Introduction to Section 6.2

In this decad, the Āḻvār strikes an entirely new note, making a bold departure, rather, in refreshing contrast to the earlier ones. The Saint, who was hitherto pining for the Lord’s presence and crying out his heart, now keeps Him at bay, when He eventually turns up in post-haste (even as He rushed to Gajendra’s aid) in response to the Nāyakī’s piteous appeal in the last decad, conveyed to the Lord through her special emissaries. The Nāyakī resents the Lord’s delayed appearance and arraigns Him for having strayed elsewhere, making love to the damsels of His special preference and He is being asked to go back to them. The door is shut against Him, a movement in the contrary direction indeed! But there is nothing uncommon about this, as this is a natural ingredient of convivial love, which is super-sensitive to, and extremely intolerant of the lapses on the part of either partner, the overzealous female, in particular, being critical of the remotest risk of alienation of the male from her, by his getting under the spell of any other lady-the characteristic feminine jealousy, keen and cruel. Actually, the Nāyakī’s pangs of separation even egged her on to the extreme step of putting an end to her life, rather than eking out a miserable existence.

Of the nine kinds of relationship subsisting between the Lord (Super Soul) and the Individual Soul, as set out in the Śloka “Pitā ca rakṣakaḥ Śeṣī, Bharthā Jñeyo Ramāpatiḥ.....” the husbandwife relationship is attracted here. The strained relationship such as the one exhibited in this decad, did subsist, as a temporary phase, between Lord Kṛṣṇa and the Gopīs. The Nāyakī would now seem to have got into the mood of the Gopīs. Similar treatment is noticeable in Kulaśekara Āḻvār’s Perumāḷ Tirumoḻi (of Ērmalar Pūṅkuḻal) and Tirumaṅkai Āḻvār’s Periya Tirumoḻi (Kāṭil Kaṭippiṭṭu).