I wish there was some kind of early warning system - something to tell us to taste carefully the last few moments of delight allowed us before we become caged. Nothing warned me. I had returned from a dance tour in France, levitating on the memories of adulation and praise. I perhaps took longer than usual to recover from the journey. "Nayantara, are you quite OK?" my husband asked me, as we shared our morning tea. "I'm a little tired, Rakesh. Probably I am getting too old to travel." "Not too old to dance though, right?" he laughed. I laughed too, at the thought of that unimaginable age. "Never too old to dance." I think about this and other ironies as I try to get through the excruciation of unchanging routines - through days that don't change much. Through hours of dreaming different futures and remembering different pasts. I try to deflect my gaze from the mess I see inside me to what I see outside.

It is late evening and the sky is a strange and singular shade of blue. The streetlights show me a wedge of rain that curls across the sky. The night is still, the sky is motionless , and all that moves is the quiet sweep of cloudburst against the palette of the twilight. It is very quiet and if I listen carefully, I can hear the music of the rain change when the wind alters the direction of rainfall.

I took a long time to recover from the trip. "Too long." my daughter decided, in that sweetly dominating way that children sometimes have. "High time you see a doctor." So see a doctor I did. I went to a hospital and did all the many times written about things while waiting for my physician. I stared at the other patients, the gladioli on the table, feeling secure in myself and in the knowledge that I was loved. "Silly girl, she worries too much." I thought, feeling cherished nevertheless, at the idea that somebody cared enough about me to fuss. Bored, I looked out of the window. There was a Gulmohur tree shading the garden outside.

The wind touched a flower, touched it gently, so it slipped away from the branch, floated downwards. It took a long time to come down and my eyes followed the path of the petal as the petal followed the will of the wind. It reached the ground, scraped against the sand, and finally, was still.

My name was called and I walked in to see a thin, bespectacled harmless looking individual sitting at a desk that dwarfed him. "Good morning, Mrs. Venkat." He smiled. "Do sit down." I sat down and began to feel a little nervous. "So, what precisely is the problem?" "Nothing really, it's just that I am a little weary after a long trip, and my daughter insisted that I see you." He waited and looked at me again. "OK. I'm feeling stiff and cramped and..." "And?" "Doctor, I find it difficult to move and my hands are shaking and.. and dancing is difficult." The last few words came out in a rush and I felt a little embarrassed. The doctor did not seem perturbed at my reaction, however. He was looking at my hands. I watched them too, and I was horrified to see how much they were shaking. Damn. Critics used to write at length about the mastery I had over my movements. I was ashamed, embarrassed, and I turned away from the doctor's face, stared instead at a print I could see on his wall.

It was a print of a Leonardo horse. A simple picture, but the charcoal had fallen on the paper in a way that seemed to make the horse leap off the paper. How does the artist do it? It is like some melodies, where the musician says more with the silences between the notes, than with the notes themselves. Just a few lines on paper, that's all they were, but they conveyed movement, not just of the horse, but of the slash of the hand drawing it.

The doctor continued with his examination and I began to find the whole procedure a little funny. What, I wondered, could they conclude by tapping you with a tiny hammer, staring at your eyes, observing the way you walk? "It looks like Parkinsonism." He said. "That's just a name to me, doctor. What are the implications ?" I asked. "Umm. Well. We do have some medicines that will make you feel better for some years." "And then?" He pretended not to hear me, wrote a prescription and handed it to me. "I'll see you next Friday." he said. I drove to the beach. I needed to be alone, I needed to think. I remember the chill in the twilight and the feel of the sand that still held the heat of the afternoon.

I was terrified that evening, as I stared at the sky, the light, the patterns of flight. Birds were having fun, riding thermals. A seagull dove from a sky the colour of gunmetal and sliced across the sea, it's wings skimming above the white lace wave spume. A couple of kingfishers perched on a boulder near me. Stylish birds, with neat heads, sleek silhouettes. At some unknown signal, they took wing, and I glimpsed a glimmer of blue in their plumage. I reflected that a bird's true colours are seen only when it's wings are outspread and it is flying. Suddenly the sky changed to empty.

Things were handleable initially. I took my medicine, continued to teach and give occasional performances. But not for long. I was not happy with myself, not happy with my dancing. I could not compromise, stoop to mediocre, lukewarm, passable. I tried, but I couldn't. It had to be, it has to be blazing, red hot, superlative. Therefore, soon I was restricting myself to teaching, and now, I only permit myself to watch.

It tends towards the unbearable sometimes. Sometimes it is unbearable. I have the safety net of my husband's love to shield me though. He loves me too much, I often think. It is something I can not understand. If who he fell in love with was the creative, mobile, graceful dancer, then how can he love the inert, brittle creature that I now see myself become? But he does. He carries me to the balcony, where I sit on a swing and we observe the world go by, in a quiet, undemanding, silence. He is paged and he has to leave. "You won't be bored here, will you, Nayan?" he asks as he walks away.

I am never bored as I sit here on silent evenings, watch people walk on the tree shaded lanes. A toddler is learning how to walk. His mother sits some distance from him, smiling encouragingly, holding out her arms. The child takes his first few steps , frowning with concentration at his shoes. He picks up speed, runs the last few steps and falls in to his mother's arms, laughing. She is laughing too, as she gives him a kiss and they walk down the street together.

My daughter tries to be supportive, spend time with me, but I learn from my husband that she is afraid of me. She is wary about my emotional fragility, scared that she will precipitate the tears that are never too far from the surface. I am liable to sink in to depression, to become uncommunicative. This morning we are sharing a rare moment of togetherness. I gaze at her with love - my daughter, my student. I sometimes irrationally blame her for my disease, for putting a name to what I thought was a mere lassitude and fatigue. And at night, in that unguarded moment between the first touch of sleep and the drowning in it, I hate her. I hate her because she can dance. And I, I can't. She is terribly tactful, doesn't talk about her classes, her performances.. " Mama, there is a veena recital today in the city. Shall we go?" "No, Madhu. I am tired. And dressing up and getting ready for a two hour programme - I just can't face it." "I'll help you mama. Let's go. Do come. It isn't right for you to sit at home and brood." As always, I follow the path of least resistance and agree with my child. "All right, dear if it means so much to you."

It is later in the evening ,and I am watching the maestro play the veena. The music washes over me without touching me much. I am hypnotized by his fingers. His hand flies over the frets with speed and precision, then suddenly slow down as the tempo of the music gentles. Then just one finger moves. Just one string vibrates. One note emerges. I realise that your future is written in your hands. Not on the lines of your palms, but in the lines of their movement.

I have always considered myself a creature of joy and fire and I do not like what is happening to me. In an attempt to cope, to handle the situation rationally, I borrow a book on neurology and read up Parkinsonism. "Expressionless facies." It says. I look at myself in the mirror and am amazed at the difference between what is reflected on the glass, and what I feel inside.

Reader, you are probably turning the pages of this story over an evening drink as you watch the lights move on the river. I too was complacent once, secure in the knowledge that I was beautiful and admired and good at what I did. People probably think that I have accepted my disease because my face lies about what I am feeling. Says that I do not feel much. Oh, but I do. I feel the memory of movement and it is killing me slowly. I dream of the swoop of the eagle, the leap of the dolphin, the flight of the mind. Do you realise how precious it is, movement? To lift your foot, place it on the ground, swing your shoulder, turn your neck? No, you don't and I hate you. I despise you, as I lie here trapped.

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