Gossip Guy

fashionscandal.com dedicated to dissecting socialites,their designer wardrobes,fashion weeks and sordid affairs in a shrill,patronising tone. Even though this sort of journalism fills me with horror,the random details on who’s-hooking-up-with-whom are extremely entertaining and it’s not surprising that this blog is currently the talk of Delhi.

Fashionscandal.com has a tacky layout,the grammar is haywire,but it’s blazing with malicious headlines and many of the juicy tidbits happen to be true. I worry for the anonymous blogger who seems determined to flout all the unwritten rules in the Indian media: we journalists try not to write about peoples’ personal lives (Bollywood aside) and there is a vague code of ethics regarding privacy. The scathing attacks on people’s marriages,business ventures and sex lives could land him in a difficult spot. After all,this is a city where people kill each other over parking and a politician’s son,less than a decade ago,got away with breaking his ex-wife’s boyfriend’s legs.

Some of the posts are brutally realistic comments on the Delhi elite. The one on Bangkok babies,for example,on how many rich Indians fly to Bangkok,and with an IVF procedure that costs approximately Rs. 6,50,000,ensure the birth of a male child. (Gender selection is legal in Thailand.) One would imagine this would be a huge secret strictly between the parents,never to be let out,but I’ve been part of dinner party conversations where people are openly exchanging Bangkok baby stories. The tragedy is that in the very crowd flaunting Birkin bags,ten carat diamonds and a Harvard business school degree,there’s sympathetic understanding on the need for a male child. A liberal viewpoint suggests that if we can use science to remove cancers,fix our noses and cellulite,why not to choose the sex of our child? The ethics of gender selection is a murky issue worldwide,in India it’s completely illegal,and so be it. In the spate of kidnappings that have occurred recently in Delhi-Gurgaon-Noida,not a single girl has been abducted: the kidnappers assume parents might not pay as much.

The thing with the Internet is anyone can start a blog,write absolutely anything and by the time you’ve lodged a cyber complaint with the police and the link is taken off,its already been posted to Facebook and Twitter where 10,000 people have read it. I suspect this could be the future of this site pretty soon. This is not the first website in India devoted to pursuing Delhi and Mumbai’s high profile lot. highheelconfidential.com and stylecandy.com do an admirable job with a focus on Bollywood wardrobes and gossip. fashionscandal.com is just more fun because everything becomes a lot more scandalous with proper nouns. The future of society journalism in India is on the net,where all you need is to be rich and wearing some designer labels to grab your fifteen minutes of fame.

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