திருஞானசம்பந்தர்

By the temple tank at Sirkali, a three-year-old child stands alone, crying. His father had gone down into the water to bathe. The child cried from hunger and aloneness — and to that cry came the ones who are Mother and Father to all the worlds. Uma herself fed him her milk of wisdom from a golden cup, and the crying stopped. When the father returned and saw milk at the corner of the child's mouth, he asked: who gave you this? The child lifted a finger towards the sky — and what came out was not an answer but a song: "Thodudaiya seviyan..." — the One with the ear-ring, the One who rides the bull. She gave it to me. The song that began at age three did not stop for thirteen years.

From that day, God was never distant for Sambandar — He was his own Mother and Father. A child's claim on its mother is not requested and granted; it comes with birth. It was with that claim that he sang. In that very first hymn he calls the Lord "the thief who stole my heart" — en ullam kavar kalvan. Only a child can call God a thief; what lives in that word is not audacity but closeness. And the Lord accepted the claim — for the boy who walked from town to town singing, He provided a pearl palanquin and golden cymbals.

In Madurai, the Pandya king lay burning with a fever no one could cure. When the planets stood ill-omened against the journey, he sang the Kolaru Pathigam — "Veyuru tholipangan" — with the Lord who shares His form with Uma beside us, every planet can do only good. In Madurai he sang the glory of the sacred ash — "Manthiramavathu neeru" — and the king's fever left him; the land returned to Shiva's path. At sixteen, at Nallur Perumanam, his wedding was held. In his bridegroom's garments, he invited everyone present to come with him, and walked into the great Light the Lord opened. He remained a child his whole life — his love never needed to grow up, because it was born complete.