Gossip Grannies

The seat cracked as if a heavy body had lowered itself upon it. The protagonist whose posterior had been responsible for the embarrassingly audible event, belongs to the category of toothless grannies whose jaws go smack-smack while relating, what seems to them, juicy and delectable stories of people who are unfortunately acquainted to them. A true gossip granny is always inclined to make a good story out of everything and the truest of them all had just made herself comfortable on a couch near our front door.
What followed was a sheer torrent of ‘Do you remembers’ and ‘That reminds mes’ followed by the customary reference to my increased or decreased bulk. She’d go ‘hiss hiss!’ at the curious inability of her immediate circle to appreciate the value of being able to report succulent and eyebrow-raising developments in the lives of the unfortunate.
“Whose marriage is on the rocks? Whose kid failed in the exams for the fifth time in a row? Who poses a serious threat to the harmony of the locality?” It would be a rarity if such questions would go unanswered by the end of her visit. Gossip granny has always tended to wake the fiend that sleeps in me. All the endless jib-jabbing makes me feel loony to the spleen and increasingly taxes my powers of endurance. Loud vocal deliveries through part-falling dentures about her oh-so-perfect grandchildren leave me convulsing in a corner of the room.
Serving refreshments is a far more daunting task. At first, she’ll click her tongue irritably for having interrupted her when she was on the verge of making a profoundly vital revelation. This would be followed by stinging complaints about how hot the tea was (the saccharine content of which was a diabolic scheme against the diabetic) and how the chocolate chips in the cookies stubbornly stuck to her dentures and refused to budge despite heroic efforts of her overworked tongue.
Some people would rather have an epileptic seizure than entertain a gossip granny. Gossip after gossip, she’d take refreshing draughts at the fountain of pleasure after she had thrown a bomb of a story and seen it explode. Right when you think she has run out of news, she’ll surprise you with a piece of information more shocking and more alarming than the ones related so far. The stories are well-sequenced with the best saved for last! Gossip granny delivers all these equipped with a finely honed, well-sharpened set of demeaning vocabulary tools while I sit quivering in my slippers.
After hours of painful waiting, it finally comes like a spring in the desert! – the moment she pulls herself up the couch and inches doorwards! It is an infinitely relieving feeling – a balm to the tortured spirit.
“Frightful!”, exclaimed my friend as I related the experience to her.
“Dreadful!”, I assented.
“Terrible!’, she suggested.
“Most!”, I agreed as I left. It wasn’t a very good exit speech but I’m a girl of too impatient spirit to find solace in an unending war of synonyms.