Her name was Kothai — the girl adorned with flowers. She was the daughter of Vishnuchitta, the temple flower-gardener of Srivilliputtur in Tamil Nadu, who spent his days making garlands for the deity Ranganatha and who raised his daughter in the constant company of the divine.
She fell in love with Ranganatha the way children in the presence of the beautiful fall in love — completely, without the adult's capacity for self-protection, without the theological framework that turns direct experience into doctrine. She composed the Tiruppavai — thirty songs in the Margazhi month — and the Nacciyar Tirumoli — another collection — before she was sixteen. These are among the most beloved texts in the entire Vaishnava tradition, still sung in temples every morning in the month of Margazhi.
But there was a problem. Before she offered the flower garlands to the deity each day, she wore them first. She put them on her own head and looked in the water's reflection to see if they were beautiful enough, if the arrangement was worthy of the god she loved. Then she offered them.
Her father discovered this and was horrified. A garland that had been worn by a human being — touched by human impurity — was ritually contaminated. It could not be offered to the deity. He had been unknowingly presenting contaminated offerings. He was devastated.
That night Vishnu appeared in his dream.
He said: I want only the garlands she has worn. Send me only those. Do not send any others.
The tradition's theology of Bhakti is located in this instruction. The garland that Andal wore — the one that carried the touch of her devotion, the warmth of her head, the specific fragrance of the love that had chosen the flowers and arranged them while thinking only of the beloved — was more pleasing to the divine than the ritually pure garland that had been handled correctly but without that quality of attention. The ritual purity that her father was protecting was real. The love that contaminated it was more real. The divine, in the dream, was being precise: what I want is not the correctly offered garland. What I want is the garland that has been loved by the one who loves me. The contamination is the value. The touch is the offering. Purity in the Bhakti tradition is not the absence of human contact. It is the presence of genuine love. The untouched garland, however correctly prepared, had not been loved. Andal's garland had been worn. That wearing was the worship.
She was taken to the great temple at Srirangam, dressed as a bride. The accounts say she walked toward the deity and disappeared — absorbed into the image, united with what she had been loving since before she had words for what she was doing.
She had been born in a garden. She had spent her life making garlands. She had died — or been completed, or returned to where she had come from — in the presence of the one for whom every garland had been made.
She was perhaps fifteen. She had written a hundred and seventy-three songs that are still sung. She is the only woman among the twelve Alvars, the Tamil Vaishnava saint-poets. Her festival at Srivilliputtur is one of the largest in Tamil Nadu.
The garland you have been wearing before you offer it — the love that has passed through your own warmth before it reaches its destination — is the only garland the destination actually wants. Pure offering is offering that has been loved. Everything else is correctly arranged flowers.