I thought nosiness was an affliction peculiar to Pakistanis. But it seems more widespread. I asked the writer, Manil Suri, if Indian journalists ever subjected him to delicate probes about the size of his advance from publishers. No, he replied. They just ask me outright: tau aap ko kitnay paisay millay? Another Indian friend told me that the most personal of questions from desis are inevitably prefaced with, Don’t mind my asking, but...He has learnt to interject with: “I probably will mind so please don’t ask.”

A recent reading of Xiaolou Guos tender, funny novel, A Concise English Dictionary for Lovers, confirmed my suspicion that the Chinese are also not big on privacy. When the Chinese heroine, Zhuang, reads her English lover’s diary, he is outraged and accuses her of invading his privacy. Zhuang is baffled by his anger. “But why people need privacy?” she wonders. “Why privacy is important?” In China, every family lives together, grand-parents, parents, daughter, son and their relatives too. Eat together and share everything, talk about everything. Privacy makes people lonely.”

Privacy, I suspect is a western construct. In the sub continent it is equated with secrecy and so an individuals desire for privacy is met with suspicion (Why he wants privacy, haan? Must be hiding something). And if you tell people to mind their own business you are thought insufferably rude, as if you were transgressing the norms of polite behaviour. I have reflected long on why this should be and I have come to the conclusion that it must be related to overcrowding. If you live on top of each other, as we and the Chinese do, how much privacy can you give or receive? Or as my husband put it ever so delicately: If you have to defecate in public, privacy can’t be a priority. So privacy then, is a function of prosperity. And so it should follow that as your income goes up, so should your regard for privacy. Hence the yuppies who live with their nuclear families in gated communities in pockets of affluence in Bangalore and Islamabad keep the world at arms length. And perhaps it is my western education and comfortable lifestyle I have to blame for thinking it a dreadful intrusion when I am interrogated about my personal life by strangers in planes. Though I don’t mind in the least if I should just happen to overhear someone else’s interrogation. Listening, I tell myself, is a writer’s duty.

Respect for other people’s space doesn’t come naturally to us desis. It is a sensibility we have to learn, like a second language. Try as we might, we find it difficult to stifle our curiosity about others. We may learn not to blurt out questions but we can never quite overcome our desire to know. Our problem is that we are dreadfully interested. In everything and everybody. The more personal, the more visceral, the better. It is our meat and drink. Whenever I hear someone say they are going to hospital, I have to bite my tongue to stop myself asking. What for? What Swedes may call gossip is our chitchat. What they may see as unbearable nosiness is our healthy interest. We like to talk, to engage, to ask and if we tread on a few bunions in the process, then sorry, don’t mind uh?

This leads me to think it can’t just be a function of wealth. After all there isn’t that much difference in the standard of life of the northern Italian and the said Swede but while the former is loud, loquacious and all too public, the former is quiet, phlegmatic and all too private. So perhaps there is a cultural component to this issue as well. Perhaps, it isn’t our fault that we can’t stifle our curiousity. Perhaps, we are wired differently. Perhaps, we are like this only.