Amavaasai

Amavaasai is a remembered midnight that Nandhini uses to frame her earlier encounter with Vandhiyathevan as an occasion when his life was in her hands. In the present exchange, the recollection turns into an accusation: she says she spared him, then condemns him for failing to show gratitude.

The Recalled Midnight

Nandhini identifies the encounter as an Amavaasai midnight not long before the conversation. She recalls Vandhiyathevan walking straight into her clutches at an enemy pallippadai, placing him within reach of her and her men. The text supplies no further calendar detail; the significance of the time lies in how precisely Nandhini invokes it as a shared, recent past.

Nandhini’s Account and Its Consequence

Nandhini says that one gesture from her would have allowed her men to annihilate Vandhiyathevan. She presents her decision to spare him as an act of mercy, then casts his conduct afterward as the repayment of an ingrate. Amavaasai thus serves less as a general description of time than as the marker for a personal debt in Nandhini’s version of events: she returns to that night to challenge Vandhiyathevan’s claim to gratitude and to strengthen her accusation against him.