The seventh nerve

Hema flew down from Srinagar to see me. She was drop-dead gorgeous: flawless skin, impeccably symmetrical eyebrows, expressive dark brown eyes, and long healthy eyelashes. Her nose looked as if it was sculpted by Michelangelo. Her cheekbones and jaw-line would make an anatomist gaze in wonder. She had bouncy burgundy hair reminiscent of Dimple Kapadia's in her youth.

- Dr MAZDA TUREL

I thought it was perfectly appropriate for a doctor to momentarily appreciate utopian beauty within the quiet recesses of his brain. In fact, looking at her, I was reminded of the 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Amir Khusrau, who famously proclaimed Kashmir's beauty with, “If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.”

When I asked what the prob-lem was, and before her docile husband sitting next to her could answer, her left eye started twitching. For a moment, I thought she was winking at me, but then her face also fluttered alittle uncontrollably, grimacing involuntarily, transiently disturbing the natural beauty of her face, like it was trying to communicate in Morse code to a passing firefly. “Every time she’s stressed, fatigued, or anxious, the tremble exaggerates,” her husband said.