Let us be honest with each other…women talk. Men do it too, to a lesser extent but women really talk. We see it as a public service not as a rumour generating device, especially as we preface every divulged titbit with 'seriously, I really shouldn't be telling you this but...' or 'I hate to gossip, but…' and my personal favourite 'Swear, I mean really swear, on your Chanel bag, no…on your Birkin bag you won't tell ANYONE else'. You then swear blind, deaf and dumb that rabid, slavering three-headed dogs with a bad case of personal hygiene would not drag this secret from you while mentally speed dialling your three best friends. In breathless tones the information is imparted, interspersed with exclamations of horror, disbelief and let's face it, delight - there is nothing more fulfilling than chai and a good gupshup.

The same juicy gossip is then saved for your next encounter with a sympathetic ear and a steaming latte and so on and so forth until gossip morphs gently into common knowledge. Then, when it is imparted to you after a couple of months, you can dismiss it with a wave of your immaculately manicured hand with a 'Darling, everybody knew about that ages ago, poorani kahani!' Serene in the knowledge that you heard it when it was as new and shiny as a D flawless Graff diamond and not a much smudged knock-off on Ebay.

Well that was the story…now thanks to the advent of text messaging, cell phones and worst of all, Blackberrys, gossip just isn't gossip anymore. Try meeting a girlfriend for a lazy ladies' lunch. Before you have finished your salad, your idle chat has been 'texted' to New York, London and Delhi and by the time you have ordered your cappuccino it is on a 'send to all' email with you being quoted as the source of all evil. It is one thing to pass on a bit of gupshup but something else altogether to be seen to be the originator of something slanderous. The knock on effect is being felt in lavishly upholstered salons from Kensington to Karachi. Without gossip, what are we supposed to talk about: the state of the economy? Politics? Or, God forbid, the state of our marriages? Who wants to chat about our very real lives when we can talk about Priya's best friend's sister's husband's predilection for cross-dressing? We don't care if it is true and we certainly have no intention of checking whether it is or not, we just want to seem more interesting to the person sitting opposite us.