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If you say city to people, people have no problem thinking of the city as rife with problematic, screwed-up people, but if you say suburbs - and I'm not the first person to say this, it's been said over and over again in literature - there's a sense of normalcy.

Cities produce love and yet feel none. A strange thing when you think about it, but perhaps fitting. Cities need that love more than most of us care to imagine. Cities, after all, for all their massiveness, all their there-ness, are acutely vulnerable.

Rural towns aren't always idyllic. It's easy to feel trapped and be aware of social hypocrisy.

I just think cities are unnatural, basically. I know there are people who live happily in them, and I have cities that I love, too. But it's a disaster that we have moved so far from nature.

I think there are people who really love the comfort of their small town, and there are people who feel stuck by it.

This urbanization that's taking place around the world is very real. But if it's people that are seeking an urbanized environment out of desperation, that's not going to be helpful long term.

I've always been sort of interested in the rural countryside. Things happen out there that are very strange to city dwellers.

I feel like, big city or small town, you can relate to following your parents' footsteps or putting your own dreams on the back burner or vices that we get caught up in - that whole cycle. That's not just a small-town thing. That's a life thing.

A lot of those ideal towns are all starting to look the same, the specifics are starting to disappear. So we need to retain a love for life, a love for one's family, a love for where one's really from.

As the years passed in my village, I witnessed poorly educated young men leaving to seek the greater comforts and liberations of big cities. I would see them on my visits to Delhi.