Very well written. Interesting and amusing piece of writing. Good command over language and clever use of phrases and vocabulary. :k:
Here’s to wossip
by
Rabail Qadeer baig
When people talk of other people behind their backs, they gossip. However, when women act like petty tattle tales and grill others when they’re not around, they wossip. Wossiping is not a new concept, especially for those who have contributed a great deal to it. Let us admit it; we women can’t even comb our hair without gossiping, or at least thinking about it. The gossip-chip is an integral intellectual component and is apparently mounted on the very conscience of not most but all women parallel to their existence. Women are no doubt the goddesses of rumours, scandals and bad-mouthing, but with all due respect, for even wossiping in an art that requires a lot of determination, confidence and expertise.
In day-to-day lingo, the word ‘gossip’ refers to the act of spreading news from person to person, especially rumours or private information. Gossip forms one of the oldest (and still) the most common means of spreading and sharing information; it also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and other variations into the not-so-shareable information thus transmitted. While gossip is hearing something you like about someone you don’t, a wossip could be anything from a very casual chitchat or a light informal conversation for social occasions to something as holocaustic as dishing the dirt, wagging one’s tongue, speaking bitterly about others and revealing secrets or intimacies – false secrets or intimacies. And this is where it gets lethal and dirty.
Gossip has historically been associated with redundant housewives who mastered the art of “knitting and nitpicking”, not forgetting the certain women-like-men who also indulge in it. However, to be associated with gossip today, all you have to do is be a woman, or at least dress like one. Today, those who want to indulge in a mouth-to-mouth ‘recitation’, and want to see facial expressions, have invented the infamous ladies’ kitty parties – where everything from who is who to who’s who is discussed with major emphasis on the third, fourth and fifth women, household irritants, servants, maids, maid’s servants, shopping and clothes, cooking recipes, and of course the men are attached as an “appendix” to all of the above.
The years that a woman subtracts from her age are not lost; they are added to the ages of other women. Legendary nosy parkers include the barely 52-year-old ‘girl’ next door, the second oldest of mom’s innumerable siblings, the matchmaker from hell who drops by for a cup of tea and everything else in the fridge every Friday evening, and yes, the rumour and scandalmonger at work who’s been working for the firm only a couple of years but knows the deep dark prehistoric secrets to just about any normal co-worker (read paranormal, in case you buy what she tells you) and who extremely irresponsibly steals time (a lot of time) from work to enrich and fill the ears of those who are too polite to say no.
That an empty mind, or a non-existent one for that matter, is a devil’s workshop is a concept very typical and old-fashioned. The biggest bad mouths in history or at present have proved to be those who not only have their heads filled to the top, but have them filled with only God knows what. One admits sharing juicy titbits with a close buddy once in a while, but giving wings to would-be secrets, or fuelling silent ambers and anguishes with clear perceptible winds is no less than a crime, unless the object of abhorrence is the hot bombshell who joined in last week. Who can look so plastic perfect 9 o’clock in the morning? She definitely has something going on. And then there is her, who’s head over heels over common sense in love with him. I mean come on, he’s married and old and extremely incapable… and the idle speculation continues. As George Eliot once said, “Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.”
The situation is grim, for wossip mostly starts as a secret to be told to one person, and from thereon it flies, and like they say, ‘the story runs on wheels and every hand it passes, oils it.’ It is mostly associated with malicious content and intent, meant to give cheap thrill in seeing someone else belittled or relatively lowered in esteem.
But like every mills and boon novel and every Bollywood movie, wossip too has its positive side and a happy ending. The greatest thing about a rumour or message in the garb of wossip is its access and penetration, for it is within everyone’s reach. It is undoubtedly the most interesting form of speech and greatly relieves the load off the women’s chests.
Therefore, there is no need for a spontaneous knee-jerk reaction. Fighting wossip could be counter-productive so feel free to join in and have a bit of fun. It is a fact that one tends to believe gossip more than the office memo and if wisely handled, this mouth-to-mouth link could do wonders. In the words of Elizabeth Drew, “The inspired scribbler always has the gift for gossip in our common usage… he or she can always inspire the commonplace with an uncommon flavour, and transform trivialities by some original grace or sympathy or humour or affection.” But do remember, as long as we keep it all in good humour and try and not harm the other as much as we might like to, gossip could actually be quite pleasurable. To you at least