The Ache Was the Argument
Nammalvar, the greatest of the twelve Alvars, described himself as a woman waiting by a window that God had not come back to. He wasn't being metaphorical in the decorative sense. He meant it as theology. The Tiruvaimoli, his masterwork, six thousand verses of Tamil devotion, does not read like a scripture. It reads like letters written to someone who has left and may not return. The longing in it is not incidental. It is the point.
