godai continues to live based on two hopes: 1. His word that He will not forsake His devotee under any circumstance; and 2. Even if He slips from His word because He is svantantran and can do whatever He likes, He has another trait in addition to His svAtantryam; He is subservient to His aDiyArgaL, and since she is periAzhvAr's daughter, she can depend on this association; He cannot forsake periAzhvAr and hence his daughter. So she is bound to reach Him. But time flies and no sign of bhagavAn; godai's tApam increases by leaps and bounds, and she wants to reach Him immediately and wants to go to His temple and ask Him why He is torturing her like this. Since she does not have energy left in her body anymore to go anywhere by herself, she pleads with her folks to please take her to His places like mathura, AyarpADi, gOkulam, dvArakai etc., find where He is right now, and entrust her at His Feet. This is the topic of this tirumozhi - maRRu irundIrgaTku.

B. Additional thoughts from SrI PVP:

perumAL has svAtantRyam, but He also is bound by ASrita pAratantRyam. When it comes to periAzhvAr, His svAtantRyam will lose out to His subservience to His devotee, periAzhvAr. Since ANDAL has taken refuge in periAzhvAr, she is bound to attain Him. With this conclusion, she has taken refuge in periAzhvAr. She chose periAzhvAr's sambandham instead of directly depending on Him because she was not sure about how He will exercise His svAtantRyam, left to Himself. This is how she rested her hopes on her association with periAzhvAr as her definite savior in the just concluded tirumozhi.

In the current tirumozhi, she is going back to approaching Him directly. Why? Because she is thinking aloud about His svAtantRyam again, and is concluding that it is because of His unquestionable svAtantRyam that He has no choice except to protect His devotees. Everything in the Universe is His property, He is the sole Owner of everything, and if He does not protect His belonging, He is the loser and no one else; so He has no alternative except to protect it; because of His svAtantRyam, He can protect anything He wants any time He wants, and there is no one who can stop Him. So His svAtantRyam is the precise reason that He has no choice except to be the sole Protector of His belongings.

Normally, an owner doesn't do things to loose his belongings. Thus, His svAtantRyam becomes an upAyam for us to reach Him and not to loose Him. When we wish to do something, He makes sure that there is no obstacle in our path and this is made possible only because He is a svAtantRyan. Thus, feeling happy on the one side about her being periyAzhvAr's daughter, gOdai tries to hold onto emperumAn also in the eleventh (tAM ugakkum) pAsuram.

In spite of her reaching to Him again, He did not come and solve her pangs of separation from Him. She could wait for Him till He comes; that is her svarUpam. But, her wish is to get to Him at the earliest possible moment. Now, she starts doing things that are contrary to her own svarUpam to attempt to reach Him without waiting for Him to come to her. She wants to go to Him and see His face herself; but, she doesn't have the strength to walk and go to Him. She starts thinking that her folks, feeling sorry about her sad plight, will have to act like ISvaran or periyAzhvAr and help her achieve her goal. Since she cannot walk and He will not come to her, she thinks it is the duty of her folks to take her to Him. She now pleads with them: please take me to mathurA, AyppADi and other places where my nAthan is.

Listening to gOdai's firm belief in emperumAn's words, her folks tell her that she should rather try to wait patiently like periya pirATTi waited in aSOka vanam. They are not able to explain godai's condition to the rest of the townfolk, and are totally frustrated and exhausted. So they are advising godai to hide all her thoughts and act normal. She obviously is unable to do that, and unwilling to do it also. She contemplated on going to tiruara'ngam and try to relieve her folks of their predicament because of her, but she was worried that the same story will repeat itself if she goes to tiruara'ngam; if emperumAn does not immediately accept her there, then the elders will be subjected to the same predicament in a different place. So she decides that it is best if she goes directly to kaNNan wherever He is, and considers this to be the best solution for all. So in the current tirumozhi, she is pleading with her people to take her to wherever kaNNan is, and leave her there.

godai tells her people: "You are not in a position to understand my condition; I am experiencing the intense desire to reach Him, and all the words you are telling me are in vain. I am not in a position to respond to your words you tell me in the spirit of telling me what is good for me. Just take me to the vicinity of the places where kaNNan will be, and drop me somewhere in that region. This is the best you can do for me".

