125. Tale of Two Anklets

Ilango Adigal's Silappathikaram, the earliest Tamil epic poem, tells the story of Kannagi, the virtuous daughter of a merchant in Tamil Nadu, who marries a young and successful merchant named Kovalan in the city of her birth. The couple is childless but happy and prosperous. Then one day, Kovalan sees a young temple dancer named Madhavi dancing, singing, and reciting poetry, and he is irresistibly attracted to her skill and beauty. It is not uncommon for a married man to begin an affair with a courtesan, but Kovalan is so taken with Madhavi that he departs the home he shares with Kannagi and lives with Madhavi as though she were his wife. Kannagi's parents are angered by this, but virtuous Kannagi says nothing against her beloved husband. She spends her time caring for her parents and her parents-in-law, whom Kovalan is similarly neglecting.

Like all smitten men, the wealthy Kovalan sinks into poverty as he spends his money on gifts and finery for Madhavi. Then, at a Hindu festival, he hears Madhavi sing of a woman who loves a man, but the man does not fit his description. He is struck by jealousy and then wonders if his love for her had been one-sided all along. He thinks, What a fool I was to leave Kannagi! He leaves Madhavi's house and returns to Kannagi, who takes him back. Madhavi realizes Kovalan has left her, and pleads for him to return, but regretting his past actions, Kovalan rejects her.

However, the couple is now destitute. Kovalan can't think of a way to provide for them without first obtaining capital, so Kannagi says, "Husband, I will sell the two gold anklets passed down to me on our wedding day by my Amma, and this money will help you begin as a merchant again." Kovalan is shocked at the suggestion of parting with a family heirloom, but they have no choice. They travel to Madurai to begin anew. On the outskirts of the city, Kovalan goes ahead to try to sell one of the anklets, leaving the other with Kannagi. He finds a goldsmith, who appraises the anklet and says, "Ah, what a find! Only the queen is wealthy enough to buy this; I must consult with her at once." Kovalan is overjoyed, but in truth, the goldsmith, having recently stolen a very similar anklet from the queen, sees an opportunity to shift blame. He hurries to the palace and tells the king that the thief is in his shop.

The royal couple had been arguing over another matter, so the king is anxious to appease her. He doesn't question the goldsmith's character or story when the craftsman shows him Kovalan's anklet. Kovalan is arrested and, despite his protestations of innocence, is executed on the spot.

Meanwhile, Kannagi waits outside the city in vain. Her worry grows. And so she enters Madurai and asks for news of her husband, only to hear of his death, so recent the body is still warm and pumping blood. She flies to the palace and sees for herself this horrifying truth. Enraged by the injustice, she pulls out the anklet she had retained, the twin of the one Kovalan was carrying, and snaps it between her hands to reveal the rubies inside. The queen's missing anklet had contained pearls. It is proof enough that Kovalan was no thief.

Overcome by guilt, the king suffers a stroke and dies, and the queen, horrified by what her lost heirloom has caused, follows soon after.

Kannagi, though, after all the hardship she has endured, is not satisfied by their deaths. She wants justice. So she becomes the avenger. In a surge of fury, she plucks out her breast, a sign of her womanhood, and flings it at Madurai, which is immediately engulfed by flames. She departs for the kingdom of Chera, where she dies and is lifted to the heavens as the goddess Kannagi Amman, worshiped in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka for her purity, loyalty, and her sense of justice and righteous, vengeful anger. There are festivals held in May and June, when she is thought to return briefly to earth, which is also when my aunt was pidichittu by her at a Batticaloa temple and left in a trance in the innermost rooms. Like many Tamil goddesses, who revenge themselves on the guilty with ease, Kannagi Amman is ancient, prototypical female retribution. When the state fails, she rises.

In the 2019 film Sinamkol (சினம்கொள்), an Eelam Tamil film about a former LTTE cadre struggling to find his family and regain his land and a place in society, one of the characters surveys Nanthikadal lagoon and recounts Kannagi's story to the suffering protagonist, saying, "A Kannagi will emerge for us from this darkened Nanthikadal. Her rage cannot be contained by any ocean."

Blood has made so many lagoons in Eelam, but there is no blood test for the scars of the miscarriages of justice among a people ravaged by genocide or, locally, in all the clinics where misbelief wrongs the innocent.

In addition to being our local avenger, Kannagi Amman represents fertility and health. Amma says offhandedly once that to be seized by Kannagi is to be cured. At the same time, Amma remembers being scared of possession, hoping at temple festivals that the the goddess would not touch her.

It's not what Amma means, but I, too, flinch at the notion of cure, and we are no strangers to righteous anger. The pey pidichittu in this narrative is Kannagi Amman manifesting in the sick body, the wronged body, the body charting unpredictable path through lagoons whose water levels are buoyed up by a history of corpses. War dead or the medically neglected, either way, you are forced to change your intended path. (– 35. Diasporic Reasoning and Aesthetic Experience)