Compassion

Thiruppallāṇḍu & Periyāzhvār Thirumozhi

Periyāzhvār was a humble gardener of Srivilliputhur who wove garlands for the Lord each day. When he was honoured before a king, his first instinct was not pride but fear — fear that the world's evil eye might fall on his beloved God. So he sang the Thiruppallāṇḍu, a blessing upon the Lord himself: “Many, many years to you!” It is the rare hymn where the devotee, like a doting parent, worries for the safety of the Divine. The Periya Thirumozhi that follows watches Krishna grow up through a mother's eyes — his cradle, his mischief, his first steps.

Thiruppāvai

Āṇḍāḷ, the only woman among the Alvars, was found as a baby in a garden of tulasi and raised by Periyāzhvār. She refused every earthly suitor, declaring she would marry none but the Lord himself. In the Thiruppāvai she imagines herself and her friends as cowherd girls of Gokula, rising before dawn in the cold month of Mārgazhi to bathe in the river and wake the sleeping Lord with song. Thirty verses, sung to this day at dawn through that whole month, turn a simple village vow into one of the most beloved poems of devotion.

Perumāḷ Thirumozhi

Kulasēkhara was a king of the Chera land who found his throne far less precious than the courtyard of the temple. He sang that he would gladly be a step at the Lord's gate, a fish in the temple tank, or a flower in his garden, rather than a ruler of men. The Perumāḷ Thirumozhi moves between a king's renunciation and a mother's love — including the famous verses in which he sings as Dasharatha grieving for Rāma, and as Devakī aching for the son she could not raise.

Thirumālai

Thoṇḍaraḍippoḍi Āzhvār — “the dust of the feet of the devotees” — tended a garden of flowers for the Lord of Srirangam. In the Thirumālai he speaks plainly of his own failings and of the saving power of the divine name, holding nothing back. It is a hymn of confession and refuge, treasured for its raw honesty about the human condition and the mercy that meets it.