When I start a relationship of friendship with persons significantly senior than me, my first hesitation is always that what would I going to address that person. I use to ask people how do they like to be addressed by me?
As far as professional contacts are concerned, I do have a lot of my seniors, ranging from 5 to even 30-40 years older than me. Still I call them by their first name, while on work, as a part of professional practice in my organization.
However, in our subcontinent, we in personal relationship are obliged to give respect as well as respectful addressing to our elders as part of our culture when relationships are concerned.
West, otherwise, has very limited vocabulary of relationships. All Mama, Mosa, Chaha, Taya, Fufa, etc are only Uncle for them and they address all their Mami, Mosi, Chachi, Taayi, Bhuya by Aunt. In addition, they don’t address anyone outside their direct relation as their Uncle or Aunt. I am amused that there is no equivalent world to our simple word of respect “Ji” in English.
Our concept is completely different. We have abundant words in our vocabulary for blood relatives. Though we have our indigenous words for non-relatives we have somehow adopted the address of Uncle/Aunty for anyone close but who is not directly linked by relationships. And not this we use to call every and other stranger, we meet, by Uncle/Aunty due to our mindset.
The possible reason of this behaviour, as I think, would be that our culture works with the comforts of relationships. And if we don’t have blood ones we try to make ones of respect, even with strangers. We might have millions of flaws in us but this is one of the prevalent beauties of our values.
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