You can't understand the depth of love I have for kaNNan. All the advice and consolation that you are giving me saying I should be more patient and wait for Him, is like a conversation that happens between a deaf person and a dumb person. mathurA is the dwelling place of kaNNan, who was born to dEvaki but left her to live in nanda gOkulam and grew up as yasOdA's son, and bravely arrived at the fighting grounds ahead of the boxers who were deputed to kill Him, and waited to face them. The only fruitful service you can do for me now is to take me anywhere close to mathurA. I beg of you, please leave me somewhere near mathurA.

This wonderful decad describes the heart rending plea of ANDAL to Her Lord for samSlesham . All of the cetanas' hearts should experience this anubhavam that gOdai is demonstrating to us. She starts appropriately with vaDa mathurai in search of her Lord. That is where it all started with His avatAram inside a kArAgRham as the child of vasudEva and dEvaki . AyarpADi came next in His life ( orutti mahanAip pirandu--). The second pAsuram therfore shifts ( amazingly ) to AyarpADi. The third pASuram says, please take me to the gates of nanda gOpan. The fourth pAsuram takes her mind to the banks of yamunai. brindAvanam is the place, where nandagopan's family moved after pUtanA samhAram and other incidents, which made the parents fear about staying in gOkulam(AyarpADi). The fifth one takes her to yamunA maDu , where kALiyan was conquered by kALinga nardanan.The 8th and the 9th takes her to gOVardhanam and dwArakA. Final pAsuram refers to SrIvaikuNTham. There is a logic in the flow of ANDAL's thoughts in tracing Lord kRshNa's life from His childhood to His bAla leelA's and then His life at a later stage at dvArakA, and finally to His abode ("mama dhAmA").

maRRu irundIrgaTku: "all of you, who are different from me. sudarSanam SrI kRshNasvAmi iye'ngAr points out that the difference between ANDAL and the rest is that the others are willing to wait for Him to bless them based on their efforts, whereas ANDAL cannot bear to live any longer without Him; such is the intensity of her devotion to Him.

irundIrgatku aRiyalAgA: Even though you are living in the same place as me, still you will not be able to assess what my mind is going through. My position is like that of sanjayan in mahAbhAratam (uttara kANDam 68-5). dhRtarAshTra asks sanjayan: "I am as learned in the SAstra-s as you are; I am as intelligent as you are; and yet, it is only you who are able to understand the truth behind things, and I always have to learn the truth from you. Why is it so, sa'njaya?" sa'njaya replies: "I do not cheat anyone; I do not indulge in any act that is contrary to dharma, and am pure in my nature. You try to understand things based on the SAstra-s that you have studied, whereas I try to understand based on SAstra-s guided by devotion. Your position is like that of one who tries to see things that are hidden to the eye, using the eye as the means; my situation is that of one trying to see the things hidden to the eye by applying the collyrium (a'njanam) that reveals the things that are hidden to the normal eye". Just like that, gOdai has the intense devotion to Him that cannot let her be separated from Him, and her folks are ordinary and are not able to understand or appreciate this special relationship.

mAdhavan enbadOr anbu tannai: if I had fallen in love with brahmacAri nArAyaNan, I might have reconciled to my situation and consoled myself; but the One I desire to be united with is mAdhavan - SrIman nArAyaNan - the One whom lakshmi Herself chose. He is not just the abode of Love, He is the personification of Love itself. He is Supreme in every respect. nammAzhvAr declares: "kOla malarp pAvaikku anbAgiya en anbEyO" (tiruvAimozhi 10-10-7). He makes everyone fall in love with Him, irrespective of whether they are children, youths, adults, or older people, by showering His love on them first. rAmAyaNam (ayodhyAkANDam 17-16) extols rAma as the one who bestows His love on the four castes and the people in four stages of life like childhood, adolescence, youth and old age and to all others; so, they all love Him intensely in return.

"sarvEshAm hi sa dharmAtmA varNAnAm kurutE dayAm |
caturNAm hi vayah sthAnAm tEna tE tamanuvratA:
||

It is emperumAn's nature to love His aDiyArgaL first and create a love for Himself in their minds.

anbu tannai uRRu: it can be interpreted as "she wants to reach mAdhavan who is the personification of love", or "She has matured into bhakti or devotion that is the culmination of the intense love to Him" ("niRandanUDu pukku enadu Aviyai niNRu ninRu urukki uNginra" - tiruvAimozhi 5-10-1) - nammAzhvAr is intensely suffering, and unable to bear that suffering, at the thought of how much trouble bhagavAn goes through for our sake - such is the intensity of his devotion.

irundEnukku: "I am in a state where I cannot live without Him, but I have no energy left to even walk to His place; so I am staying fixed to this place".

uraippadu ellAm; maRRu uraippadu ellAm - all the words that you are all saying in order to keep me from getting to Him, contrary to what I want.

