Forms of address in our culture

This is no academic essay though the topic deserves it. These are a few random observations.

The channels along which our memory travel are worthy of speculation just like the stuff that comprises our dreams. As to the latter, as the nocturnal lady wraps herself around us, we enter an unexpected world that throws up figures and facts that had never entered our orbit of thought. Same with memory channels that take turns and twists, if we care to let it wander in a libertine way.

This prelude is an excuse to open up a scene near my village well enacted more than half a century ago. The large well where danced emerald–hued waters reflecting the crown of a sprawling Kumbuk tree was located in a carpet of green fields and named Kanuhetta for no explicit reason. It almost took on the mantle of a village assembly come noon. Reuters, the famous newspaper agency though it had no specific office there had a good part of his busy workers on the well-compound mostly in the form of females who exchanged spicy gossip. Not that the men did not contribute.

Classless society

The well was not sex-wise segregated and a classless society haunted it though the middle class shunned it at its busiest times. I am not sure to what class I belonged, perhaps to a class cunningly creeping up from the lower class to the village middle class via tactics as parsimony and historical legends that fuelled an “out of the ordinary heritage”. Finally the voyage ended up with certain luxury items as having its own well from which water was got by the laborious mechanism of pulling out the precious stuff with the aid of a qaarope and a rickety bucket. Sometimes these wells ran dry and then we were “forced“ to go to the common well.

That led to an enthralling adventure for the children. There were two stiles to jump over and under the foliage of Kamaranga trees spread their fruits full of juicy syrup and presenting patchworks of yellow robes, a charming sight. Then there was dear Nonnachchi with her regular question session as she delivered them on her wooden door step. “Duwe(Daughter), so you are at home for the vacation?” “Yes, Achchi”

“I heard that you are attending a Christian school. Don’t you become one. Not only your parents but even your grand parents were very devout Buddhists”. I promise dutifully to carry on the Sinhala Buddhist heritage though at times I cannot resist the temptation to kneel before the Madonna with her bewitching smile.

One afternoon when the private well was dry providing children with many a primeval pleasure as those mentioned, I came back from the village well, howling as though the very devils were chasing me. In fact some village tales are woven around a Jala Rakusa or water devil who gets attracted to lasses nearing puberty.

Rational questions

Amma of course never believed in such stuff and just spurted with very rational questions. “Whatever is the matter and didn’t you have the bath? Returning so early? ” Looking back it was evident that her daughter subject to cross-culture patterns of civilisation had begun to give enough headaches to her.

“No. I did not bathe. How can I? A man at the well was very rude. He asked me, Umba mokada ada me lindata ave?” (Why did you come to this well today?)

“So?” She had her hands on her hips to martial her aggression.
“So what? Why should he call me umba? It is the term we address our servants and beggars at the door.”
“Not always. It is a common form of address used by us,the Sinhalese.”

My father a reluctant contributor to mother-daughter dialogues found the topic interesting.

“It is enough he didn’t t ask you, why did tho come to this well today?”

“That is very funny. Why should that man use such a disparaging term? She has not committed a crime.” I surmise that she gulped the rest,” And she le arns in the English medium in a far off city.” Distance too does conjure andeur.

“You need not commit a crime to be called THO. In fact it was used very liberally in the ancient days. A man would say to his wife, "Sondura, Will tho prepare lunch early today as we are planning a hunting trip”

“If you tell me that, your dinner will precede your lunch,” was his beloved Sondura’s retort. Sondura! That is an endearing term that husbands use for their wives.

Though Prof. M.B. Ariyapala contends that in the bygone era the term was used only in literary works. He was too impatient to use such “lulling” terms.

Auditory powers

Actually a spouse would more likely address the other one in a round about way. As, Me ahunanda (Can you hear me ?) though he knows that the partner’s auditary powers are quite sound. The wife would also address the husband by this and also by Me lamayinge thaththe (Children’s father). Sometimes it is used very illogically. For example, I had an elderly maid at one time. She was childless but she addressed her life-mate by that term. I once queried her on this anomalous situation.

“Apoi, Nona. How to address Eya (that one) as Aron Appu. It will make me burn in hell in the next birth”. After a visit to Kavatayamuna temple her fright of hell has just peaked.

“Is the sin as bad as that?” I asked her rather concerned for I too commit this ‘sin'. The husband and wife in our conventional society fight shy of using the other’s personal name for some non-deciphered reason and one could research whether this habit is germane to our society alone. The couple gets away by using the term as Eya and Meya. Oya is also a form of intimate address that close associates use. Once I read that a woman had sued a man who had addressed her as Oya or the Thai equivalent of it, that insinuated a very close relationship making her husband suspicious. The case was heard in Thailand and hence I am not aware of the judge’s verdict on it and the intricate complications that followed.