This figure is addressed with the Tamil epithet Kaṇṇaṉ in Nammāḻvār’s poetry. For 10 points each:
[10e] Name this subject of erotic verses addressed to the “Dark One” by Mirabai, whose poems also describe this figure’s relationship with the gopi Rādhā.
ANSWER: Krishna [or Kṛṣṇa; prompt on Vishnu or Viṣṇu]
[10h] This translator rendered Nammāḻvār’s poems in Hymns for the Drowning. Before his untimely death in Chicago, this prolific philologist translated Telugu courtesan songs in When God Is a Customer and reported seeing himself “signed in a corner / by my father” in his poem “Self Portrait.”
ANSWER: A. K. Ramanujan [or Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan]
[10m] Ramanujan also translated Akka Mahādevi’s poems in which she laments Shiva’s absence, calling him “my lord of” this “white” plant. Prakash dies in a bombing in a Bharati Mukherjee novel titled for this plant.
ANSWER: jasmine [accept “my lord of white jasmine” or Jasmine]
<JB, World Literature>