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Meaning of ‘AEZU’

Whenever I hear this word, my innerconscience got a moment of bliss. This is a traditional and very popular word used by Pun Magars in the Dhaulagiri region. Nowadays it is used all around the world that had migrated from that region. Dhaulagiri is also my anchesterial village which might be the main reason behind such blissfull feelings towards this word, I guess. ‘Aezu’ is still been used in the countryside of the region.

‘Aezu’ is composed of two words ‘ye’ meaning ‘hello’ or ‘hey’ and ‘ju’ which is used to respect other after greeting their names. In normal Nepali language it is ‘jiu’ but the native people mainly Pun Magars of Dhaulagiri region say ‘ju’ instead. ‘Aezu’ is more oftenly used to greet friends respectfully. If a friend is near we use ‘ju’ only but if s/he is at distance we use ‘aezu’. E.g. if ‘Gore’ is your friend’s name and he is near to you then you can greet him ‘Goreju’. If he is far then you can greet him ‘Aezu’.

‘Aezu’ was almost extinct. But some of notable groups and people of our society gave it a life. According to my knowledge, an inspirational musical group from Pokhara named themselves as ‘Aezu’ and composed songs using this word. They were the first group who officially used this word. In the similar way ‘Pun Magar Society’, Western Chitwan published their annual magazine using ‘Yezu’ as its title. And, later ‘Fimala Magazine’ an inspirational magazine of our society has given more emphasis to this word. Nowadays this word is more popular than before, which I think is because of indigenous movies produced by Fimala Films Production Co. titled ‘Aezu’ and its sequel ‘Aezu II’.

During my research in the villages of Dhaulagiri region for ‘Fimala magazine’ and attending ‘Karbakeli Investigation’ programmes since 2059 B.S. I found more female users of this word. It shows that ‘Aezu’ has great social importance and values in our society. Pun magars are mainly ‘Kham’ speakers. ‘Kham’ is a language which has the mixture of native Magar and Nepali language. According to our senior citizens, Pun Magars were fined and consequently banned to speak magar language in fear of conspiracy from the contemporary regional kings of that region. As a result, we lost our language and manuscript. However, some of the words are still in our tongue which has great pride and importance. ‘Aezu’ is one of them.

For example ‘swina’, if someone says ‘swina’ then the people from this region easily understand it which means ‘dream’. But other races of people don’t. There are lots of such words. They also need conservation and preservation. For this one person’s commitment is not enough. We have to change ourselves. We need to start buying and reading more social, regional and other magazines. Doing these will certainly boost motivation of doing more socially important programmes, works and publishing others magazines which consequently helps to document these words and restore our lost language in the other way.

Mejan Pun Magar Translated by Inder Pun