𝔎𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔦: The virtue of infinite love

Chapter 8

Not the hush of sacred verses half-whispered, nor the quiet of milk poured over dark stone—but the terrible stillness of a veena whose last string has snapped. The parrots in the mango grove huddled close, their emerald wings shivering like stolen temple silks. Even the lamps guttered low, their flames bowing as if weighted with unshed tears.

The sun climbed, a molten coin in the sky—

And yet—

Andal, who woke when the stars still tangled in her hair, who swept the sanctum while night clung blue as Krishna's throat, who had never once let the dawn pass without crowning her Lord with song—

Did not come.

Inside the maidens' chamber, fear uncoiled like a serpent in flowerbeds.

Vasanthamalai paced, her anklets crying where where where against the stone. Madhavi's jasmine garland wilted between her fingers, its perfume turning sharp with dread. Padma, young as new moonlight, clutched at Suddhamani's sleeve: "Perhaps she's become verse and melted into His footprints?"

They ran—barefoot, their braids unraveling like desperate prayers—through corridors that echoed with the ghost of Andal's laughter.

They found her by the washing stone, her hair a storm of black lightning down her back. Her hands plunged into the water, wringing her father's dhoti as if she could squeeze the silence from between its threads.

"Andal!" Suddhamani's voice broke like a wave on rock. "The Lord stands waiting in His sanctum! The morning chant has withered on the priests' tongues!"

Andal lifted her face. Sunlight slid down her cheek like a golden tear.

"Let Him wait," she said. "I am washing my father's clothes."

Vasanthamalai's hands flew to her mouth. "But the garland—the sacred thread of flowers that binds earth to heaven! Without your song, the temple cows low mournfully at empty troughs!"

Andal struck the wet cloth against stone—once, twice—each slap a thunderclap in that terrible silence.

"What use are my garlands?" she asked the hollow air. "He wears the stars as ornaments. The Ganga flows from his feet. Why would He miss one girl's wilted jasmine?"

Madhavi knelt, her shadow trembling across the washing stone. "You've never turned from Him—not when fever turned your bones to fire, not when the cyclone tore the petals from your hands."

Andal stood. The courtyard dust rose in pale clouds around her feet, as if the earth itself sought to cloak her sorrow.

"I have sung until my throat bled," she said, her voice a silver knife in sunlight. "I have woven my dreams into garlands so heavy with love they bruised my palms. And still—" She pressed a wet hand to her chest. "Still He does not come."

The maidens swayed as if struck by an unseen wave.

She took up the broom, its coconut fibers whispering against stone as she swept fallen petals—pale as forgotten promises—from the temple floor.

Padmam whispered: "She sweeps as Yashoda swept the courtyard after Kannan stole the butter... but where is His laughter to forgive her?"

Andal moved to the sanctum steps, poured water over them in great arcs that caught the sun like falling diamonds. She scrubbed—not with a devotee's reverence, but with a woman's fury, as if she could scour the very silence from between the stones.

In the flower garden, her fingers moved among jasmine buds—no longer weaving the secret love-knots that once made the Lord Himself lean down from heaven to smell their perfume.