THE COLOMBO GRAPEVINE
BY: THE COLOMBO AUNTY
Where everybody knows everything, nobody knows where they heard it, and the person discussing the skeletons in your cupboard may have an entire cemetery in their own.
There is something wonderfully optimistic about telling a secret in Colombo. You sit down with a trusted friend, lower your voice to that special register reserved for medical diagnoses, impending divorces and other people’s children, and say, “Please, darling, this must not go any further.” Your friend looks positively wounded. “Me? Of course not.” Absolutely confidential. Between us. Vault conditions. State secret. Not a word. You leave reassured, blissfully unaware that you may just have issued a press release with a twenty-four-hour embargo. Because your friend has a friend. That friend has another friend, who has a sister, whose husband went to school with your cousin, whose wife is having lunch on Tuesday with somebody who knows your family extremely well. By Wednesday afternoon, your confidential family matter has acquired background, analysis, motive, two completely invented details and, rather impressively, an eyewitness. By Friday, somebody who has never met you is correcting somebody who has. Welcome, darling, to the Colombo grapevine.
Information in this town does not travel neatly from A to B. It behaves more like spilled champagne at a crowded party, spreading rapidly, slipping under tables and somehow ending up somewhere nobody remembers pouring it. Perhaps there has been a family emergency, a medical scare, a marital problem, a financial difficulty or some private disagreement. Understandably, you need to talk, so you tell one close friend. Perhaps two. Then, on reflection, three. Your spouse tells somebody trusted. Your sister confides in her closest friend. Your cousin decides one other person really ought to know because, after all, she is “practically family.” Suddenly, the family secret has more authorised distributors than an international luxury brand. Then comes the delicious part: the hunt for the leak. Almost nobody begins with the inconvenient question, “How many people did we tell ourselves?” Good heavens, no. Suspicion immediately settles upon somebody the family already dislikes. “It must have been her. I never liked her.” Or “Definitely him. He has always been jealous of me.” Within hours, the alleged gossip is being gossiped about with precisely the recklessness for which the accused has just been condemned. We leak our own secrets and then declare war on the plumbing.
By this stage, discovering where the story actually came from is nearly impossible. Perhaps the accused person repeated it. Perhaps they did not. Perhaps they heard it from the fourth person, who heard it from the sixth, who heard it from someone who cannot remember whether they heard it at lunch, a wedding, a funeral or while waiting for the valet to bring the car. Eventually, “someone told me” undergoes its miraculous transformation into the most authoritative source known to Colombo society: “Everybody knows.”
Everybody knows he is having an affair. Everybody knows their marriage is finished. Everybody knows the business is collapsing. Everybody knows she has had something done to her face. But does everybody actually know, or have five supposedly independent sources simply been drinking from the same cup of coffee? Repetition has a marvellous way of putting on a blazer, straightening its tie and presenting itself as corroboration. “I heard it from several people,” somebody announces triumphantly, never considering that all several may have heard it from one person, who heard it from another person, who originally heard it from you.
Affairs, both existing and entirely imaginary, deserve their own wing in the Colombo Gossip Museum. There is always somebody with an almost professional interest in everybody else’s romantic arrangements. Who is seeing whom? Why were they having lunch? Why did she arrive separately? Why did he leave ten minutes later? Why were they both at the same hotel? Why were they both in Singapore in the same month? Coincidence is rarely allowed legal representation. Colombo possesses detectives who would make Scotland Yard feel terribly under resourced. A photograph is enlarged. A dinner is reconstructed. Seating arrangements are examined. Instagram follows are scrutinised. Someone remembers seeing them talking at a wedding eighteen months ago. Case closed. Most deliciously, the person conducting this moral investigation may themselves have enjoyed a romantic career requiring several volumes, an index and possibly an authorised biographer. The person with the most affairs can become Colombo’s greatest authority on everybody else’s alleged affairs, while the complicated spouse becomes the guardian of marital virtue. You almost have to admire the audacity. If I keep everybody staring through your bedroom window, perhaps nobody will notice what is happening behind my curtains.
This, darling, is where gossip becomes psychologically interesting. Looking outward is so much more comfortable than looking inward. Why examine our own marriage when somebody else’s can be dissected over lunch? Why question our own financial choices when we can speculate about how somebody else afforded their house? Why confront our disappointments when we can explain another person’s success as luck, family money, connections or something “very suspicious”? We become investigative journalists specialising in other people’s lives, except without editors, fact checkers or that terribly tiresome requirement called evidence.
Then, sweeping elegantly into the room, comes the green-eyed monster. Envy almost never introduces itself honestly. Nobody says, “His success bothers me because it makes me feel unsuccessful.” Good Lord, how vulgar. Envy has considerably better social skills. A man buys a beautiful house, and somebody remarks, “Well, the bank probably owns most of it.” A woman builds a successful business and immediately, “Darling, it’s all connections.” Somebody loses weight and there must be injections involved. Someone’s child gets into a wonderful university and suddenly the parents “know people.” A couple appear genuinely happy, and somebody smiles over the rim of a wine glass and says, “Give it time.” There is something strangely soothing about discovering that somebody else’s apparently wonderful life is not quite as wonderful as it looks.
If the necessary evidence cannot be located, the Colombo grapevine is occasionally willing to manufacture a little. Envy becomes particularly potent in a small social pond because comparison is personal. A billionaire in California buying his fifth yacht is unlikely to ruin your breakfast, but the fellow who sat behind you at school buying a better house can become a serious emotional event. You remember him. He borrowed your ruler. He failed chemistry. He was hopeless at cricket. How dare he now have a swimming pool? At moments like this, Colombo administers one of its great medicinal phrases: “He wasn’t even that clever at school.” Few sentences have provided such immediate relief to the bruised adult ego. When somebody we once considered our equal suddenly races ahead, we have two choices. We can revise our opinion of them or revise the explanation for their success. Connections, inheritance, marriage, politics, family money and suspicious business dealings are all considerably less painful than admitting that the irritating creature may simply have done rather well.
