Chapter Ten
We’ll leave our hair loose, free of flowers,
no milk or ghee will touch our lips
or line of kohl darken our eyes
Tiruppavai 2
Wrapped in a crimson shawl, Andal reached high to lift the latch of their gate. She stepped out into the chilly air with her mother and they joined the women gathered at the temple’s gopuram. For the next thirty days, they would chant through town in the last hour of night leaving Villiputturians to sleep until cries from their she-buffaloes heavy with milk pierced their dreams. For Andal, it was as if they walked into the fertile dark of Lord Tirumal’s belly where time and space hummed. Will he recognise my voice? Surely he will, she thought, now I am a woman. She imagined their singing coaxing his eyes open, his body rising from his serpent bed, r
