Chapter 9அதிகாரம் 9 சினம் Anger

The fire was lit not outside but within, a spark from one’s own dry wood.

A man burns because someone has changed the writing on the sand, and never stops to ask: who would read writing on sand?

The fuel of a burning fire comes from elsewhere; the fuel of burning anger is its own.

In the Tamil, ‘its own’ points back to anger. What it burns may be anger itself, or the one who carries it.

Water that breaks its bounds tears away the bank; within its bounds, the same water brings plenty.

New anger asks for a reason; once it has lasted, anger itself is the reason.

In anger she broke one pot; among her own people, inside, a hundred broke.

Dried grass shows where someone lay; those whose anger has cooled see the scar.

Grass that is lain on yellows and dries, so a pale patch keeps the body’s shape after the person has gone.

A stone thrown into a well sinks; a word spoken in anger does not sink, it rises.

Even a clay pot that never speaks of its boiling tells of it, in the line the boiling scarred.

Fierce boiling leaves a scorched line or a crack on a clay pot, and it stays there long after the fire is out.

They say there is no ember in the banked ash; one breath of theirs makes a lamp of it.

Banked ash is packed down over a fire; an ember can live on beneath it, and a single breath makes it glow again.