I am in awe of grace. The very fact of its existence fills me with wonder.

Perhaps this is because I have so little grace myself. My movements (when I pay attention) are economical, precise; perhaps even forceful. I was one of the very few people in our year who were allowed to dissect, and I am very good. Good when it comes to tasks. Coordinated motor activity comes to me only with great concentration. But grace... the physical quality of grace: fluidity and elegance combined with economy and unconsciousness of movement; that is beyond me.
But (or perhaps that is why) I admire it so. I admire grace in movement, in speech, in gesture and in writing. I fall in love with lilts of voice and subtle gestures, with long fingers, with sublime moments wrought in the substance of time.

Today, as I was leaving the Department of Forensic Medicine at our college, I saw a little girl. She couldn’t have been more than three or four. She was wearing a frock which I thought had been made for a doll, and her hair was the colour of malnutrition, a shade somewhere between red and brown. There is a large drain along the wall, and it has a narrow moulding around it. She was walking on tiptoe along that moulding, and the ball of her foot always came down in the exact same line. She had a tiny smile on her face as she walked. There was grace. In the midst of that squalor, there was a moment of beauty.