It's All Relative

As I picked my daughter up from school one afternoon, her first grade teacher pulled me aside. In a conspiratorial whisper, I was told that Meera had been caught lying. Quelle horreur! Now, whereas she was not a perfect child (although she will claim otherwise), she was not given to lying. Pulling the fire alarm in kindergarten, yes, but not lying. Soaking the carpet with a garden hose through an open window, yes, but not lying.

Mrs. Franklin reproachfully informed me that Meera insisted she had two sisters, but her chart very clearly showed that she had only one brother. Is there anything the teacher should know (maybe that my husband didn’t?).

I sighed. Her two ‘sisters’ were her cousins. There is no word for ‘cousin’ in my mother tongue. Go figure. We have a name for every relative under the sun, but no ‘cousin’. Great offense is taken were you to use the word. In order to save face, we use the term ‘cousin-sister’ or ‘cousin-brother’, hoping to keep them (and Mrs. Franklin) content.

We may not have ‘cousins’, but make up for it with a million aunties and uncles. Any, and I mean any, friend of a parent, or older Indian is called an Uncle or an Aunty (which makes it extremely convenient when you cannot remember their name). The Aunty and Uncle are attached to the first name…so it would be JayshreeAunty or RamanUncle and not Aunt Jayshree or Uncle Raman.

What if it is a blood relative? Ay, there’s the rub. There is no relying on the generic English words “uncle” and “aunt” for this case, each one being given its own nomenclature. A father’s brother is known as kaka (oh, go ahead, be juvenile and have your little snicker), his wife would be a kaki. A father’s sister is known as foi, the husband fuva. A mother’s sister is known as masi, the etymology of which is endearing to know: ma (jai)si which translates as “just like mom”. A masi’s husband is a masa, and a mother’s brother is known as mama, which understandably leads to some confusion in foreign countries.

Befuddled as yet? Good, let’s move on to the in-laws. A husband’s brother, should he have more than one, has two separate designations, the older one being jeth (the wife a jethani) and the younger one being a deeyar (the wife a derani). A husband’s sister would be a nanand and a wife’s sister a sali. Mother-in-law is a sasu (hopefully a good one) and father-in-law a sasra.

There are a few more, but I think I shall stop here, or you will stop reading.

I should add the caveat that these are all Gujarati words. India has a hundred plus languages (18 of them official), and let’s not even get started on the infinite number of dialects.

It is to my shame that I admit to Gujarati being almost like a foreign language to me. While I can recognize the words individually, string them together and you lose me totally. At a recent wedding, a relative was introduced to me as:
aa mari kaka ni chokri ni nanand ni jethani. (Translation: this is my dad's brother's daughter's sister-in-law's older brother’s wife). By the time I was digesting this, it was my turn to be presented. This is what I was: her diyar na sasra na bhai na chokri ni chokri. (Translation: her husband’s younger brother’s father-in-law’s brother’s granddaughter).

It sure makes up for the lack of the word ‘cousin’ doesn’t it?