits somewhere between a ‘boudi’, denoting a married woman and didi, a sister
The other day, as I was driving down my usual route, the traffic cop stopped me. I hadn’t bumped a red light nor overrun the speed limit, so I wondered what his objection could be, but complied anyway. Turns out that he wanted to check my pollution papers, which were very much in order, but his opening line had me smiling, rather than getting my brows furrowed. As I rolled down the window, the cop addressed me as ‘didibhai’ and went on to make his ask. Now, he could have said ‘madam’ or simply not used any term and just wielded his authority. But he chose to deploy the fast-vanishing Bengali term ‘didibhai’, one that immediately affirmed his ‘bhodrota’, his gentility and had me acquiesce without an objection.
For the uninitiated, ‘didibhai’ sits somewhere between a ‘boudi’, denoting a married woman and didi, a sister. The term also emits a certain modicum of benign affection - obtusely complimentary, mildly suggesting that one could still pull off a ‘didibhai’, never mind the half-greyed mane or at least that is how I chose to interpret it.
Later that evening, my bell rang and I was informed that I needed to accept a delivery. The nature of the delivery was described by the security guard as ‘phood’. Not khana, not khabar, ‘phood.’ Just within this last year or so, ‘phood’ or food, has imperceptibly substituted ‘khabar’. And we seem to have allowed it to do so without even recognising the shift. There have been many similar language entries that have walked in and made themselves at home, replacing expressions that had otherwise lasted and shaped our thinking quietly, without explicitly trying to do so.
On the other hand, many other terminologies and lexes seem to have become quite endangered; some have even turned virtually extinct. And nowhere is this more visible than in terms used for filial connections, where terminologies were at once endearing, unique, imaginative and affectionate. Firstly, you didn’t paint every female relation as ‘aunt’ and every male as ‘uncle’; there was a whole range from ‘mashi’ or ‘masi’ to ‘pishi’ or ‘bua’, to ‘boudi’ or ‘bhabi’ or to, as alluded to earlier, ‘didibhai’, which simply has no parallel. Then there were prefixes to address the seniority from ‘bodo’ or ‘bada’ for the older one, to ‘mejo’ for the middle guy and of course, ‘choto’ or ‘chota’ for the youngest.
But the prefix is where the reference became fun and imaginative. Some words really meant nothing, nor could be looked up in a dictionary; they were just cooked up with a dollop of affection or rooted in some odd episode and got doggedly stuck to a reference. I know of a family where one of the tallest male members, at 6 ft 2 inches, is referred to as Tingu bhaiya (‘tingu’ meaning short) - quite the least suitable prefix for the tallest, making it all the more fun and enduring for over six decades now. Other playful prefixes were quite common - ‘ranga pishi’, used by Rituporno Ghosh in ‘Shubho Muhrat’ to denote a fun aunt or if you think of the Hindi films of the 1960s, then invariably you could find a ‘Doctor chacha’, a medically qualified friend of the father and so on.
Somewhere along the way, we seem to have hurriedly simplified and standardised, having taken a rather broad brush with the way we address one another. Everyone becomes an uncle or an aunty, a bro or a boss, a madam or a sir - neat, efficient, universally applicable and faintly anonymous.
In that uniformity, something small but precious slips away: the context of a relationship, the texture of familiarity and the playfulness that once crept into everyday speech without trying too hard. It is hard to quantify the exact loss, quantify the quiet carrier of stories, hierarchies, affections, private jokes and cultural cues, that wove commentary into conversation without announcing it.
Of course, now the doorbell announces uniformity quite unabashedly. Because now, when the doorbell rings, the delivery guy no longer says that he is from’ Amazon’. He confidently replies from the other end, ‘Ami Amazon’.
Supriya Newar is a multi-lingual writer and poet from Calcutta. Besides being a music aficionado, she is also an avid traveller. She may be reached at [email protected]
