𝔎𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔦: The virtue of infinite love

Chapter 7

The mirror was cold this morning. Its silvered surface, once quick to reflect the blushing pride of her youth, returned instead a spectre of desolation—her pallid face, shadowed by longing and draped in the melancholic hues of absence. There she stood—Kothai, whom a father named in hope, but whom the world rechristened Andal in its rarest flashes of prescience. She was not merely a devotee—she was devotion incarnate, love made flesh, poetry made pulse.

She stood before her polished bronze mirror, anklets chiming like sorrowful bells in a forgotten shrine. Around her neck lay intricate garlands of lotus and gold beads; her bangles, once echoing with mirth, now sat heavy upon her arms. Eyes like tempestuous monsoon clouds lingered upon her reflection. Her lips, redder than fractured rubies, moved with indignation.

"Tell me, O Thiruvenkatamudaiyaan! Tell me now—am I not beautiful enough for your gaze to falter? Do these eyes, sculpted from the dusky ambrosia of twilight, not remind you of your consort herself? Or have you truly abandoned me for eternity?"

She turned, fingers trembling, adjusting the silk on her shoulders, weaving jasmine into her hair like a weaver who spins yearning into garlands. Her scolding began—not as petulance, but as an aria of agony.

"Even the elephantine clouds, those exultant beasts that parade across the skies of Thiruvengadam, roar Your name as they gallop through the heavens, trumpeting the syllables of Govinda in cyclonic harmony. Even they, O Swami, visit me with more constancy than You! You—my promised Lord, my destined flame, the sapphire-bodied sovereign who reclines upon the coiled infinity of Adisesha—how dare You ignore me thus?"

She twirled slowly, her anklets dancing to the rhythm of wrath. Her friends—Vasanthamalai, Suddhamani, and Madhavi—watched from the shadowed corridor, horror frozen upon their cherubic faces. The mirrored floor beneath her bore the red bloom of her lacerated feet.

"Stop, Kothai!" Vasanthamalai wept, her voice cracking like a dry reed in monsoon wind. "The earth drinks thy blood, but what dost thou gain from such ceaseless pirouettes of pain?"

"My heart burns, dearest!" Kothai cried, lips contorting into a bitter smile. "Dancing is the only way I remember I still exist! My every step seeks Him, but He has left my body unanswered—like a song exiled from its rhythm!"

"Why punish thyself thus, Andal?" Suddhamani asked, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. "If He be cruel, must thou mirror Him in cruelty to thine own flesh?"

"Cruelty? No, this is love's revolt!" Kothai's voice soared like a thunderbird. "My beloved Krishna has forgotten His primaeval consort—me, she who wears Her ornaments, mimics Her gait, and imitates Her glances! He who should be broken without me, thrives! He who should long, does not! Is that not treachery?"

"Enough, Kothai!" Madhavi sobbed. "This path leads only to madness. Your feet weep; your soul rages. Let Him come or not come—but do not dismember yourself in devotion!"

Andal only laughed—a sound as fragile and sharp as shattered glass on temple steps. Her kohl-lined eyes turned toward the horizon. "The world will say—that eternal Protector, He who saves beasts and men and gods, struck down a girl who only loved Him too hard. Will they not, Madhavi? Will they not say that?"

Her hand touched her throat, where a necklace of green emeralds lay.

"He is unjust! I am the Goddess incarnate, the lotus-born love—and yet, He treats me like a beggar at His court. My songs—do they not reach His ears? The verses that poured from my lips like waterfalls from Shesha's hoods, have they meant nothing? I wrote Him stanzas soaked in sandalwood and saffron, metaphors etched from the womb of Tamil, but He has offered me silence. Silence, when I thirst for His murmur."