Civic leaders alarmed as supply of unsolicited advice reaches historic highs while demand for said advice remains, as it has always been, at zero. Experts say problem traces directly to the aunty-uncle complex, which has been spreading since independence.

ENTIRE COUNTRY — By Staff Reporter Who Did Not Ask

NEW DELHI — India is facing an unprecedented surplus of freely given, completely unrequested advice, with latest figures showing that the country produces approximately 4.7 billion individual opinions daily, of which only 0.003% were solicited by their recipients, while the remaining 99.997% were delivered anyway on the grounds that the advice-giver "just thought you should know" or "arrey, it's for your own good" or, in the most advanced cases, simply "you should listen to your elders."

The unsolicited advice covers every domain of human life with no domain considered private or off-limits. Surveys indicate the most active categories are: marriage timing (directed at anyone over 23 who is not yet married and also several people under 23 as a "just start thinking about it"), career choices (delivered by relatives who have spent their own careers in entirely different fields), weight (delivered at family functions, across tables, sometimes across rooms, never requested, always precise: "thoda weight badh gaya hai na?"), skin colour ("fair and lovely" has been rebranded but the underlying advisory has not), and academic performance (discussed about your children with other people's parents in front of your children, who can hear, who have always been able to hear, who have never been considered in this calculation).

"Arrey, I'm just saying."— Every advice-giver, after delivering advice that required no saying and that no one will act on. "Just saying" is the disclaimer that makes unsolicited advice legally and emotionally non-binding in Indian culture. The advice will still be repeated at the next function.

The most feared subspecies of unsolicited advice is the Wedding Function Advisor — a relative who, at any wedding, will find the single person, the overweight person, the person with the non-traditional job, the couple who have been married for two years without producing a child, and the child who has not gotten into IIT, and address each of them in sequence before the first course has arrived. The Wedding Function Advisor is not cruel. This is the most important thing to understand. They are genuinely concerned. The concern is real. It has simply not been mapped to whether the concern is welcome, useful, or any of the recipient's business. The mapping has never been done. Nobody is planning to do it.

At press time, this reporter's mother had called to say that this article was "too long" and that he should "write shorter things" and also "are you eating properly" and also "when are you getting married" and also "uncle Suresh's daughter just got placed in Google" and the call had lasted twenty-two minutes during which no advice was sought and all of it was given, and it was, in its way, entirely an act of love, and the reporter said yes Amma and yes Amma and yes I know about Suresh uncle's daughter and will call again Sunday.

Unsolicited AdviceAunty Uncle ComplexJust SayingWedding Function AdvisorAmma Called
Disclaimer: Satire. The 4.7 billion figure is fabricated but feels accurate. The call from the reporter's mother is real in spirit and in everyone's experience. — Ed