UmaiyarODu SeviDar vArttai: People who are dumb are limited in their ability to communicate by word of mouth, and people who are deaf are limited in their ability to hear. Since you all do not know my state, you are unable to communicate meaningfully to me (or, you are unqualified to talk to me), and so you are like people afflicted with the limitation of being dumb. Nothing that you say is getting through into my ears because this is not what I want to hear, and so I am like one who is deaf when you talk to me. So our conversation is like a dumb person trying to verbally communicate to a deaf person.

peRRu irundALai ozhiyavE: gOdai's folks ask her: "How can you say nobody knows your plight? He who caused you to be in this plight should certainly know". gOdai responds: "He did not even care about His own mother's plight, and left her as soon as He was born. How would He know about His lover's plight?" dEvaki performed intense penance to get this child; she gave birth to a boy after much trouble. The boy whom she gave birth to, left her on the day He was born.

pOip pErttu: just as the saying goes "peRRa manam pittu" (SrI Krishnaswamy Iyengar), dEvaki stood with tears rolling down her eyes as her child was leaving; and what did kaNNan do? Without ever drinking His mother's milk even once, He left her ("piLLai manam kal").

pErttu oru tAi il vaLarnda: ["orutti maganAip piRandu Or iravil orutti maganAi vaLarndu"] He grew up in another mother's house - yaSodA's; While His own mother, dEvaki, was grief-stricken that her child parted from her, He just adopted yaSodA as His mother, and let her tie Him up and beat Him up ["kaNNi nuN SiruttAmbinAl kaTTuNNap paNNiya perumAyan"]. All dEvaki could say was :: "tiru ilEn onRum peRRilEn - ellAm deyva na'ngai yasOdai peRRALE" (perumAl tirumozhi 7-5); and yasOdA enjoyed the ultimate happiness ("yaSodai tollai inbattu iRudi kaNDAL" - perumAL tirumozhi 7-8).

peRRu irundALai ozhiyavE pOip??? His natural tendency is to hurt especially those who cannot live without Him. kulasekhara AzhvAr in his UDal nilai says in perumAL tirumozhi 6-4, "tAi mulaip pAlil amudu irukkat tavazhndu taLar naDai iTTuc cenRu pEi mulai vAi vaittu na'njai uNDu pittan enRE piRar Esa ninRAi". yasOdai is very particular in making sure that kaNNan drinks her milk, which sustains His body. Making her wait in sorrow (by not drinking her milk), childishly He goes and drinks the milk from pUtanai, who came to destroy Him. This led people to mock at Him as one who does not know the difference between those who love Him and those who are only bent on doing evil to Him. nambi: Literally means "Eminent person among men". Here it seems ANDAL is suggesting that He is "nambi" because He makes this indifference to those who love Him as a special quality of His.

mal porundAmal kaLam aDainda: Instead of choosing to unite with me and embrace me when I am here waiting for Him to embrace me with love, He leaves me and goes to embrace the fighters in mathurai. mal porundAmal means "not being together with me". Or, the words could be read thus: mal porundA mal kaLam - meaning, even before the mallargaL (fighters) came to the fighting ground, He arrived there.

maduraip purattu ennai uyttiDumin: Before He embraces the fighters' bodies, please take me to vaDa mathurai and leave me there so that I can go to Him and embrace Him.

maRRu irundIrgatku ?. The love I have for Him is such that without Him, I cannot live even for a second. When periya pirATTi tried to end her life in asOka vanam, the word sent to her by emperumAn helped her sustain for at least a month. He is ArAda amudam; That is why I am in love with that mAdhavan.

UmaiyarODu SeviDar vArttai: SrI PVP had interpreted ANDAL's position to that of a deaf person, and the elders' position to that of a dumb person. SrI UV reverses the role, and interprets ANDAL as feeling that the elders are like deaf people in not being able to understand what she is trying to tell them, and she is like a dumb person since she does not recognize what they are talking (SrI UV remarks that a dumb person does not talk, and does not recognize what others talk).

