Chapter 106அதிகாரம் 106 கதை Story

Even a hundred beads are just a count; the story is the pull of the thread that strung the beads.

More than the thread her fingers stretched, the space she left unwoven is the word.

The Tamil ‘sol’ means both ‘word’ and the bidding ‘tell!’, so the last phrase can also be heard as: tell of that unwoven space.

The man who puts what happened once into two lines is a vessel dipping into the great sea.

Days in the passing go off like an ant; days in the telling close round like an elephant.

Tell of the man first, and the killing is his conquest; tell of the killing first, and he is only the killer. The killing stays.

In Tamil, kondravan (‘killer’) and kotravan (‘conqueror’) differ by a single sound.

When the thread is drawn out and the garland unstrung, the flowers all remain; the garland does not.

The teller has died, and once the listener has heard, the half left untold is a load to carry.

He has told how the boat went over, and in his hand the oar throbs again.

She who gathers the scattered days in story is a tree on which what has fallen comes into flower.

The mark cut into a stone does not change on the day the story told around the stone changes.

A different telling does not alter what was cut there.