I’ve received today this email that has brought me old memories. It’s been sent by a girl I met in India many years ago and whom I haven’t seen for years. She writes from America where she now lives, and this is what she says:

“I was home last night, reading our local Directory of Gujarati people in Columbus. Together with names and data they print also some nice articles in it, and I was reading one of them. The name of the article was Sapaati priya (Fondness of surfaces).  When I was reading it, I felt some kind of familiarity, though I didn’t know that you had written that article.  The whole time I felt some connection.  At the end when I turned the page and saw the name of the writer of the article: ‘Father Vallés’. I told myself, no wonder, I knew, my heart felt it.  Isn't that something?  I had to let you know that.  It is 11:37 pm and I have to get up early for work tomorrow, I will talk to you later.
Love, Rupa.

A letter like that gladdens a writer’s heart. She recognises my style. She somehow connects not knowing why. Her heart knows. She discovers the name at the end. And she tells me. Blessed the day in which I wrote that article. The style is the man, say the French.

I myself had forgotten about that article. I have looked it up in an anthology of my Gujarati writings of twelve years ago from where someone in Columbus had taken it to reprint it without telling me any thing as is usually the case. “Fondness of surfaces.” I translate a paragraph.

“We are all superficial. We read a little, we understand a little, we know a little, we do a little. A little. Something has to be done, but the least of it the better. Nothing deep. Or, better, deep into the surface. No complaints. Here is the quotation, here is the date, here is the paper that says it. But nothing more. Superficial, trivial, frivolous. Never deep, serious, complete.

When we were beginning the second course of the paper on Statics and Dynamics in Madras University, which was a continuation of the previous year’s course, the teacher, Shri Narayanam, asked us: “What did you learn last year about this subject?” We answered him: “Something about everything.” He retorted: “I wish you knew everything about something.” The lesson stuck with me. More practical than the whole course on Statics and Dynamics we later learned. (Shri Narayanam was a great teacher.)

He who digs a little in many places will get no water. Experts on surfaces. No well.”

You’ve made me happy, Rupa.

A Muslim astronaut has for the first time reached the International Space Station, and his experience can help us to understand Muslims and to understand ourselves not only in scientific matters but in religious matters too. There were difficulties in the mission. A Muslim prays five times a day from sunrise to sunset, but the Space Station in orbit goes round the earth 16 times in 24 hours, that is 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets, which would make it 80 times for prayer in 24 hours. Prayer has to be said facing Mecca… from a space ship that changes position every minute. Before prayer the devotee has to wash with water their hands, arms, face, head, feet; and water is scarce in space. And then the postures and gestures in prayer turn out complicated in zero gravity. What to do then?

Muslim religious authorities had studied the case and had adapted the traditional rules to the special occasion. The five daily prayers will be computed according to the time at the Kazajstan launching station from which the space ship was launched; to face Mecca it will be enough to look towards the earth from the distance; the ablutions will consist in gestures only, without water, as it is done in the desert when one has to pray without water; and the prayers can be said standing.

What has favourably impressed me here is the readiness to adapt themselves to the circumstances. Flexibility is always a sign of vitality. A good example. Congratulations. Sheik Muszafar Shukor can go round the earth without fear. Allah will protect him.

By sheer coincidence the mission commander this time is a woman, Peggy Whitson. The Muslim astronaut obeys her orders. Flexibility again. Mission accomplished. Congratulations.