One evening, it dawned on me how much Iâu00c2u0080u00c2u0088missed my alone-ness. Pic/Thinkstock

The holy quivering of violins surrounds me (thanks to John Tavener) as I compose my thoughts so that they can be assembled into something coherent, so I can make sense of all the delicious madness echoing inside my head. I have begun working on my second book. I know this now for sure. I've titled it 'The Miracle of the Loaves and the Fish', since it is, at heart, a book about the generosity behind the act of feeding. It is also, I learned a few days ago, an epistle to my best frie­nd, Mona, and concerns itself with the subject of ecstasy: spiritual food. I have been researching the lives of certain saints, the euphoria of specific poets and writers, and other manifestations of rapture, however mythic or presumably real, for instance, alleged rumours about how when Annapurna Devi, who played the surbahar and the sitar (but rarely ever to an audience), performed her daily riyaz, the air in her home would be redolent with the scent of sandalwood, as if she was a conjurer of sorts.