HOW ELDERS SAY ‘YOU’VE LOST WEIGHT’ INSTEAD OF SAYING ‘ARE YOU OKAY?’

— The roundabout language of love and worry

In many Nepali homes, the most loaded sentence you’ll hear after a long absence is not “How have you been?” or “Are you doing okay?” It’s this:
“Oho, dhilo bhayechha ni. Timi ta dukhidieko jasto dekhinchha.”
(Oh, it’s been a while. You look thinner, like you've suffered.)

The words are about weight. The tone is about concern. But what’s really being asked is: What’s going on? Are you eating? Are you sleeping? Is something wrong?
They just don't say it directly.

This is how love is often expressed in our culture—not in the form of probing questions or emotional confessions, but in roundabout gestures, in passing comments at the dinner table, in a second helping of rice you didn’t ask for. Elders, especially, come from a generation where feelings were folded inward, not spoken outward. Direct questions about mental or emotional well-being are rare. What replaces them are coded phrases, usually through the language of the body.

“You’ve lost weight” becomes a proxy for you’ve lost colour, lost appetite, lost joy.
“You look tired” becomes a way of saying you seem burdened, worried, unlike yourself.
And the ever-reliable “Don’t you eat properly there?” is layered with concern, guilt, and a longing for closeness they don’t know how to name.

Sometimes it feels frustrating—this avoidance of direct emotional talk. Why not just ask, Are you okay? Why circle around it? But to understand this indirection is to understand a history shaped by silence. A society where people have long learned to express care through action, not articulation. Where making food, tucking in bedsheets, or simply noticing a change in someone’s face is how love is measured.

In many Nepali households, emotions are wrapped in rituals. A grandmother may not ask about your heartbreak, but she will hand you a plate of warm sel roti and tell you to eat it all. A father may never say, I miss you, but will insist you carry snacks back to your flat in the city. And yes, an uncle may scan your face and say, “Too thin, han?” when what he really means is, You’ve been carrying something silently, haven’t you?

To the outsider, it may seem superficial, even rude. But within these remarks lies a deeper language of care—coded, subtle, tender. One that trusts the other person will understand what is really being said.

And perhaps this is why we learn, in time, to respond in code too.
“I’ve just been busy,” we say, when we mean I’ve been overwhelmed.
“I don’t know why I’ve lost weight,” we shrug, when what we mean is I haven’t had the appetite to feel okay in weeks.

These are not lies. They are bridges—tentative and quiet—between people who don’t always know how to say what they feel, but desperately want the other to know they’ve noticed, they’ve cared, they’re here.

So the next time an elder says, “You look like you’ve lost weight,” don’t brush it off. Hear it for what it truly is. Not a comment on your appearance.
But a question in disguise.
A worry, softly delivered.
A hug, folded into a sentence.