Gossip

Gossip is all around us today. Its more abundant than the air we breathe. It is created in seconds and , and it requires little or no reason to be spread. And as it moves on from vendor to vendor, the information receives more and more exaggeration ( or animation as I prefer to call it ), the characters become more colorful and the incidents more fictional. And at the end of the day, you have a story so exciting that it would put the plot of a Jeffery Archer novel to shame.
For today's teenagers, gossiping comes as a reflex. Most of us understand that its a bad habit and that it can result in co-lateral damage, but yet we immerse ourselves into the vicious cycle that it in turn creates. So you weave a fresh spell of gossip, you share it with your best friend, your “ Chaddi Buddy “, the one person in the world who is the keeper of all your little secrets , the one who wouldn't let you down even if someone put a gun in his mouth, at least that’s what you think. But even before you know it that supposedly loyal friend has already passed it on to his other “Chaddi Buddy”, who in turn swears secrecy on his parents, the God he worships and his new beige Labrador pup called “Scruffy”. So inevitably the message spreads faster than an epidemic. The results are devastating. You damage many reputations, you offend people, you make enemies. Your friends who once patted you on the back to comfort you, will now fear that you might just stab theirs.
But shockingly gossip is actually the seed of " Language" . Many anthropologists believe that language evolved because gossip is a more efficient version of the " social grooming "essential for animals to live in groups. Apes and other creatures solidify their social bonds by cleaning and stroking one another, but the size of the group is limited because there’s not enough time in the day to groom a large number of animals. Speech enabled humans to bond with lots of people while going about their hunting and gathering. Instead of spending hours un tangling hair, they could bond with friendly conversation (“Your hair looks so unmated today!”) or by picking apart someone else’s behavior (“Yeah, he was supposed to share the wildebeest, but I heard he kept both haunches”).
So mind your own business, love all and speak ill of no one. Yes I know I sound like your teacher from third standard, who also happened to gossip a lot. But the no one is perfect and life is all about getting there.

by,
Akash KJ