GOSSIPING - Spoof

GOSSIPING – The art of doing it effortlessly.

All indulge in. And all deny.

Gossip column in a paper or magazine is respectable and avidly read with eagerness, though no newspaper would admit that it is a Gossip column. They would aver that they are only putting in print behaviour of individuals and human peccadillo, i.e., trifling offence. Gossipmonger is publicly shunned and looked askance at but privately is very much in demand.

A wag once said ‘ I never believe a gossip which I have not started.’ Gossip is the life of parties. Without gossip, however, tasty the food may be, whatever vintage the wine may be, however gracious the hostess may be, there will not be any spark in the party. After all what for are parties. Not just for free food and drinks. For meeting friends and families? To enquire about their health? No, Sir, it is mainly for gossiping, though nobody would admit that. What happens in parties, apart from boozing, gulping food and ogling at ladies. Men talk shop. Ladies take stock of the latest fashions. But all these are peripheral or secondary activities. Unsaid but known to all, it is gossip that gives life and cheer to any party.

In a party gossip starts about those who are absent from the party or those who are late comers or leave the party early. ‘ Don’t talk about yourself, it will be done when you leave, ‘ said Wilson Magner. In a party the excitement and gossip start together. And the next day both the husband and wife think alike. ‘ Office work be damned for an hour. So what if I postpone house hold chores.’ Both can’t wait to share with somebody the latest gossip heard the night before. That cannot be postponed because the liveliness of gossip would be lost if it is not hot. And then again in postponing the sharing of gossip you run into a chance of somebody else overtaking you in sharing the gossip with the person with whom you were to share the gossip. And while transmitting the gossip, rarely can anybody resist the temptation to add his own little bit, twist the gossip at the edges and give some colour to it. I must say that in this ladies are far ahead of men folk because women have the instinct to gossip and change the shape of the gossip. When one lady conveys the gossip to another the former is able to establish that the gossip is absolutely true but also in effortlessly making quantitative addition and qualitative twist to the gossip. While subconsciously some of the listeners of the gossip may doubt the veracity, the juicy aspect of gossip ensures that the subconscious mind goes to sleep or the person asks the subconscious mind to mind its own business and not to meddle with what he wants to believe.

No scientific studies have been made on gossip or any theories have been formulated on how gossip works. There is a reason for this. Unlike magnet, gravitation, electricity, etc., each gossip has its own momentum, changing shape in transmission and may have prolonged life or instantaneous death. How can then anybody make a general theory, not to talk of any precise mathematical evaluation. Andrew Mathews in his famous book ‘ Be happy’ had a page with caricatures of people talking in a party. In enters a couple and the husband tells the first person ( les us call him Shifty ) they meet ‘ I am fatso and this is my wife and we are an extremely happy couple.’ From Shifty the statement of the husband is transmitted from one to another in the party, with each person adding a twist to the statement. The last person who does not recognize the fatsos, conveys the gossip to them saying ‘ the wife of fatso has committed suicide because of fatso’s affair with his Secretary and fatso is in jail.’ I quoted this just to prove the fact that gossip has a momentum of its own, shedding some mass and gathering more colour on its journey, which no scientific formula will fit in or capture.

A small town is one where everybody knows whose cheque is good, and whose husband is not – so said somebody. The point is not whether it is truth or false. The essence is that gossip travels very fast and juicy gossip is one which has plenty of listeners.

I have a board in my dining room reading ‘ Gossip is welcome.’ Each one of my guests who reads the board would smile and tell me that he/she does not indulge in this harmless or horrible vice. The qualification attached go gossip would depend on whether one is straight faced liar or afflicted with amnesia. Further comment would be that someone / everyone else does / do, depending on whether the person is individualistic or sees the universe as a whole. Some go to the extent of telling me who all we know indulge in this age old practice ( without realizing that what he just did was also gossip ). Invariably within a few minutes I am the lucky recipient of some sweet gossip from the person who looked down at gossiping, some adding – perhaps thinking of the board – that what he/she has said is the absolute truth and nothing but the truth and not gossip.

