‘We are not that type, and it does not suit our character to curse, but she would deserve it! Let her become one with dust, dust and ashes let God and the Mother of God bring upon her.
I haven’t cursed anyone in my life, and I don’t curse. But let her be buried without shoes in her feet, Mother Precista, and Saint Filofteia. The Lord has given, the Lord has taken! The Lord has given, The Lord has taken!’
Maybe you remember this famous scene from “Cuib de Viespi”, in which the two sisters start cursing others, even as they were preparing for the funeral.
It seems to me that this is a scene that highlights a type of behavior specific to a large part of the population. Even if we hide it under a title, fancy business cards, glittering clothes, and jewelry, the inner auntie makes its way to the light as water makes its way through the rock.
Her voice is weaker or stronger, depending on education, social circle, how we come to have certain positions or social privileges. The more we work with ourselves, the more effort we invest, the better our role models in life, with values and principles based on ethics, integrity, respect, the lower or non-existent the voice of our inner auntie.
The more and the faster we managed to get things, without deserving them, the more we feel that we deserve everything, the louder is the auntie’s voice. She gossips, criticizes, curses, swears, threatens, attacks someone else for no reason, and her principle is that walking over others means reaching the top. And all of these take place with a smile on her face.
In the Bucharest neighborhood where I grew up, there were older ladies who had such behaviors. As if soured by life’s dissatisfactions, they came in groups from church, after communion, and gossiped about those in other groups.
The younger women, like my mother, did not have the time for such things. They taught us not to pay attention to them and to mind our own games.
However, I met that behavior later and I realised that, beyond all the opportunities for education, travel, world knowledge, beyond our access to information that the internet provides, there are some aspects that remain unpolished. The inner auntie is triumphant in many people, regardless of gender.