Chapter Twenty-Three
Little kuyil pecking young red buds
warble sweetly in his ear
if you make him come quickly
you will see what I can do
Nacciyar Tirumoli 5:8
It was almost dawn by the time Andal and her father had finished talking. In slow surreal motions she unrolled a mat beneath her bedroom window and lay down. Her body needed the rest even if her mind and heart did not. She closed her eyes and exchanged them for two of the stars not yet faded, her mouth for the new moon. She let her face vanish into a sky of neither night nor day, the soothing imperceptibility of its light washing the world into pureness and newness; more like heaven, she thought, than earth. This was how she imagined Vaikuntha, there where her love reclined on his serpent bed. From gem-studded palaces and oce