It is not that only ordinary mortals like us practice this enjoyable habit, but even Presidents and Prime Ministers are at it. It is said that within five minutes of American President and British Prime Minister meeting in closed doors, they throw away the agenda notes and share the latest gossips they had heard about the French President . So also business tycoons, artists, barristers and tea shop boys. Of course nobody can beat journalists and cine stars in the high proficiency they have in this art of gossiping to which they add sufficient bitching to give the gossip a glow. Incidentally it is the cine stars and journalists who made gossiping a fine art. For example, a journalist would write that he saw the car of this famous actor parked outside the house of that equally notorious actress at two in the morning and then goes on to say that he met the actor next day morning and found him tired but with a glow in his face. Pure gossip and bitching, but at the same time not sufficient enough for any libel action against the writer. I think that this admirable talent of journalists made Mark Twain to say ‘ I became a newspaper man. I hated to do it, but I could not find honest employment.’

Gossip is the spice of life. Without it all of us will live unexcited, moody and with headaches. You don’t believe. Take a lady with a headache. The moment she hears a juicy gossip, presto, the headache vanishes. If the gossip is about her best friend then she becomes very cheerful and headache has no way of penetrating her head for another twenty four hours atleast. If pharmaceutical people knew this secret they will throw their hands in despair. Same is the story of politicians, babus, professionals and even criminals. You still don’t believe it. Try this. In the office the boss fires a professional. The professional goes back to his seat disenchanted. He phones a friend and starts gossiping about his boss. Phone conversation ends. The man’s spirit is back to normal. Morning paper. Who is bothered with the downward momentum of investment and economic growth. There is a scandal. All go through it avidly. The morning becomes cheerful. Suppose a TV channel telecasts gossip about a politician. Would anybody miss it. Everybody would lap it up. Nobody would disbelieve. The earlier tiredness is gone.

If you still don’t believe, I will give another chance. Page 3 of dailies now devote considerable space for gossip on the lovely and mighty. Would any lady miss it. No. And that would be the talking point when two ladies meet. At the same time she would just glance through stories about millions being affected by floods.

How does a gossip start. People share their problems with friends, and sometimes even with strangers. Stranger may sympathise and so also some of the friends. But some of the friends would be glad that you are getting it at last. Not that they are not good friends. Bust gossip has a way of twisting the level of friendship. They just don’t leave at that. It is a gold mine of information to be shared. With a certain glib mastery of verbiage, they share the gossip with mutual friends who are just as eager to hear. In a nutshell gossip is a powerful art. The masters at the game give substance to shadow and content to myth. With the right inflection of the tone, an emphasis here and there, with a look of being a conspirator at the appropriate time of passing on the gossip, always wondering whether it is true and sighing that this is happening to my best friend, the friend is sure to give solid base to the gossip.

‘ Gossip is good for office’ was the conclusion arrived at a conference held a few years back at the Warwick Business School, England. The consensus was that gossiping over lunch or a coffee break is one of the joys of office life. Gossip is a much undervalued communication system. Kathryn Waddington, senior lecturer at the South Bank University, London had stated some time back that ‘ Gossip is an important feature of organizational communication which is worthy of further recognition in terms of the development of theory and research.’ She said gossip had not been studied adequately because of the maliciousness with which it was often associated, but insisted that it had numerous beneficial effects, not least helping newcomers understand an organization’s culture and history. Gossip also played an important part within informal communication networks used in the creation of power bases. ‘ Knowledge is also a power base as it relates to the control of unique information and gossip plays an important role here,’ she said. She claimed that ‘ investigative gossip ‘ involved testing for truth and exploring hunches. ‘ It is a form of discourse occurring between a small group of people.’ It was also used as a way of eliciting information or knowledge about people, situations or organizations, and, as such could have an important positive influence, ‘ according to Kathryn.

So, you have to understand that it is not only that I am saying that gossip is good. The lady has come up with investigative gossip. I have not studied this angle, though the potential to do research on this angle is immense.

The only person who had taken a practical approach to gossip was the famous yester year cine artist Katherine Hepburn who said ‘ I don’t care what is written about me so long as it is not true.’

Obvious conclusion: Gossip will thrive.

While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact

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