The Eight Watches

Rādhā arrives back at Yāvaṭa, the village where her in-laws live. She bathes. She is given the tasks of a young wife: cooking, the kitchen fire, the rice. Her mother-in-law watches her with suspicion that has hardened over time but never settles into proof. Rādhā's friends gather in pretense of helping with chores.

Krishna at Nandagrām is woken by Yashoda. He resists like any boy. She washes his face, smiles when he protests, dresses him, sends him to the cows. Across the kilometers between the two villages, the lovers spend the first hours of the day in apparently ordinary domestic action, and inwardly they are continuing the conversation of the night.

Krishna goes out with his friends and the cows. The cowherds eat their lunches packed by their mothers, run with the calves, play tricks on each other. Krishna joins fully in the games. The cowherds love him as one of them and do not always remember he is anything else.

Rādhā, prevented from going where Krishna is, sends a sakhī or a mañjarī to find a way to bring something from her hand to his. A flower, a thread of yellow garment fabric, sometimes a written verse. The day is structured around these messages. The mañjarī's whole purpose in this watch is to be the courier who can move between the two worlds.

The longest watch, and the heart of the day. Krishna and the cowherds arrive at the appointed grove. By careful arrangement made by the sakhīs, Rādhā and her friends have come too, ostensibly to gather flowers, ostensibly to cook a worship for some goddess.

The lovers meet. The whole apparatus of the day's pretense unfolds: Rādhā pretends not to know Krishna is here, Krishna pretends not to know Rādhā is here, the sakhīs pretend not to be arranging anything. And then in the inner kunja, where only the closest mañjarīs are admitted, the meeting happens. The afternoon hours are the most secret hours. The sakhīs stand guard outside. The mañjarīs serve from within.

This is the kunja-līlā the bhaktas remember when they sing of Vraja. Hit Harivaṃśa's eighty-four padas are mostly set in this watch. So is much of the Gīta Govinda. The midday meeting is the textual heart of the eight-fold day.

The lovers must part again. Krishna gathers the cows and starts back toward Nandagrām. The cowherds with him are tired and happy from a day of play. Rādhā watches him recede from a hidden place behind the trees, and weeps without sound.

Krishna's mother Yashoda has been waiting. She comes out to meet the cows as they return, sees her boy, gathers him to her. She inspects him for cuts, asks why he is dusty, scolds him a little for being late. He tells her elaborate stories. She does not believe most of them and is tender anyway.

Krishna eats. He plays with his older brother Balarāma. Yashoda sings him through evening tasks. The cows have been milked and stalled. The household lights its lamps.

Rādhā at Yāvaṭa is also in evening tasks: the lamp at the family shrine, the evening rice for her husband Abhimanyu, who, in the deeper Vraja theology, is a phantom-husband created by Yogamāyā to give Rādhā a household-cover and is not a real personality. The mañjarīs who accompany Rādhā in this watch begin the inner preparations for the night-meeting that they all know is coming. The day has been the long approach to the night.

The household sleeps. Rādhā's mother-in-law Jaṭilā has finally gone to bed, despite her wariness. The mañjarīs help Rādhā dress for the night-meeting: a different sari, fresh flowers, more careful ornamentation than for the daytime kunja. There is a whole inner-kunja ceremony of preparation that the Govinda-līlāmṛta describes in detail.

Krishna at Nandagrām is similarly preparing. He waits until Yashoda is fully asleep. He slips out the window or the gate of the cowherd compound, his flute in his hand, his friend Madhumaṅgala or another close cowherd sometimes accompanying him as a watcher and sometimes left behind. The night air is still warm. The Yamuna is dark and quiet.

The deepest watch. The lovers meet in the rāsa-sthala, the place of the rāsa-līlā. On a full moon, Krishna plays the flute and the gopis come from all over Vraja. The midnight forest is fragrant with jasmine. The mañjarīs are everywhere serving. The sakhīs are dancing each with their own Krishna, multiplied by his māyā so that each of them has him alone.

And in the deepest inner kunja, hidden from even most of the sakhīs, Rādhā has him in the way no one else does. The Bhāgavata's anonymous gopi of 10.30.28, the unnamed gopi of the rāsa whom Krishna led off into the secret place: she is here. The Goswāmīs say she is Rādhā. The mañjarī-bhāva sādhaka is the one whose contemplative form serves outside that secret place, gladly, holding the betel for after.

The night ends without the lovers wanting it to end. The mañjarīs come to wake them. The cycle begins again. The eternal day of Vraja has no first day and no last day. It is the same day, played over and over, eternally, in the eternal abode of Goloka where time does not pass and only love unfolds.