Skip to main content

Gossip

 


I’m halfway through K R Meera’s Malayalam novel, Ghathakan (Killer). The narrator-protagonist compares life to an onion with endless peels. “The onion’s politics is to toss acid to your eyes. Its ideology is the burning sensation in the eyes. Our tears are its message.” As I read the theme of the latest Indispire Edition, #gossip, the onion’s politics rushed to my mind. Gossip is more like an onion than life is. You can peel it endlessly. You can feel its acid in your heart. Its scalds carry intoxicating delights.

Quite a lot of the informal human communication – conversations, in simple words – is little more than gossip. Essentially there is nothing wrong in that. People love to talk about their colleagues at workplace, other relatives when they meet at family functions, or neighbours when they are in the home-premises. That’s quite natural, I guess. Life is after all a series of tightrope walks between you and another human being associated with you. It’s only natural that we check the quality of each rope every now and then.

I like to listen to gossips. They are sources of infinite grassroots wisdom. If there were no gossips, I would have imagined life as a sublime process engaged in by noble people who leave behind adorable footprints on the sands of time. I would be the only exception, a scarecrow-like figure, standing on the edge of the infinite sands feeling so unworthy to step on to the sands. Thanks to all the gossips, I understand that the other people too have their weaknesses.

As a young man, I used to think just the other way. I was puffed up with egotism. I used to think that I was some great personality, if not an avatar of god Vishnu or some other deity. Whenever I took the pen, I imagined colours dancing in the readers’ hearts. Rhetoric was my weapon. I mistook culture for sartorial elegance.

But the peels of the onion had to fall some day or the other. That’s a natural law. Onions shed their peels as naturally as trees shed dead leaves. Other people assist generously in the process too. That is where gossip becomes the eternal truth, the real Messiah, the perfect redeemer. Gossips bring truths home. Ugly truths. But they look so adorable when they are about other people. Either way, gossips are good. They entertain as well as inspire.

 

Comments

  1. Pradeep NairMay 16, 2022 at 12:34 PM

    I agree with you. Gossip is a part of human interactions. Like you rightly said, they entertain and make out lives easier.
    If serious talk is at one end of the scale, then gossip is at the other end.
    The only problem is, many people don't see gossip as gossip. They mistake it to be serious talk!
    Now there is no dearth of gossip. There is plenty of that on social media.
    (My latest post: Online games and the idea of beauty)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 16, 2022 at 7:09 PM

      What would the average person do without gossip? His mind would die of starvation. Gossip keeps mediocre imagination alive.

      As you point out, the social media is the best example. Truth dies a million deaths every moment there. Your intellect bows out. And rhetoric reigns supreme. Long live the king of rhetoric!

      Delete
  2. Yamini MacLeanMay 16, 2022 at 5:48 PM

    Hari OM
    As Pradeep points out, gossip has, perhaps, taken over where more thoughtful discussion ought to take place. I have an aversion to 'gossip' yet it is impossible to escape it entirely. You say it can bring home truths about oneself... but I contest this, for gossip is the talks we have about those not present. It is the comparing and judging of another's personality or life in their absence. Whether or not it contains truths is highly debatable. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 16, 2022 at 7:14 PM

      I love gossip but never indulge in it because i don't talk to people 😅 I listen.
      To words that kill people's character.
      To imaginative re-creations of truths and lies.
      To pious sentiments that masquerade toxic motives.
      To the jingoism behind holy verses....

      Well, I see truths - not hear, when I hear gossips.

      Delete
  3. AnonymousMay 16, 2022 at 10:37 PM

    Very clear! Thanks a lot for peeling off the truth about gossiping!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sujatha SathyaJune 5, 2022 at 6:55 PM

    good or bad, the moral high ground aside, gossip is something we all do or have done. in varying degrees or at different points in time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 5, 2022 at 7:33 PM

      That's true. Anyway i wasn't too serious when i wrote this post.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 3

Street leading to St Francis Church, Fort Kochi There were Christians in Kerala long before the Brahmins, who came to be known as Namboothiris, landed in the state from North India some time after 6 th century CE. Tradition has it that Thomas, disciple of Jesus, brought Christianity to Kerala in the first century. That is quite possible, given the trade relationships that Kerala had with the Roman Empire in those days. Pliny the Elder, Roman author, chastised in his encyclopaedic work, Natural History (published around 77 CE), the Romans’ greed for pepper from India. He was displeased with his country spending “no less than fifty million sesterces” on a commodity which had no value other than its “certain pungency.” Did Thomas sail on one of the many ships that came to Kerala to purchase “pungency”? Possible.   Even if Thomas did not come, the advent of Christianity in Kerala precedes the arrival of the Namboothiris. The Persians established trade links with Kerala in 4 ...
10 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...
10 comments
Read more

Five Microtales

1.        Development             Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and many others stood at a distance, along with their families, and watched their huts being pulled down by a bulldozer. They were asked to leave the place where they had been living for decades. “The government has taken over this land for development works,” an officer said. Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and the others spread their bedsheets under a flyover over which flew opulent vehicles of development.   2.        Impersonation             The old woman went to the Women’s Welfare office. She wanted to register herself for the Prime Minister’s monthly welfare scheme for the old and unemployable women. She placed her thumb on the scanner for Aadhar authentication. “Not matching,” the officer said. She was arrested for trying to impersonate. Sitti...
8 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
7 comments
Read more