Rule of the thumb — do not put your mouth into motion before your head is in gear: remember and 'respect' the senior, junior, Boro Bhai, Chhoto Bhai, Boro Apu, Choto Apu etc culture whenever you speak Bangla!
It's not as if our language is at fault here, yet I have always been perplexed with the Bangali obsession for 'respect', which whittles down to being fearful of authority, of the state, government, or right down to our family nucleus where we miserably eke out an existence. The concept of 'respect' virtually juggles an overtime of our mind, and much as we make tall talks about 'free or frank' interactions of views, nothing can be conducted under these frightful circumstances.
How we address each other has something to do with the great Bangali (or South Asian) sense of 'propriety' and if you haven't quite gotten what that means — the harsh word 'decency' will be rubbed into you with more than a few grains of salt. The objective of this propriety and decency exercise is no more than driving in fear, even fear of someone who by some quirk of fate was born maybe just a few weeks before you?
Words that we use can easily go for or against us, and as children our parents drummed in the necessity to be 'well-behaved' in public or private. The greatest debacle for growth of free speech in Bangladesh is as children we were reprimanded if we asked uncomfortable questions or simply because our 'elders' didn't have the right answers or were too embarrassed to answer what we wanted to know. Ironically, to be termed Beyadob or irreverent/disrespectful is part of an experience all Bangladeshis have to go through sometimes in life.
This grated subservience to authority of all kind has plagued our efforts to be free humans in every sphere of our cultural or national life. It is therefore not unusual that Bengalis find themselves sadly inadequate in coping with the concept of 'worldview', as our culture doesn't permit anything more than entrenched parochialism. Our entrance in the global world with digitisation being the mainstay has seen us only stutter and stumble.
All of this has got to do with several degrees of 'dependency philosophy' that has become the mainstay of the active culture we live and seemingly thrive in. But my personal feeling is, no matter how much we patronisingly tout the lofty concepts of 'fighting inequality or bias' of any kind, we as a matter of convenience or sheer ignorance practice and promote the same demeaning 'culture' without even batting an eyelid.
For instance the first criteria for use of the word Apni is determining the age of the person it will be used, to be considered 'appropriate'. Understandably it 'must' be used when we address an 'elder' or someone who is in a far more 'important' position than we think we are. If one were to address a minister of the government, Apni is de rigueur mandatory and it really doesn't matter if one finds out later that the minister was several years junior in college. The only consolation is there is a possibility that you too will be reverentially addressed as Apni simply because you are a Boro bhai (elder brother) deserving 'respect'. Ah! A shining example of 'respect begets respect' that our parents taught us, right?
Then comes, Tumi — a highly suspect term. In West Bengal, it is used as replacements to the neutral English word 'you' with varied degree or luck, but in Bangladesh one has to be extremely careful using it. Ideally it is used to address someone who is not necessarily a friend of the same age, but an appropriate term for a subordinate, say a junior colleague or even the domestic help or chauffeur. Unless otherwise 'permitted' it is of course well understood that in return we expect to be addressed as Apni!
Leaving us to the term Tui. On surface it is a term of endearment, used and misused as situations demand or in manners we fancy. It is very common among some Bangali families that children and parents or uncles and aunts to use Tui to address each other. On the same token among siblings and cousins Tui is just fine. However, depending on the level of 'closeness' it can also be used among friends, but the buck stops right there. The bottom line here is one has to be in 'agreement' that the use of Tui does not in any way discomfit the other.
However there are some 'exceptions' to the rule. It may be used selectively to hail a rickshaw ride, or while buying provisions from the salesman in your neighbourhood grocery, or in the unlikely event that your self-driven car is hit by an autorickshaw driver. Clearly in many situations the term Tui degenerates from a term of endearment to one of outright abuse with vulgar overtones. It's the best term to use if one is in the 'urgent need' to shut up an opposition that we think is a Chotoloke or low life and not worthy of our 'respect'.
It is thus not a surprise that national traitors too are termed 'Tui Razakar' but that term in recent days doesn't necessarily mean the collaborators of 1971!
Maqsoodul Haque (Mac) is a columnist and a jazz-rock fusion musician