your bridge home
Saints and Poets
Six words in Tamil that everybody in the language knows, and nobody has improved on in eight hundred years.
In Valmiki's Sanskrit there is no moment when Rama and Sita fall in love. He comes to Mithila, he lifts and breaks the bow, and the marriage is arranged, correctly, by their families. It is a good story and it has no room in it for two people looking at each other.
Kamban put one in. Rama is walking through Mithila. Sita is at a window above the street.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.