Chapter Nineteen
Black sparrows at dawn announce the Dark One
I hear them chant his sacred names. Is this true?
Lord of Tirumaliruncolai, King of Dwaraka,
Vatapatra sayee asleep on a banyan leaf
Nacciyar Tirumoli 9:8
Visnucitta returned home from the temple garden to find Varaji squatting in the kitchen grinding coconut and green chilli back and forth with her stone pestle. All of her strength was concentrated in the task, as if the infusion of the chillis’ fiery heat into the sweetness of a fresh coconut was life. Back and forth, back and forth, until the paste forming in her mortar was the colour of lime flesh. But life was not always a simple matter of two ingredients, two points of view. Truth felt like that sometimes; it needed pounding again and again before its many lessons co
