I was born to a diplomat father and writer/translator Mother, the former Indian and the latter a Czechoslovak in 1950 at Alexandria, Egypt.At a very young age I was ushered into the rarified atmosphere of spirituality - as distinguished from religiosity. We were later to live in areas with a large or dominant Islamic culture, like Sudan, Tanganyika and Madagascar. I have played in the desert, sifted the sand through my fingers and have heard the five calls for prayer. It is important to understand the milieu in which a body of thought originated. Tribal Arabia - in a broad sense- was, like all such rural areas, largely untutored and commanding only a basic linguistic skill, enough to transact daily business but not to express high and lofty ideas. Thus, like all reformers, Nabi was also looking for a HCF- matters that would be understood by his brethren. The bell-like clarity of the phrases in the Holy Quran attest to a larger readership, not an arcane one like the Talmud or Vedas.