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There is a huge sense of loneliness as people leave villages and move to cities. It's hard to find that human connection as you move away from where you started.

I never really had any close friends in India, and I felt a terrible loneliness and isolation for many years. Westernized Indians don't like my books and I tend not to like westernized Indians - so we're quits.

I probably like being isolated more than many people do, but I'm lucky to have the friendship of many fine people, and they keep me from becoming very isolated. The world of my mind is certainly a populated and warm place, too. It's difficult for me to become too isolated with such resources.

We live in an inter-dependent world. An isolated India is not in our interest.

I live in a village where people still care about each other, largely.

Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units.

I was raised by the Indian community, and those families are still very close to us. We used to go to each others' houses one Sunday a month, so we got to know everyone well. Also, we love Indian food and can't get enough of it.

Above all, we must avoid the pitfalls of tribalism. If we are divided among ourselves on tribal lines, we open our doors to foreign intervention and its potentially harmful consequences.

In the larger world, tribalism is an enormous problem, as it ever has been: both strength and idiocy borne from belonging.

There is a crisis that is not political - an epidemic of loneliness, of sadness - and we're completely unequal to dealing with it.