Guiltless and free

Thirukkural with the Times explores real-world lessons from the classic Tamil text ‘Thirukkural’. Written by Tamil poet and philosopher Thiruvalluvar, the Kural consists of 1,330 short couplets of seven words each. This text is divided into three books with teachings on virtue, wealth, and love and is considered one of the great works ever on ethics and morality. The Kural has influenced scholars and leaders across social, political, and philosophical spheres.

Motivational speaker, author and diversity champion Bharathi Bhaskar explores the masterpiece.

It was not the crime that first unsettled me — it was the nail polish on her fingers.
Neat, with a kind of professional perfection.

But here was Abirami — standing trial for killing her two young children — with the composure of someone on a casual outing, not a courtroom that might condemn her for life .

Seven years ago, when the case broke, my thoughts went first to her children. Even if they saw their mother adding something to their milk, they would have drunk it. Why would a child suspect their mother of harming them?

The court found her and her lover guilty of murder. Yet the case felt like more like a warning than a domestic tragedy — of how the lure of illicit relationships and fantasy, amplified by platforms like TikTok (not banned when the crime happened), can erode moral fibres already tattering. For Abirami, elopement wasn’t enough — she wanted to erase every tie that bound her to her existing life. So, she poisoned her children.

In nature, some animals kill their young — to spare the weak, to conserve resources. But evolution attunes most species toward nurturing, not destruction. Monkeys — our closest kin — do not practise infanticide. Which makes maternal filicide in humans not just rare, but chilling.

Psychologists trace its motives thus:

· Altruistic filicide: a suicidal mother saves her child from a motherless life

· Psychotic filicide: driven by hallucinations or delusions

· Spouse-revenge filicide: the child is killed to take revenge on the father

· Unwanted child filicide: the child is an obstacle

Abirami’s motive lay in the coldest category — the child as hindrance.

On the day of verdict, the judge pronounced the sentence – life imprisonment for both. That image stayed with me — the woman waiting for judgement — her hair neatly tied, her face composed. No tremor of guilt . No eyes hollowed by remorse . She cried only when the punishment was pronounced. She asked for mercy — which she never showed her children.

Mothers are considered protectors, who don’t eat, sleep or even comb their hair for weeks if their child is unwell. Think of Manisha Kachhadiya, who in the recent Air India IC171 crash in Ahmedabad, shielded her eight‑month‑old son from the flames with her own body, later donating her skin to save him, again. Her instincts were pure, reflexive — child before self.

Abirami stood at the opposite pole. Evil isn’t effortless. Yet some do it — and live on, as though nothing happened.

Perhaps they have what psychologists call dissociation — two selves coexisting:
One, the rational self that walks, talks, and performs the social dance.
The other, hidden and dark, driven by lust, desire, hatred, or greed.

The mind capable of such cruelty is not always broken; sometimes it is calculating — able to measure gestures of grace with the same precision it measures out poison. It can hold two worlds within itself: one that functions in the day, of socialisation, and another that thrives in the night, untouched by empathy.

Valluvar saw this long ago. In Thirukkural 1072, he speaks with bitter clarity:

Nandrari Varir Kayavar Thiruvudayaar
Nenjaththu Avalam Ilar.

Compared to the compassionate, the wicked are “fortunate” —
They carry no weight of remorse in their hearts.


And so, they walk on, their pulse even — carrying the quietest death of all: a soul untouched by guilt.