For the past three weeks, words have failed me.
So I did what every Tamil eventually does when language falls short. I turned to Sangam poetry.
Perhaps this can say what I have been trying to.
Translation and my thoughts are at the end.
குறுந்தொகை 40
யாயும் ஞாயும் யாராகியரோ?
எந்தையும் நுந்தையும் எம்முறைக் கேளிர்?
யானும் நீயும் எவ்வழி அறிதும்?
செம்புலப் பெயல் நீர் போல
அன்புடை நெஞ்சம் தாம் கலந்தனவே.
Translation:
What are you and I to each other?
What relation is my mother to yours, and your mother to mine?
How did you and I ever come to know one another?
Like rainwater falling upon red earth, our loving hearts have mingled and become one.
My thoughts
There is a reason this poem still finds people after all these years. It understands something I have never quite found the words for.
Sometimes, people just happen to us.
They are not ours. They do not come from where we come from.
There is no reason for them to matter as much as they do. And yet, they do.
Two people, born into different families, living entirely separate lives, somehow meet and feel as though they have known each other for much longer than a lifetime permits.
“Like rain on red earth.”
I think about that line often.
Because once the rain falls, can you really ask the earth to give it back?
Maybe that is why some people never quite leave us. Not because we are unwilling to move on, but because somewhere along the way, they became a part of us and we, a part of them.
Kurunthogai 40 isn’t trying to explain love.
It is simply acknowledging that some things were always going to happen.
And perhaps that is the saddest thing of all. That some people are written into our lives in ink, even if they were never meant to stay.
Pretty Little Death 