maika

plural maikas

1. IndiaA woman's maternal village: the place where she grew up, especially as contrasted with her new home after marriage.

   This was the last indulgence she was permitted. It was meant to soften the severing of all connections with her maika.

   1997, Kiran Nagarkar, Cuckold, HarperCollins, published 2013, page 72

   2 more examples

   A woman typically reports feeling much better after visiting her maika, and it is sometimes thought that the health of her children is improved by their visiting their mother's brother's house.

   1977, Kenneth David, editor, The New Wind: Changing Identities in South Asia, page 279

   These images reflect a married woman's fond, idealized recollections of her maikā, where she was relatively free and pampered and which she perceives as a land of (emotional) wealth and prosperity.

   1996, Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India, page 86