I'm the most communal person that exists and a very solitary person. So I think writing is a form of getting to the community and being alone, and it's the best of both possible worlds.
Because we are communal creatures, if you're with people who think you're smart, you're smart, and if they think you're dumb, you're dumb.
The thing with me is, I'm both untidy and I hate mess. But I'm not untidy in communal spaces, like living rooms. My bedroom is havoc.
My parents were no ordinary people. My mother turned Gandhian, and my father was a staunch communist. They named me after the great saint as a symbol of communal harmony.
Ever since Modi became prime minister, he has given a free rein to his ministers and BJP functionaries to create an environment of communal tension and violence.
Our collective memories are welcoming places, and one image, that of Jesus, has absorbed and appropriated elements of other traditions and aspirations in order to shape our communal remembering.
Music is a very communal thing, and it's been cool to see how different cultures have resonated with our music. It's been an amazing process.
I turned atheist in the '90s when India went through troubled times - communal riots, bomb blasts... Mumbai, where I live, was badly affected. I blamed religion; also, extremists on both sides - right and left.
I was always the classroom clown, and the teachers allowed me a certain latitude. The assemblies were good, and the headmaster used to tell little stories; I loved the idea of communal storytelling.
The ritual of film-going in some sense replaced that of churchgoing, because you share something communal, sometimes mystical.
I think I used to do everything and then people had a problem with that within the band, so we're doing more of a communal thing.
I had a somewhat religious upbringing. Not strict, but it was there, and I'm kind of thankful for that. If you grow up just watching MTV, that's its own form of religion, and it's not even based on happiness or communal responsibility. I mean, try to construct a worldview out of that.
Too many of the elderly do not have the family or the communal attachments necessary to feel valued; too many are widowed or otherwise alone; too many live in surroundings where they are essentially without the companionship necessary to stimulate a mind in danger of deteriorating.
There's no need to let your family know the details of what you throw out or donate. You can leave communal spaces to the end. The first step is to confront your own stuff.
Where I would fault President Bush the most was that, in the wake of 9/11, he motivated our military, but he didn't call the nation into a state of war. And he didn't explain that this would take though a communal effort against common foe.
There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.
