Monkey's uncle

It happens when you hear people you never met, call you uncle. You feel a jolt somewhere in your mind when you hear that word. If you hear it for the first time, it would derail the train of your thoughts with a loud explosion. You would feel aged as if a single word, like a time machine, sped up your biological clock.

You would like to get used to it after protesting a few times. Because every time you protest, it turns into a burlesque act. The callers are amused by your irritation and repeat their calls to irritate you even more. You feel trapped in the comedy of terror, because it forces upon you an avuncular obligation. You feel like an uncle who has been the butt of a joke.

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But then the frustration seethes within you, because you cannot reconcile what you believe with what you hear. You don't mind when your nephews and nieces call you uncle, because it is a relationship thing that has nothing to do with age. That is not true when strangers call you uncle. It has nothing to do with relationship but everything to do with age. It basically means you are old enough to be a father figure, it means you are over the hill, someone who shows the sign of age.

Worst of all, it bruises you like a criminal tortured in police custody. It hurts you although there is no wound in sight. It forces you to take a stock of your life, waking up like Rip Van Winkle, suddenly realising that so much time had whizzed you by.

It bothers you like a thorn in your head. You don't want to believe it, but it pricks you in the conscience.

There are days when you hear the dreaded word more than once. If you are out on an Eid shopping or a regular shopping spree, you hear it so much that you might actually come home convinced. You would feel old and weak, wondering if one should not be as good as what others think. You would stand in front of the mirror and examine your face, the streaks of white in hair and moustache, sign of wrinkles, bags under eyes, anything and everything that is mark of age.

Believe me, one word does it all, changing in one phonetic flip, the way you used to look at the world. It reminds of the cruelty of boys who pelted stones at the frogs in a river. What is play to some is death to others. People who call you uncle seldom know that it could put you through so much anguish, that one word could send you on such an intense emotional trip. You think of age, you think of the end, you think as if you have started to live from the finishing line of a race. It deflects your life and puts it on a reverse course.

So this one word like a seed grows into a tree. It overshadows your personality, and takes the bite out of your confidence, which was there until you heard that call. You find yourself in the grip of disappointment, which characterises a disguised man who has been recognised. The hair dye doesn't do the trick, neither do the skincare lotion and the puff of hair spooled atop the forehead with the vigour of a cotton candy. You feel embarrassed like a man who was exposed after he had gone into hiding.

Mind it, this is your private suffering, which means you cannot share it with others, because they would find it silly. This one word sets you ablaze in your own sensibility, your own private hell lit up with the fire of your own agonies. You don't feel connected to those who address you, at the same time you feel a disconnect within yourself. You are not the same person you thought you were, because others don't agree with you.

Some would argue that the word uncle is honorific, a kind of trunk call of respect the younger people would like to show to their elderlies. But you don't want that respect which humiliates you, one that takes your dignity and puts a dent in it. Instead you wish you were addressed as brother, one that has the fresh smell of youth and places you at par with the caller. The word brother also pours honey into ears, because it shows you the consideration you expect from others. Brother is egalitarian, uncle is authoritarian. Brother is endearing, uncle is mind shearing. Brother is eternal, uncle is time bound. Brotherhood means solidarity, unclehood means nothing.

You think about it, wishful thinking, and at the same time you hear the despicable word wherever you go. People call you that when they approach you to ask for the light off your cigarette, time on your watch, and direction for their journey. They call you that when they ask for money, help, opinion and guidance. The more you hate it, the more you are haunted by it.

Are you making a mountain out of a mole? Are you making a big deal out of nothing? It's not that you don't reprimand yourself for being excessively sensitive, for bogging down too much in the quicksand of semantics. A rose is a rose, no matter what others call it. You go back and forth in your mind. You try to ignore it, you try to forget it. But it keeps coming back in your mind with the resilience of a bedspring.

The damage, however, is done as soon as the word is uttered. Once it is heard, it doesn't help if you are told to the contrary. The beast enters the garden of innocence and ransacks it. It prowls in the corridors of your conscience and claws at your consciousness. Just one word it is, yet it has the power to push you to the end of your wit.

Has anyone called you uncle lately other than your nieces and nephews? If not, wait until someone does it and see if what I said also works for you. I am a monkey's uncle if it does not. Oops! I guess I have heard it so many times, I am already convinced.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.