Amish Tripathi

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 see a sense of unity in the universe. Spirituality is not limited to only one religion. One can experience it across different religions. I am fascinated by philosophy of Advaita and philosophy of unity. We have to get over the illusion that God is different from us.

Many of Judy Blume's books - which I devoured when I was growing up and where I found characters that were believable because they were a lot like me - caused considerable consternation when they were first published, but now they're widely accepted as an essential part of the children's literary canon.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.