This feeds beautifully into Colombo’s big fish in a small pond syndrome. Spend enough time in London, New York or Paris and one eventually encounters the distressing discovery that millions of people have never heard of you and appear perfectly content with the arrangement. Colombo can be more reassuring. Our school, social, professional and family circles overlap so beautifully that status travels with you. “I know the Minister.” “I went to school with the Chairman.” “My cousin knows the Ambassador.” “We were invited to the wedding.” “I have his private number.” But perhaps the ultimate Colombo credential remains, “I know what really happened.” Information is social currency and possessing a delicious morsel that somebody else does not know makes one magnificently important for at least the duration of lunch.
Then somebody mentions politics, at which point the civilised lunch requires United Nations observers. Politics in Colombo is not always discussed so much as prosecuted. Two people can be happily talking about cricket, children and the dreadful traffic when one makes the fatal mistake of praising the wrong politician. Shoulders stiffen. Glasses descend onto tables. Voices rise. Suddenly, two people who have been friends for thirty years behave as though the survival of the republic depends upon one defeating the other before dessert. Strong political opinions are perfectly legitimate. The difficulty comes when we cannot accept that an intelligent, decent person may look at exactly the same country and reach a different conclusion. Disagreement becomes stupidity, then corruption, then disloyalty, then moral failure. If persuasion fails, character assassination is waiting outside with the engine running. This is when politics and gossip fall passionately into each other’s arms. If the argument cannot be won on policy, attack the person’s motives. “He only supports them because he got a contract.” “Her family has connections.” “You know what his brother did.” Within minutes, a conversation that began with taxation has arrived at somebody’s brother in law’s business dealings in 2007. Nobody remembers the original point, but everybody is having a marvellous time. Political rumour has another enormous advantage: it requires very little proof. “I heard it from somebody very close to them” is treated as accreditation worthy of Reuters. Who is this mysterious somebody? How close are they? Were they actually there? Did they witness anything? Please, darling, do not destroy an excellent story with administrative details.
The greatest absurdity is that political friendships often prove considerably less durable than political alliances. Two old friends may stop speaking over politicians who, six months later, are sitting happily together in a coalition, smiling for photographs and explaining that the national interest requires everyone to move forward. Governments change. Ministers change sides. Yesterday’s mortal enemies discover astonishing areas of common ground.
Meanwhile, Uncle Nalin and Uncle Rohan are still refusing to attend the same dinner because of what happened over the fish ambul thiyal last Christmas. One suspects the politicians themselves are sleeping perfectly well.
Hypocrisy, of course, is wonderfully democratic. We condemn nepotism while quietly telephoning somebody about our nephew’s job. We rage against corruption while searching desperately for “someone we know” who can speed things up. We denounce gossip while demanding every delicious detail. We adore free speech when holding the microphone and discover an extraordinary sensitivity to cruelty when somebody answers back. Gossip flourishes beautifully in this climate. It entertains, bonds, flatters the ego, feeds envy, establishes social rank and, most conveniently, keeps everybody’s attention away from our own cupboards. Once we dislike somebody, even the flimsiest rumour arrives gift wrapped as fact. “I always knew she was like that” is much more satisfying than asking the tiresome question, “Is it actually true?”
Yet privacy, inconveniently, begins with us. Tell six friends about a marriage, an illness, a financial problem or a family emergency and one cannot faint with astonishment when number seven knows. Betrayal is wrong, certainly, and confidence matters. Friends should be trustworthy. But sometimes the mysterious leak is rather closer to home than we would like to admit. Unfortunately, mirrors make dreadful villains. The great Colombo rumour machine, after all, is not powered by one malicious Aunty, one jealous friend, one bored retiree or one spectacularly indiscreet socialite. It is powered collectively. One person whispers, another interprets, a third supplies motive, a fourth improves the ending, a fifth forgets where it started and a sixth announces that everybody knows. Eventually, the story completes its grand tour of Colombo and arrives back in its original neighbourhood, considerably better dressed than when it left. Someone listens in horror, shakes their head and takes a thoughtful sip of their drink. “Honestly,” they say, “people in Colombo have absolutely nothing better to do than discuss other people’s private lives.” There is a solemn murmur of agreement, followed by a brief silence. Then the chair inches closer, the voice drops, the eyes brighten and the great machine starts all over again. “Darling, I absolutely hate gossip. But while we’re on the subject, have you heard what happened to...?”
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ABOUT THE WRITER
The Writer is a well-loved, magnificently seasoned Colombo Aunty, still sexy at sixty, and a socialite from before you were born. She tittle-tattled at the Hilton Colombo and danced at the two Blues: Elephant and Leopard. Keerthi photographed her long before Colombo discovered the camera and started screaming “HI!!,” and she watched Geraldine strut the catwalk before Elina was even conceived. She shopped at Odel when it was still on Dickman’s Road, sipped Moët at Chesa Swiss, dined at Koluu’s Frangipani, and occupied her rightful perch at both fashion weeks, Colombo and MBFW, of course, where the real fashion show was often in the front row. These days, she prances between Shang Palace and Gallery Café, armed with decades of Colombo anthropology, selective discretion, and an elephant’s memory. She does not gossip, darling. She simply remembers everything, connects the dots and, when absolutely necessary, provides historical context.
