"Aunty-Biotics"

Aunties --- walking talking female weapons of social warfare --- never cease to surprise me [think eyes-popping-out-of-sockets surprising]. After every social encounter I feel I have seen it all and then another Aunty-Biotic comes up to mock my tunnel vision. I do not know where to draw the line, really, in trying to destroy them with verbal sarcasm. I mean what all should I point out?

I have been talking endlessly about the Matrimonial Police Aunties who play roles of high inquisitors in the social sphere. They feel it is their job to ask if every last girl is married or single. If you say No they have various make-belief suitor options as well! 

How do you react when a Space Intruder Aunty wedges herself into your sister's lap, trying to occupy a seat that was already occupied. I seriously stifled the urge to poke the lady with my dining fork when my sister informed that she was actually sitting on my sister's lap. She took permission of course, before she intruded! The tragedy is everywhere. I let a similar kind of aunty go ahead of me in a buffet dinner line because she had her dinner plate nudged into my ribs at the back. She was fully aware of the physical contact her ceramic plate had made with my back and her blank stare implied that she was in no mood to break it. Considering that her plate would soon be filled with oily curries, I let her go ahead in line. Such intruders will spot you the minute you make an entry into a social gathering and will wave frantically at you until they are seated on your lap, eating from your plate. Yes --- you read correctly. A particular intruder aunty dived into my mother's plate of biryani to help herself! 

I lunched with the Age Defying Aunty who insisted that despite being in her mid seventies she was a dancing diva. Instead of respecting her real name, she preferred being called Maddie. Now, there is nothing wrong in being young at heart. I believe what cracked my nerve was the fact that earlier she had offered me and my sister her OLD SHOES --- stilettos --- because she believed she was too old to wear them anymore. Seriously, OLD SHOES, the ones she'd sweated in --- possibly while dancing. Such age defying ladies are everywhere. You may run into them on a wrong day when they had had their botox re-do appointment and their faces were frozen so I couldn't tell what emotion they were expressing. 

Kabhi Khudkushi Kabhi Gham Aunties actually summon the nerve to share too much information. Mostly, they are not satisfied with anything in their lives and make it a point to tell the social universe about it. I was near an ear bleed when I found an aunty complaining that her husband did not "have enough time from work" otherwise they would have had had more kids. So, what do you want my mother to do? Request your husband to "make necessary changes" or give me up for adoption?

There are also the Hide and Seek Aunties who can't seem to make up their mind which people to be spotted in public with. When they mistakenly attend an event where two different set of their friends are present they try not to let the cat out of the bag for both of them that they are common friends. This probably has something to do with the kind of exclusive drama they put up with each set of people. so you may expect to get a bouquet of flowers from them one time and you may find them sneaking away from you --- hiding under a table perhaps --- at another party.

Devil's Workshop Aunties are big time gossip mongers. They are capable of triggering a female civil war with their sneaky tactics. Tales from other people's lives, family secrets they've sworn not to tell, exaggerated reality, evil schemes of family politics --- every malicious evil from Pandora's Box comes out from their big mouths. Who married whom, who divorced whom, who's having a baby, who died, who is about to die, how is the world rotating about its axis --- they know it all. 

These are just a few Aunty types. They're difficult to predict and my observation continues.