break into their secret places,
deceive them with affectionate lies,
excite them in love play,
get together the whole crowd one day,
and then you steal away like a spinach thief...
You opportunist,
you excite them from moment to moment,
make mouths water,
show them love to make them surrender,
drown them in a sea of passion,
and by the time the morning star appears –
you get up and vanish.
Pour gold as high as I stand.
(Ramanujan et al. 1994: 98–9)The protagonist is a worldly, educated woman, a courtesan from urban sur-
roundings. We have sensual, sophisticated poems from a streetsmart woman,
one who appeared in public like the men in the seventeenth century. It has been
observed of this courtesan: “We thus achieve an image of autonomous, even
brazen, womanhood, a far cry from the rather helpless female victim of the
absent god in Tamil bhakti... in contrast to the torn female personality of Tamil
bhakti, the courtesan in these poems is remarkably self-possessed” (Ramanujan
et al. 1994: 38).
Thus, the love between the human being and the deity is articulated as the
relationship between a woman and a man against the backdrop of early Tamil
poetry and Sanskrit “heroines” in Bha ̄rata’s Treatise on Dance. The male or female
poet, speaking in the manyvoices of a woman-lover, languishes, laments,
cajoles, chides, threatens, and teases. The passion is striking, the drama, as a
good drama should be, is engrossing.
But the lover is not the only kind of woman’s voice that the male poet speaks
in. Sometimes, he is Yas ́oda ̄, the foster mother of the toddler Kr.s.n.a, wanting to
bathe him, comb his hair, drink his milk, and so on. Sometimes the poet is one
of the cowherd girls who is complaining about Kr.s.n.a to Yas ́oda ̄ about his appar-
ent childish mischief that is tinged with erotic sentiments:
O mother Yas ́oda ̄:
At twilight, the other day, he came, as though one familiar with me!
He showed many tricks, he played with me.
Holding and pulling my garment, he demanded a ball of butter,
and so he warred with me, not letting go...
“Thaaye Yas ́oda ̄” in the raga Thodi by Oothukadu Venkata Subbaiyaiyar^4The twilight time is the hour for clandestine meeting between lovers. Yet here
we see a child Kr.s.n.a who gets into trouble and who teases the cowherd girl.
Whether it is Kulasekara A ̄l
̄
va ̄r in the eighth century, Oothukadu Venkata Subba
Iyer in the eighteenth century, or Ambujam Kr.s.n.a, the sensitive woman lyricist
gender in a devotional universe 577