Hands that hung loose

A few weeks before her final exams, she was called to the Principal's office and told to go home.

When she arrived, her mother was already dead. She was fourteen, and she did not know what to do with her hands: they simply hung loose.

She had gone days without proper food on the journey. She was hungry, but she hid it, afraid of seeming greedy at such a sad time. That confusion, of grief mixed with ordinary hunger, stayed with her all her life.

Such feelings later found their way into her dances. In Duvidha (a Hindi word meaning 'dilemma'), a traditional woman sees a picture of a powerful woman leader, and is torn between two ways of life.

After her exams, she kept asking herself, 'What next?' That question later became the dance Atah Kim, about power and goals in life.

Her sorrow and confusion became the roots of her art.