“Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most … human.”

As a lifelong Trekkie, I was of course shaken to the core by the news of Leonard Nimoy’s death.

Spock was always my way into the science-fiction fantasia of “Star Trek,” the character I looked up to, the one I cheered on, although I’ve never been a hardcore math geek or even particularly interested in science. I am also completely smitten with the young James T. naturally, but it was Spock who elevated the show from mere entertainment to something far more lasting.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t know how to speak Vulcan and I don’t have a Starfleet uniform hanging in my closet. But I have had an affinity for “Trek” since I was a little girl.

Heck, when I first started watching Kirk and crew boldly go where no man has gone before I was too little to even know I was watching reruns. I thought “Star Trek” was still actually on TV.

Nimoy’s death has gotten me thinking about what it was that made “Trek” mean so much to me, and I think it has something to do with feeling like an alien. As a little girl, I was one of the only Indian kids around, which I realize is hard to imagine these days when Fremont often feels like a suburb of Mumbai.

But back in the day, I always felt a little strange and out of place and often tried as hard as I could to dress and talk like everyone else, lest they discover that I was indeed different. I was into assimilation long before the Borg.

Spock was my alter-ego because he was half-human, half-Vulcan and thus he was never really and truly accepted by either culture. He was never quite emotional enough for Kirk, or for Bones — who always insulted his pointy ears — and he was always far too touchy-feely for the Vulcans.

That’s how every child of immigrants feels, of course, as if they are never quite what their parents hoped for but also nowhere near as authentic and effortless and cool as the rest of the children at school. I remember getting mocked when “Gandhi” came out, for instance, and making darn sure my mom never made the mistake of packing naan in my lunchbox. Wonderbread only!

“Star Trek” grappled with issues of race in other ways, of course. There was one of the first interracial kisses (when Kirk and Uhura got smoochy in “Plato’s Stepchildren”) and the episode (“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”) about the planet where every resident had a face with a black half and a white half, yet the guys with white on their right side hated the guys with white on their left side. That one resonated with my childhood imagination far more strongly than countless history classes on the civil rights movement.

But it’s “Spock” who was the heart of the series. When he died in “Wrath of Khan,” quoting Dickens to the bitter end, I remember how I sat in the movie theater after the picture, with the wind knocked out of me, tears gushing. I even had “Amazing Grace” played at my father’s funeral years later because there was something comforting about echoing Spock’s memorial in my time of grief.

Now I am aware that I have fully outed myself as a power geek of the highest order but I think it’s important to share why Spock meant so much to so many. It’s not just about nerding out, about little green men and Tribbles and phaser-battles,

It’s also about the power of television, and indeed all art, to make us feel that our struggles and fears and rites of passage are universal.

It’s about Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. “Star Trek” did diversity before many of us were born.

Nimoy, whom I had the good fortune to interview several times, knew this better than anyone and perhaps that is why he was always so gracious to Trekkies, who can be a bit intense in their fandom. He knew that he was a symbol of belonging for many of us and that is why we are all collectively hoping that the ideas Spock stood for will indeed live long and prosper.

Contact Karen D’Souza at 408-271-3772. Read her at www.mercurynews.com/karen-dsouza, and follow her at Twitter.com/karendsouza4.