Lālkuṭi Captariṣi Rāmāmirutam, commonly known as La.Sa.Ra (1916–2007), is a towering figure in the history of modern Tamil literature. This smārta Brahmin, much influenced by Anglo-Saxon literature, is the author of a voluminous work famous for its formal originality, introspectiveness and mysticism. La.Sa.Ra sees literary creation as a spiritual exercice – both a celebration of Ampāḷ, his lineage goddess, and a search for himself. Bhakti thus constitutes the main thread of his work: the Goddess is the author’s inspiring muse and also his ideal. Ampāḷ figures the highest form of beauty, an image of the Absolute and the symbol of his family, which boasts about having some great mystics among their ancestors. This paper studies some representative excerpts from “lasarian” writing (short stories and articles) to show how bhakti unites La.Sa.Ra’s quests for beauty, spiritual truth and identity. The literary cult of Ampāḷ first forms the basis upon which La.Sa.Ra builds his Hindu aesthetics, inspired both by Śaṅkara and English modernist fiction. Bhakti also sustains the author’s traditionalist thought, which glorifies his own family, the Brahmin family in general and even more broadly, the culture of the smārta Brahmins.