Every sense perceives things dreadful in the paalai. The heat oppresses the sense of touch, and the fire caused by the contact of bamboos in the wind sets the forest aflame. The rugged pointed stones pierce the feet like chisels. The mirage, called the "Devil's chariot" in Tamil, marks the landscape, tortures the sight with its tantalising and empty promise. The elephant and the deer wander long distances in search of the water that they cannot find. The hoot of the moping owl sounds ominous and fearful to the ears as do also the cicada and the victory drum of the maṛavars, the jungle-folk whose occupation is to kill the merchants and rob the caravans that pass across these forlorn tracts. The pods of vaakai rattle all along the way. The wayfarers smell the rotting corpses of those who have been the victims of the maṛavars and as the tear-drops roll down their cheeks their parched tongues hasten to absorb the tears, the only possible moisture available to them. The forest is infested with wild animals, the elephant and the cheetah that prowl about in search of what they might devour.53 The paalai poetry attracts the reader by its note of pathos and the tragic element that runs through it. One set of poems may be classified as aiming at a sympathetic interpretation of Nature by depicting the horrors of paalai and thus making Nature reflect the horrors of separation. The desolation in the paalai region is but a feeble reflection of the desolation within the hearts of lovers. The heroine trembles at the very thought that her lover will have to traverse a dreary landscape fraught with such dangers as we have described. In one of the poems written by Avvaiyaar, the poetess, the heroine separated from her lover says how much she should love to search for him in the endless, forked paths of the forests as Veḷḷiviiti sought for her husband in the sea. But what type of forest is it in which she would search for him? It is one where the tiger of colours like the leaves and flowers of the veenkai, watching the hunger of the tigress which has just brought forth three cubs at one litter, listens with rapt attention to the masculine barking ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 53 H.T., p. 8 f; p. 168 f; Akam; 45, 51, 55. |