BRIEF CASE: Aunty in Agony

It was an event waiting to happen and has happened. I have become an aunty. No, not an aunt. That happened a long time ago when my siblings sired their respective progeny, who came goo-goo gurgling into the world, bestowing aunt-hood on me. I’ve graduated to the big league now — I’ve become the universal aunty.
Even auntyji, if you please. Becoming aunty to my children’s friends and the neighbours’ kids was something I was quite game for.This isn’t the Wild West after all and we don’t call our almost-could-have-been aunts by their first names. But what about the rest — the sabziwala, the kaamwali, the newspaper boy, and the autorickshaw driver who are all suddenly bestowing aunty-dom on me in merry unison?
Is it that tiniest wisp of grey showing? Is it my thickening waistline? Or is it just one of those things that are written on one’s DNA? A coding which goes Indian + Female + Past first blush of youth = Aunty. QED.
When I was a kid the Delhi aunty was a formidable creature. She had to look and dress her part — she had to be seen perambulating ponderously down colony streets, early mornings and late evenings, dressed in a cotton maxi and blue and white Bata rubber slippers and she had to have indisputable haggling skills vis-a-vis hawkers.
It’s no longer so. Now I’m a full card-bearing member of the aunty brigade and i didn’t even apply to get in! Like Amitabh Bachchan’s honorary doctorates, the title descended by itself. And it’s sticky.
Declining it politely will only bring ridicule and fuel further unwanted discussions on what my exact age might be. Remember, dressing has nothing to do with it — my jeans and crop tops have had no dissuasive effect whatsoever.
I have toyed with the idea of trying to see if a miniskirt might do the trick but the prospect of being known as the miniskirt-wali aunty at the Mother Dairy booth is just too daunting. And frankly I’m too scared to wish that they would stop calling me aunty. For that will be the day they’ll start calling me mataji!