When bot wrangler Sunita Williams lifts off from Cape Canaveral tonight on a six-month trip to the space station, she’s going to try and sneak aboard some good ole home cookin’, a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and The Life of Pi. A Goan restaurant in Cape Canaveral just filed this report:

… the crew of the next Space Shuttle mission, at the request of [Sunita Williams]… has decided to have their lunch before liftoff… at… “Taste of Goa” on Dec. 7. The restaurant is located in Cape Canaveral… just opposite the… United Space Alliance… Sunita has requested him to make some boneless tandoori chicken so that she can have it in space, along with with the chapatis and samosas and stash of imli chutney and hot sauce that she plans to take… [Link]

My father and I were talking about taking the Gita. One of my favorite books, which I think I will take, is called The Life of Pi. My father’s favorite book is [the] Odyssey, so I will also take that. If I can smuggle in some samosas then I will try to do that…

My dad and I would always be there sitting there together and he would bring his Gita and read it to me. As a child it did not confuse me. It gave me a greater understanding that the religious is sort of all the same thing…

My main job during the space shuttle would be doing the robotics. During the flight that takes me up there we will be doing a major power reconfiguration in the space…

I will cut [my hair before liftoff]… When stuff floats around in the space station it clogs up filters and gets in the way of cleanliness and the environment control system. [Link]

Williams is Gujarati-Yugoslavian-American, a surfeit of hyphenation:

She is the daughter of Deepak Pandya, an India-born physician who migrated to US in the 1960s and now works at a veterans hospital. Her mother Ursaline, a home-maker, is an American of Slavic descent… she described her father as a traditional Hindu and therefore a vegetarian. “My mother would cook two different meals each day one Indian and one meat and potatoes so I got to eat a little bit of both and a good variety. I still like spicier food…” [Link]

Sunita’s father went to school in Junasan village in north Gujarat and later in Ahmedabad. He completed his medical studies in Surat… [and] left for the US in 1960 for further study in neurology…

Pandya is closely related to the late Haren Pandya, Gujarat’s home minister, who was murdered three years ago. According to the extended Pandya family, the first visit by Sunita to Gujarat was for the thread ceremony of Haren Pandya. She visited India after the death of Kalpana Chawla in the Columbia spacecraft tragedy as part of an effort by the Chawla family and others to keep alive the memory of the first Indian-American astronaut. [Link]

I hear NASA’s been in the market for desi astronauts recently. Who better to pilot vehicles patched up with duct tape and baling wire than a subcontinental

Here’s my own personal Ganesh puja: NASA please. Kalpana was one smart cookie. Please bring this one home safely.