When two people meet, they look for an appropriate signal of recognition and appreciation. They shake hands, they embrace, kiss each other on the cheek, hail each other loudly with arms raised, or silently with folded palms.

Most forms of greeting to permit people to touch one another. The more contact there is, the clearer it is that their greeting is no longer just a symbol of pleasure and affection, but already an experience of encounter and an expression of relationship.

We Indians greet each other with palms pressed together in front of our chest. Do we not touch, then? Indeed we do, for the contact of our gazes is already ‘touching’.

A ray passes between the eyes which, like an electric current or a magnetic attraction, connect the two like light. This creates the moment of touch.