Is it necessary to tell tittle-tattle tales, to gossip? Well, I have always thought of it as being absolutely beneath me. I try my level best never to indulge in such time-consuming, and more than that, mind-corrupting activities. They are fruitless, and take away your focus, is what I feel.
Well, I have been brought up the same way. My mother never joined neighbouring aunties "chit-chatting" for hours on end. Actually, my parents faced terrible difficulties in the first few years of their marriage due to tremendous injustice by the immediate family. Never ever did I hear either of my parents speak a single bad word against such hard harshness. May be, hence I find gossiping plain boring.
As a result, at times, one is absolutely unaware of happenings and incidences around. Let me give you an example or two. During my Ph.D. years, I was asked to conduct a few lectures on Vocabulary Formation by a prominent "math" with its own institute of language learning.
Accordingly, I used to go there for teaching vocabulary once a week. In the university hostel, at that time, a Kashmiri Muslim guy with all possible bad habits and worse friends, it seems, impregnated a girl from Tamilnadu. She was a polio patient, needed clutches. At times, one helped her climb up steps out of sheer empathy. That is all.
I was absolutely unaware of all such developments. Well, I was busy with the huge Ph.D. studies, and learning German in the morning and Spanish in the evening. Twenty-four hours seemed as if vanishing like a wisp, and I adored that feel.
Well, once before my teaching was to begin, I was asked about 'happenings in your hostel'. Most honestly, I said , "all is well". So I was asked about the incident directly. I was amazed because I genuinely did not know a word. "Do you stay in the same hostel?", I was asked cattily.
Well, the problem with not gossiping is that you are absolutely unaware of the politicking around by the mafia gangs, eh, yup, "groups" on campuses which overflow with them. Neither party considers you their insider. So you lose on plum appointments. Similarly, suppose, your Ph.D. theme and your genuine, sincere hard work is "shared", you never know till it is very late!
Personally, I feel such damages can always be overcome. One is resilient enough. But it is disgusting to listen to sick talk that sucks! What is the use of your degrees, your reading of heaps of literature and criticism if your mentality is no different from the notorious "washerman" from the Ramayana or from women fighting over tap water?
As a result, even when newspaper headlines holler about something that happened in the institute where you teach, you do not know even the ABCD of that entire affair. Well, you go there, you teach, you visit the library, you take up student-related activities, perform them real well, and you are home!
Well, it may appear 'naive' to many! Better to be that way. Anyways, such incidents are always 'managed' by powers that be. In the incident above about the Muslim guy impregnating the polio-stricken girl, there was a lot of feminist 'theater' (in all possible senses of the term) which I witnessed from real close 'angles' once i knew the context. Well, very soon all was quiet on that front, and gangs moved on to find out new victims! Sad and sick!
Pratima@ Well, better to lead life in such a way that you can happily sell the family parrot to the worst town gossip!
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