Privacy and respect.

When will we Indians understand that other people’s medical, sexual, financial, legal, or relationship problems are strictly off-limits as discussion subjects, especially when those people have entrusted you with the said information in trust and have forbidden you to share it?

We seem to think nothing of speaking openly about it to family (because after all, they are family and who else will you turn to?), friends (because how can anyone be a friend if you keep secrets from them?), and sometimes even complete strangers (because they looked like good people from a good family) both, voluntarily and when asked (which is another trait we have: we aren’t awkward or embarrassed to ask someone personal, or even intimate, questions about them or someone they know).

What gets my goat is when you speak to someone you trust about your problems and tell them specifically to keep the subject matter discussed away from a particular person, and then they go and tell it to that very person because, ‘they kept asking’.

Aaaaargh! What part of ‘please do not tell this to that specific person’ do you not understand?

P.S: I don’t enter a closed room my daughter is in until I hear her give permission, nor do I access her email account without her consent, nor open packages addressed to her (even when it is I who has ordered them), nor go through her cupboards or drawers without asking her, nor even give her a bear hug unless she agrees (I love giving bear hugs though). And she’s 7. I am going to be 50 this year. If we can get it at both ends of our ages, why can’t most Indians? What is wrong with people?