India, Oct. 28 -- At a small get-together recently, a 42-year-old colleague confessed how uncomfortable she feels when grown-up children call her "auntie".

Her remark took me back to my entry into the administrative services at the age of 23. At the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, the college-going daughters of a senior officer routinely addressed us as "auntie." Some of my batchmates were visibly offended. Overnight promotion to aunthood at 23 was certainly premature. I was hardly delighted, but it didn't trigger an existential crisis either-I simply found it amusing.

Over the years, I realised these forms of address are rarely about age alone. They are bound up with context, culture, hierarchy, aff...