Sitting in a corner of a single bay of an extraordinarily large intensive care unit of the Iwate Prefectural Hospital at Kuji in north-east Japan, I am slowly beginning to comprehend the Japanese insight into making systems—and making them work. My friend, the dancer/choreographer Chandralekha, has been admitted here with severe hyperglycemia and acute pyelonephritis. We came to Kuji to perform her latest work ‘Sharira—Fire/Desire’ at the sumptuous Amber Hall here, which also doubles as an observatory if you go up the central elevator of the 100-foot-tall glass cone, visible from any part of the city on a sunny day. The theatre itself is a humungous building, shaped in some postmodern fantasy, as a wave upon the sea. Chandra-san’s work is well-known and admired in Japan (this is her fifth performing tour of Japan in 10 years) and all systems swung into action as she collapsed, soon after the show, with nausea and extreme dehydration.