Aji sunte ho...

A few years ago, at a big, fat, south Indian wedding, I heard a distant cousin's wife call out to him. "Enna, kekerela (equivalent of 'Aji sunte ho' in Tamil)," said the young woman, born half a decade after me, raised in Mumbai and having worked for an IT conglomerate. Why doesn't she call him by his name, I asked. Her response was simple. "He is older than me and I like following our customs and norms".

I got a similar answer from my young and educated domestic help who calls her husband, 'Choti ke papa'. "How can I address him by his name? He is older than me, and I don't want to suffer damnation."

Both are in their late 20s. They belong to different strata of society, but are bound by that connecting thread—they don't call their husbands by their names. Does that mean women who call their husband by his name are any less respectful? Does adhering to customs make my cousin's wife any less modern?

'Yevandi' in Telugu, 'Aaho' in Marathi, 'Ganda' in Kannada... the terms may be different, but the deference is the same. Author and sociologist Yogesh Atal says in his book, Sociology: A Study of the Social Sphere, "In northern India, a wife may refer to her husband as 'father or brother of so and so'. This practice is technically called Teknonymy. In Mewar, it is considered disrespectful to call the husband by his name. To strengthen this practice it is said that calling the husband by his name reduces the life of the woman by one year! So strong is the belief that when, during my fieldwork in Mewar, I asked an elderly widow to tell the name of her deceased husband, she teknonymously referred to him as 'the one who was wedded to Sitaji—she was referring to Ram, the hero of Ramayana! Ram was the name of her husband."

"I can relate to this practice", says 28-year-old Vishakha Nagpal, who is married into a Telugu family. She is not allowed to address her husband by his name in the presence of her family and relatives. "I call him Yevandi. He doesn't like it either, but then we have no choice if we have to be with family. In the initial days of our marriage, some of my colleagues thought Yevandi was his name," she laughs.

In the case of 33-year-old New-Jersey based Shubhi Anand, the choice was completely hers. Married for 11 years, Shubhi never calls her husband Amit by name. It's always 'Listen' or 'Love'.

Though social conditioning was not a particular driving force, her mother was. "Seeing my mother never call my dad by his name was definitely a strong influence. Even though Amit never expected me to not call him by his name, it was my choice, which is now a habit," she says.

For others like Suvarne Gade, who got married this week, pressure started building up as soon as the wedding got fixed. Belonging to a traditional Maharashtrian family, Suvarna's mother instructed her to not call her husband by his name. It had to be either 'Aaho' or 'Aiklat ka'. "I have actually been calling him that ever since. While it seemed forced initially, it has now become a habit. I am doing this for our families, it's not a big deal," declares the bride.

And 32-year-old Kamal Pramod Rahirathi doesn't go for either 'Aji sunte ho' or 'Aiklat ka'. She simply calls him India. "Main izzat karti hoon, isiliye unko India bulati hoon (I call him India because I respect him)," she giggles.

'Jaan' is how 26-year-old Ayesha addresses her husband Shahbaaz. "Before I met him, I was going through a financial crisis. He gave me a reason to live and Jaan means life," says Ayesha, who never calls her husband by his name. She believes not calling him by his name is her way of being grateful for all that he's given her. "I respect him," she says.

While Ayesha did have a choice, so did Shahbaaz and he chose to call her Suno. "My husband never calls me by name, he always addresses me as Suno," shares Ayesha, who had an inter-religious marriage.

In 'modern' society, given that the ideals of egalitarianism encourage women to seek equality within marriages, isn't this mode of addressing then suggestive of inequalities? Not for Shubhi, Suvarna and Ayesha, who refuse to juxtapose the issue with gender inequality. But they do find themselves an anomaly in their inner circles and often get teased by friends.

Shubhi is not shy to admit that "sometimes doing something old-fashioned is sweet and need not reflect on being liberal, educated or independent". And Suvarna's decision to not call her husband by his name reinforces the prevalence of lack of free will in the larger context.

The stories of these women give us a reason to contemplate: Will the tribe of Shabaaz grow? Will we stop judging modern women who follow traditional social norms?