So, ANDAL tells them: "Instead of wasting my time, please take me close to His place, in mathurai, and leave me anywhere in that vicinity. If you object saying - how can we leave you in such a far away place? How will we, who are like your mothers, live separated from you, I have the answer for you. He left His mother and went to another place as soon as He was born; I, who am in love with Him, can I not be separated from my mothers now that I am old? Didn't His mother have life? Didn't she have milk? Why did He leave her? Even that mother told Him that all she wishes is His welfare and even though she doesn't have the bhAgyam to see Him, all she cares for is that He is safe and well. In the same way, you should all seek my welfare and growth. Later on, when He is reunited with His parents in mathurA, I might have the bAghyam of seeing you all and living together also. He only behaved the way He did in order to do good to His parents, being such a kalyANa guNa pUrNan; I am also behaving like Him.

mathuraip puRam: When He left AyarpADi and reached mathurA, He got off at the outskirts of mathurA. So also, you can leave me at the outskirts of mathurai, and I will find my way to Him.

mal porundA mal kaLam aDainda: When He returned to mathurA frm AyarpADi, at least then, did He go straight to see His mother? Far from it. He went to the mal kaLam - fighting ground instead. "mal porundA mal kaLam" can be enjoyed in several ways: a) He was there even before the designated boxers had arrived; b) The fighting ground was not appropriate because the designated boxers were professionals, and kaNNan was a little kid, and so there was no "poruttam" or match in this fight; c) after the fighting was over, still it was not a fair match because the designated boxers were so much inferior to kaNNan, that there was no "poruttam" anyway. d) Before the boxers were going to have a chance to be in an embrace with kaNNan during the fight, godai wanted to go and embrace Him.

maduraip puRattu: SrI UV feels the correct pATham should be maduraip purattu "in the city of mathurA", rather than "maduraip puRattu" - in the vicinity of the city of mathurA [note the difference in the spelling of the mellinam and vallinam for "ra" and "Ra", which results in the two different meanings].

Because of her pEr avA (great fondness) for kaNNan, even though kaNNan lived during His vibhava incarnation as Lord kRshNa there, gOdai thinks that kaNNan is still living in mathurai, AyarpADi etc. That is the spirit of this tirumozhi.

A. From SrImAn SaDagOpan's tamizh treatise:

There is no point feeling ashamed about the situation anymore. Everyone in this village now knows about me and my viraha tApam. Without delaying any further, make arrangements for me to join Him, if you really want to restore me to the state of physical health I was in before I got involved with Him. If you all really want to save me, take me to AyppADi so that I can have the darSanam of the emperumAn who came in a dwarf form and measured the three worlds with His tirup pAdam. This is the only thing that will cure my disease.

Shyness (nANam - "lajjai") is one of the four qualities (fearfulness, tenderness, shyness and modesty) of womanhood. The shyness needs to be observed by a woman who is going to wait for a few days and then be united with her nAyakan. Such is not the case with ANDAL, who will be not be alive long enough for this union in the future. She has lost her interest in living at all and so she has lost all her shyness also. Being stung by the pangs of separation, she has come to a stage where she feels she cannot live anymore; there is no point anymore in her feeling shy.

The 'dharmam' of nANam is to be observed by the observer of that dharmam (i.e., the dharmI) only when she is going to be alive in the future; in the case of godai, she is fading fast, and so there is no need to worry about protecting this dharmam.

ini: from now on. This phrase shows that she has tried her best so far to protect her nANam, but is feeling the futility of this approach at this point.

nAl ayalArum aRindu ozhindAr: If it would help me, I can feel shy so that others do not find out about my plight in being separated from Him. It would make sense to keep this a secret only when there are some people who are unaware of my plight. When the village folks did not know about me, I kept it a secret, but now you all know. Not only the folks in our town know about me, but also those in the neighboring areas. So, what is the use of my having nANam anymore?

aRindu ozhindAr: Just as tirukkOTTiyUr nambi kept baghavad vishyam a secret, gOdai tried to hide her plight from others. Just as that secret was exposed to whole world by SrI emperumAnAr, gOdai's secret also got out of the bag. pANiyAdu, ennai marundu Seydu: Without wasting more time, please take whatever steps you can in order to take care of my disease of separation from Him.

