The pronouns

I started learning Hindi online with a teacher based in Delhi. She had already been teaching my children Hindi for a year or two, and since we returned from India in July of this year, I decided to join them.

The teacher is a lovely woman in her mid-thirties. She balances a day job as a primary school teacher with earning extra income by teaching Hindi online to students worldwide.

I recall that during the free conversation section of our first three to five classes, when the discussion turned to my husband, she specifically taught me to use a respectful "you" pronoun for him. In India, it is a social norm to use the respectful "you" pronoun for elders, men, and people of importance in general.

She explained that a wife should use this respectful "you" when referring to her husband, and children should use it for their father. In general, all men - fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, and even random men in the street - should be referred to using this respectful form by anyone. However, the same rule doesn't strictly apply to women. You do not need to refer to women with the respectful "you," only the normal, "flat" pronoun, even for mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, and neighborhood women.

Referring to Raj as someone of a higher social rank than me immediately made me uncomfortable.

Raj and I are equals. We have been equal since the day we met, and we have never strayed from that path. Being equal is the single most important key to our happy and stable relationship. We built our life together as partners who share equal responsibilities; we communicate freely and always speak our minds. Our life platform is level, not tilted, which makes it much easier to expand outward and carry out our individual and mutual spiritual growth.

Therefore, despite my sweet Hindi teacher's advice, I have been insisting on using the normal, flat "you" pronoun for my husband. It took her about three to five classes to get used to my unconventional usage. Eventually, she gave up correcting me and simply went along with it.