𝔎𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔦: The virtue of infinite love

Chapter 12

The forenoon melted into golden silence—that sacred hush that lingers between temple bells and birdsong. In the inner chamber, where lamp flames flickered like watching stars, Kothai stood poised between worlds. Her anklets trembled with unsung rhythms. Her arms curved like temple towers reaching for heaven. Her eyes, darkened with kajal, held the depth of a thousand devotional verses.

Before her altar, Veerarāghavan stood—not as carved stone, but as the living sovereign of her soul. Draped in tulasi garlands and divine silence, He watched. She knew this in her bones.

And so—

Kothai danced.

Her body became the scripture.
Her breath the primordial sound.
Her gaze the very essence of the nāyakī's longing.

The Krishna Shabdam unfolded through her—

A young gopikā, fresh as the first jasmine of spring, walked toward Yamuna's banks. Her pot balanced on her hip caught the morning sun, its copper surface gleaming like a second sunrise. The river murmured secrets as she filled it, the water swirling like liquid silver.

Then—

A rustle in the tamāla grove.
A flash of movement.
A stone flew—

Crack!

The pot shattered, its contents spilling across the earth like surrendered tears. The gopikā whirled, her chest heaving with righteous fury—

Until she saw Him.

There, leaning against the kadamba tree—

Krishna.

The eternal thief.
The divine boy.
Her heart's only home.

Mischief danced in His eyes, dark as monsoon clouds heavy with promised rain. His smile held the unplayed melody of a thousand flutes. In that moment, her anger dissolved—

Not from fear.
Not from forgetfulness.

But from recognition—

The way Meenakshi's warlike gaze softened when she first beheld Shiva in His silent splendor.
The way lightning surrenders to the sky that birthed it.
The way a wave remembers it is the ocean.

Kothai's feet now painted poetry across the floor—her anklets singing like a swarm of honey-drunk bees. Her wrists fluttered like cranes taking flight. Her face blossomed with a joy too deep for words—

For she was no longer dancing about Krishna.
She was dancing with Him.

Her Veerarāghavan.
Her Rangamāṉar.
Her dark-hued beloved who had stolen not just butter—

But her very soul.

And as the final notes faded, the lamp flames surged suddenly higher—as if the universe itself had whispered:

"Well done, My dancer. Well done."

Kothai's dance had long since ceased to be movement—it was metamorphosis.

Her anklets no longer chimed; they hummed like conches calling the deep to shore.
Her swaying arms were not limbs, but currents in the celestial Pālāvi river.
The jasmine at her brow trembled not with motion, but with the vibration of a thousand silent mantras.

And then—

A shift.

A single honeybee, gold-dusted and ancient as the first monsoon, breached the sanctum. Drawn not by the garland's perfume around Veerarāghavan's neck, but by the deeper fragrance rising from Kothai's very skin—the scent of amṛtam not churned from ocean milk, but distilled from divine yearning.