I will come back to India - so deal with it.

My children are English, and both of their mothers were English.

If my child had prejudice in his head, I'd be ashamed. I would see it as my failure as a parent.

It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all, to feel.

I am on Facebook, but mainly as a way to spy on my children. I find out more about them from their Facebook pages than from what they tell me.

What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air.... It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it.... Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.

Everest silences you...when you come down, nothing seems worth saying, nothing at all. You find the nothingness wrapping you up, like a sound. Non-being. You can't keep it up, of course. the world rushes in soon enough. What shuts you up is, I think, the sight you've had of perfection: why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences? It feels like a betrayal of what you've been through. But it fades; you accept that certain compromises, closures, are required if you're to continue.