மாணிக்கவாசகர்

He was born at Thiruvathavur; brilliant from boyhood, he rose to become chief minister to the Pandya king. Power, wealth, renown — all of it was his. One day the king sent him with the treasury to buy horses. On the road, at Thiruperunthurai, under a kurundha tree, someone was seated in the form of a Guru, disciples around him. One look. Everything ended with it. The minister fell at those feet; when he rose, he was another man. The horse-money went, all of it, to the temple and the devotees. Love sometimes grows by degrees; for some it is lightning — one instant that burns down the old life entirely. For him it was lightning.

The king demanded his horses. The Lord sent jackals transformed into horses; at midnight they became jackals again and howled through the city. Prison, punishment, made to stand in the burning sand of the Vaigai river bed — the man who had been chief minister accepted all of it. Then the Vaigai flooded, and every household was ordered to send one labourer for the embankment. An old woman called Vanti, who sold pittu and had no one, could send no one. For her sake, the Lord Himself came as a hired labourer — His wage, a handful of pittu. When that labourer would not work, the king's cane struck Him — and the blow landed on every living being in the world at once; the king himself felt it. Understanding everything, the king fell at his minister's feet. But Manikkavasagar walked away from the kingdom and the world, singing.

What he sang became the Thiruvasagam — the book that gave melting itself a form in Tamil. "Ammaiye appa oppila maniye" — my Mother, my Father, jewel beyond compare, sweet nectar ripened out of love — in a single line, a mother's love, a lover's ache and a sage's knowing run as one stream. At Thillai, tradition says, the Lord Himself sat as scribe and wrote down every word as he spoke it. And at the end, he walked into the great light of the Chidambaram sanctum and was gone — leaving no body behind, melted entirely. There is a saying in Tamil: "Thiruvasagathukku urugar oru vasagathukkum urugar" — one who does not melt for the Thiruvasagam will melt for nothing at all. The very name of this platform is the word he left behind: urugu.