paNDu paNDu Akka uRudirAgil: "paNDu" here refers to the stage she was in before this stage. The first "paNDu" refers to the stage before the current viraha tApam, namely the stage she was in when she was united with Him and having that enjoyment; the other "paNDu" refers to the stage prior to that, namely when she got to know Him, when she was a kanni, and had the shine of the young girl. So this phrase says: "If you really want to bring me back to the stage in which I was before I knew Him". Even from the time she started having association with Him, she started going down because her union with Him was interspersed by periods of separartion from Him. gOdai's luster has been diminishing day after day after she knew Him. Now that she is separated from Him, her "polivu" is going down even more drastically.

mANi uruvAi: in the form of the brahmacAri vAmanan; He took this form to beg; so, He took a form where He would keep a smiling face no matter whether anyone gave Him bihskA, or shut the door on His face and did not give Him any bikshA.

ulagu aLanda mAyanaik kANil: Only if I get to "see" that ulagaLanda perumAL. She is not any more in the stage where she can sustain her life by contemplating on His guNa-s alone. SrI krishNaswAmi ayyangar observes that she is not any more in the stage where she had declared earlier - "gOvindan guNam pADi Avi kattu iruppEnE" - NT 8-3.

ANaiyAl nIr ennaik kAkka vENDil: Two interpretations are given by SrI PVP depending on how the term "ANai" is interpreted here. The first is something like "On your word of honor! If you really want to protect me?.". The second is "If you want to protect me by bringing some clarity to my ability to understand your words and conduct myself according to your commands".

SrI PVP's anubhavam here is one of wondering at all the leelA's of young kRshNa in AyarpADi, and how yaSodA must have really enjoyed all His bAla leelA's, and in fact supported Him in all His mischiefs, while outwardly making it appear that she was harsh to Him when people complained. He gives several examples of His "mischiefs" and yaSodA's mild rebukes to Him, which almost seem to suggest to Him to indulge in more mischief!

In periya tirumozhi 10-7-11, we see one of these mild rebukes of yaSodA: "a'nganam tImaigaL SeyvargaLO nambI! Ayar maDa makkaLai" - (kaNNA! Should you be doing mischief with innocent AyarpADi girls like that?). ANDAL refers to how yaSOdA pretends to scold Him, but really encourages Him to show all these girls that He is the "man", in NT 3-9 "anja urappAL aSOdai ANADa viTTiTTu irukkum" - (yasOdai will not scold kaNNan as to make Him afraid; she behaves as if she is enjoying His pranks and leaves Him to do more pranks). Again, it is that yasOdai who said "un tam aDigaL munivar unnai nAn en kayyiR kOlAl nondiDa mOdavum killEn" - (if you keep committing pranks, your father will get mad; I do not even have the strength for taking a stick and beating you). In periyAzhvAr tirumzhi 3-2-6, we have yaSodA declaring openly that she would have preferred Him to be around indulging in mischiefs rather than letting Him go in the hot sun to manage the cows - "paDiRu pala Seydu ippADi engum tiriyAmE - en piLLaiyaip pOkkinEn.

In this pASuram, ANDAL is asking the mothers around her to take her to yaSodA's place so that yaSodA can have first-hand view of the victim of His pranks and feel happy.

C. Additional thoughts from SrI PBA:

gOdai's folks tell her: "you are supposed to be a paDi tANDA pattini; if you leave the house and go out boldly, it will end up in a great shame for all. Everyone will say - what a shame that such a woman ended up in such a nice family. This is not good for you. You have to protect your prestige and that of your family ". godai responds: There is no more secret in my life. My state is like that of a cow that goes and grazes grass from seven different places and drinks water from eight different places ("EzhUrp pullaiyum meyyndu eTTUrt tannIraiyum kuDittu varugiRa kONDip paSuvin nilai pOnRadanRO enadu nilai"). I have nothing left to be ashamed of, nor do I have to feel shame to anyone. If you really want to help me, take to AyarpADi without any delay and leave me there, where He is present".

pANiyAdu: without procrastinating. Among the azhvArs, only periyAzhvAr ("pANIkka vENDA naDamin" ) and ANDAL use this term pANittal.

paNDu paNDAkka: SrI PBA comments that the stage prior to her samSlesham with Him was the stage where she did not have any interest in bhagavad vishayam, and just spent the time eating sumptuously and sleeping well (uNDiyE uDaiyE ugandirunda kAlam". Obviously, she was in much better health at that stage than when she became associated with Him and started longing for Him.