Linda’s SoCS prompt for this Saturday.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “mem.” Choose a word or words with the letters “mem” in that order and run with it. Enjoy!

Now I could have gone the obvious route here and spoken of Remembrance Day… I thought I would go off piste (as if I ever do that normally ;P). And these are just my off the cuff thoughts, not intended to offend or educate… just what rolls out of my brain, through my fingers, over the keyboard, and onto the screen!

Mem-Sahib

A word used to address a lady in india. Often a lady of the upper classes, a higher stature than those average folk.

It was a mark of respect, like Sir and Madam, we have Sahib and Mem-Sahib.

When the Raj was ruled by The British Empire, every white skinned woman was automatically a Mem-Sahib. Obviously, due to the reason they were there, they demanded that immediate respect from the lowly brown-skinned locals.

Nowadays you here people in our community talking of girls who are overly westernised, calling them Gori-Mem. White woman, it loosely translates as. Those ‘coconuts’ as it were, white on the inside, brown on the outside! Wannabe westerners!

Of course it can also be used as a descriptive phrase to describe a western woman too.

And as a British Asian, when I go to India, I get called Mem-Sahib, or Madam, an awful lot! Because we are foreigners in our own land, essentially. We live out in the western world, that place apparently paved with gold, we seem to wear an aura of wealth, and it garners an automatic response of respect from our Indian counterparts.

But I am no madam, or Mem-Sahib. I’m just me! I’d rather be referred to as Didi (sister) or Masi (aunt) or even Beti (daughter). Not someone who is ‘above’ others. Because I’m not.

There you have it… Stream of Consciousness Saturday all about the Mem!