Kundhavai Devi

Kundhavai Devi is a royal daughter whose influence rests not only on her place in the family but on her ability to turn concern into action. In the scenes surrounding her visit to Aniruddhar, she responds to a storm’s human cost, investigates the identity of a woman haunting her father’s memories, and presses for a reunion that might relieve his mounting distress. Her judgment is practical, but it is also shaped by a willingness to listen to painful truths about the past.

Identity and Presence

Kundhavai enters Aniruddhar’s palace with Vanathi after a noisy public welcome announces their arrival. Poonguzhali is standing in a corner; on seeing her, Kundhavai’s worried expression brightens into a smile of surprise and delight. The brief exchange establishes a personal warmth amid the political and familial anxieties that dominate the visit.

Kundhavai has come in the early morning as her father’s envoy. She tells Aniruddhar that Sundara Chozhar’s physical health is much the same, but his mental state is far less settled. The cyclone has intensified his distress: he has scarcely slept and keeps lamenting the plight of poor people exposed to rain and hardship in fragile homes. He wants every possible form of assistance arranged for those whose lives have been ravaged by the storm.

Relief and Public Responsibility

Aniruddhar initially presents himself as unable to help. He says that, though he bears the title of chief minister, he lacks access to the resources needed for relief: Periya Pazhuvettarayar is away and has locked his treasure vault, while people already waiting at Aniruddhar’s gates seek aid he fears he cannot provide. Kundhavai answers the obstacle with a concrete offer rather than a formal appeal. She makes her own belongings available, adds that her mother will do the same, and says that the valuables in her father’s palace may also be used, with his personal assurance.

The exchange shows how Kundhavai uses her position to make public compassion actionable. Her father’s concern for people harmed by the cyclone becomes a mission she carries at dawn, and she offers access to resources that Aniruddhar says are otherwise beyond his reach. The visit’s urgency is therefore not only a matter of family worry: it also concerns immediate assistance to people left vulnerable by the storm.

Investigating the Woman in Her Father’s Memories

Kundhavai connects her father’s recurring account of a ghostly visitor to memories that make the story difficult to dismiss as mere delusion. At first she wondered whether his tale might be an effect of his mental disturbance. But she recalls that Vanathi once heard Sundara Chozhar lamenting and went to investigate, only to faint after seeing a figure beside his bed who closely resembled Pazhuvoor Ilaiya Rani. Kundhavai suspected a connection between the young queen and the mute woman associated with the coast; reports from Vallavarayan Vandhiyathevan and Arulmozhi Varman strengthened that suspicion. She asks Aniruddhar whether Pazhuvoor Ilaiya Rani might be the woman’s daughter.

Aniruddhar does not claim that resemblance proves kinship. He allows that she could instead be the woman’s younger sister and says that the truth is known to only three people. Kundhavai’s question nevertheless marks a significant step: she has assembled separate memories and accounts into a family mystery, but recognizes that inference alone cannot settle it.

Aniruddhar then confesses that, twenty-five years earlier, he was sent to find the coastal woman after she was reported to have plunged from a lighthouse at Kodikkarai. Although she survived and was rescued by a fisherman, he bribed him to take her to Ilankai and told Sundara Chozhar she had died. He says he acted in the belief that concealing her survival would benefit the king, without foreseeing the consequences. Kundhavai distinguishes that intention from its damaging result: she understands that Aniruddhar sought her father’s happiness, even while hearing him acknowledge that his deception was a grave offense.

Family History and a Proposed Reunion

Aniruddhar’s further account gives Kundhavai more reason to connect the woman to the royal family. After Sundara Chozhar’s coronation as crown prince, Aniruddhar was away studying religious texts in Kasi. On his return, he learned that the woman had stayed for several days in Periya Piratti’s royal garden, where she gave birth to twins and left them. She sometimes returned secretly to see the children. Aniruddhar was told that Sembian Maadevi alone knew what had become of them. He also recalls suspecting that the woman, rather than the river itself, had saved the young Arulmozhi Varman when he fell into the Kaveri River. Kundhavai says Arulmozhi later reached the same conclusion after meeting Mandhakini Devi in Eezham.

Kundhavai also explains why the secret matters immediately. During the storm, Sundara Chozhar has again relived his memories of the woman, believing her dead and imagining that her ghost is taking revenge on his children. In his panic he connects Arulmozhi’s presumed drowning to that supposed vengeance and fears that Adithan may be next. Kundhavai sees the truth of Mandhakini Devi’s survival as a possible means of easing her father’s mental anguish.

She asks Aniruddhar to reveal that Mandhakini Devi is alive and requests that he arrange an audience with the woman she calls her periyannai. Aniruddhar explains that he has already brought Mandhakini Devi to the capital because a verbal assurance may not persuade the king that his earlier report was false; seeing her would provide direct proof. Kundhavai, however, cautions against an abrupt revelation that could endanger her father’s health. She wants the truth brought to him, but insists that the manner of disclosure must take account of his fragile condition. Her role in these scenes is that of investigator and mediator: she presses past concealment while trying to protect the person who must receive the truth.