``Basu - of Star - may be out to…''

``Did you hear the latest on the Internet…?''

That's male gossip… er… talk. Cocktail category. The more respectable variety.

The evening of the day after the Delhi High Court decided to allow the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to go ahead and encash bank guarantee of four telecom operators, the whiskies were laced with prattle about the incompetence of DoT. And the sodas bubbled with theses about how this would cash-strap the Tatas, and how - and through who - the Reliance people would block their own impending encashment.

It wasn't gossip. Oh no. That can't be. These are men of business. Their discourses on the impossibility of the new telecom policy announcement by the march 31 deadline, even when these met up with the reality of a policy declaration well before then, remained considered ``discussion.'' It had never been based on gossip. Men - because all men are men of business - don't gossip.

The women in their lives - wives, friends and daughters - gossiped over the hors d'oeuvres. About bargains, price rise, crime, traffic, the weather, electricity breakdowns, work and tiredness….

At workplaces, they say, ``Have you heard about …?'' Unabashed, loud, often aggressive. Appointments have been held up, broken or made on this.

But women whisper the same. Appointments have been help up, broken or made on this. Unfairly…

Whisper campaigns are so unfair, always unfair gossip. When the learned author said that a certain female journalist was sleeping with a certain male editor, it wasn't gossip, because he was discussing the state of journalism today.

Unfortunately, when the young woman reporter said to her editor that the police were investigating allegations of paedophilia against a certain politician, she failed in delivery. Intense, anxious that she would not be taken seriously, it naturally followed that the editor brushed her off with an admonition not to listen to or repeat gossip.

Illustration by Amitabh

Never mind that he later checked on the truth - and proof- of the matter with the police himself.

The young man's salacious account of a murder victim's past sexual experiences was dignified by getting reporter's space in the newspaper, and that on the front page! As a male, he didn't even think he was gossiping…and that publicly.

But, of course, the more public the prattle, the less is it gossip.

The young society columnist cringed from ``reporting'' sexual peccadilloes, but frankly repeated the chatter of the stars - the rich, the powerful, the beautiful.

Then, of course, there's the ultimate gossip - who's going to whose tea party, who's paying off whom, and who's allying with or corralling whom?

Suchita Vemuri is with Womens Feature Service

Women are congenital gossips. It's part of their genetic make-up, there can be no other explanation for it. Yes, I agree that we men do also have the tendency to go about gossiping, but that does not absorb our life and our time.

It's not that I complain against gossiping, per se. It serves a purpose, an exchange of information. We men usually tend to discuss a lot of stuff, women accuse us of indulging in male bonding.

Actually, when it comes to men and women gossiping, there is only one item that is common between them. And that is? Talking about women. We men talk about women all the time, discuss various aspects of the ``personality'', making a critical assessment of those that interest us in particular.

Women also discuss other women, but their prime purpose is to bitch, bitch, and bitch just a little more. What is really boring are the other issues they waste their time on, whispering about, giggling and going nudge-nudge. Like clothes, cosmetics, coiffure, sales, things like that.

We men like to talk about the office and our careers, and when we do bitch, it is generally about the boss or an irritating colleague, who is usually the one who is our main competitor for that next promotion. I call that constructive bitching.

Illustration by Amitabh

If you have noticed, men and women rarely gossip across the sexual divide. If they do, I have not been part of such a session. I guess the main reason for this is that each would find the topic of the other's discourse extremely boring. Men would find the women mean and tawdry, women would find the men discussing stuff that's just too mundane.

As I pointed out in the beginning, the worst part is women cannot be expected to keep your secrets secret. If you do confide about stuff that could embarrass you, you may as well bring out an advertisement in a national daily giving details on the same subject. I rest my case.

Sanjay Jain is a public relations consultant

Send us your BuZZ