A place for Mrs Yamaraj in Oxford

It was the first four letter word that was strictly forbidden at home.

Amma always said never to utter it all by itself.

Strangely enough, you always found adults uttering it all the time.

Aiyo … he left me … cried grandmother in anguish over Grandfather’s dead body.

Aiyo … you cried in pain when you cut your finger while cutting a mango.

Aiyo … your reflexes uttered when you lost your balance and slammed your bicycle against the bushes before you learnt to ride it.

Aiyo … you said when you heard about that hit-and-run case…

Well… Aiyo was supposed to be Yamaraj’s wife. And calling her name out loud, it was believed was as good as summoning the God of Death himself. (Really … when Yama was on duty why would he be anywhere around his wife. If anything, calling her name out loud could be a sure shot way of keeping him away. Logic beats us… anyway.)

Neverthless that was the standard rule set for all four to fourteen-year olds who were prone to swearing and found themselves short of vocabulary to adequately express, shock, grief, anguish, surprise, disgust and pain.

However exceptions were allowed.

You could say Aiyo Rama – thereby summoning Rama the auspicious God along with Mrs. God of death.

You could say Aiyo deivame, Aiyo Swamiye or Aiyo anything as long as there was a reference to an auspicious god in the prefix.

Aiyo by herself was inauspicious, for it was believed that it could lead to a visit by her husband to your household.

Somewhere it looks like we have broken the rules and summoned Aiyo way too often in our everyday usage.
The Oxford English dictionary seems to have taken note of this.

OED now allows all English-speaking people to legitimately use AiyoH (the five letter word ending with H) as long as it is used to express amazement, shock and/or despair.

So now you can say AiyoH without being branded a Madrasi…
AiyoH … Boss has called me for a meeting
AiyoH … I screwed it all up once again …
AiyoH … how desperate she is to post a silly blog every other weekend.

As long as you add an ‘H’ to Aiyo the Queen hereby approves it to be Proper English.

Mr. Yamaraj, your wife is trending on Twitter and making newspaper headlines.

-Jayanthi Gopal

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