In Sangam poetry, a woman in love never says she is in love. She describes a mountain.
Two thousand years ago Tamil poets built a code called thinai — five landscapes, each carrying a stage of love, so that naming the place was enough to name the feeling.
| Thinai | Land | The love it carries |
|---|---|---|
| Kurinji | Mountains | Union — secret trysts, he comes |
| Mullai | Forest | Waiting — he has gone |
| Marutham | Fields | Quarrel — he stays away, she reproaches |
| Neithal | Shore | Pining — he is far, she longs |
| Palai | Wasteland | Separation — the long journey, the hard parting |
And the flower they chose for union, kurinji, blooms once every twelve years. A hillside turns purple, and then stays green for over a decade.
But there was one love with no landscape at all. Kaikkilai — one-sided, unreciprocated. Unmapped. Homeless.
A system precise enough to give the wasteland to separation, and it still found nowhere to put the love that goes unreturned. Even the poets couldn't find a place for it.