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Picture it. The day has thinned into dusk, and the kuñja waits with its breath held. Inside, on a couch of fresh petals and tender leaves, the keli-śayyā made ready, Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī has been brought and waits, summoned here by Her own sakhī, who has gone out and led the eager Beloved to the very mouth of the bower. And here is the wonder the tradition loves to dwell upon: at the very moment Her long-awaited One appears, a contrary sweetness rises in Her. The vāmya-bhāva takes Her. She who has waited so long turns away. She gathers Herself and moves to leave the grove, averse, unsubmissive, all refusal on the surface and an ocean of tenderness beneath.

O the cunning of love. This very turning-away is fuel. The Nāgara's hunger for union does not cool at Her coldness; it leaps higher. He is Rasika-śiromaṇi, the jewel-crest of all relishers, the rasika-maṇi, and He swims, He delights to swim, on the very ocean of the vāmya-bhāvavatī's enchanting refusals. So He reaches for Her hand. He takes it. And gently, irresistibly, balāt, by a force that is itself a caress, He draws Her back, He drags Her to the bed of flowers. There is no resisting this drawing, for it is the drawing of the heart's own gravity.

And then, kim api, something that cannot be told. He folds Her into His arms in an embrace, parirabhya, that no tongue can render, and the words simply fail and bow. He bends to Her mouth and drinks the adhara-sudhā, the nectar of Her lips, nipīya, until He is intoxicated, agitated by the very sweetness of the kiss, a wine no vine ever poured. He marks the fullness of Her breast, stana-bharam, with the sharp tracery of His nails, prakhara-nakhareṇa, prollikhya, those love-lines the tradition reads like sacred script written upon the body of the Beloved. He takes both Her lotus-hands into His own, tvat-kara-dhṛte, and with them held He loosens the knot of Her garment, the nīvī untied, while She, still in Her exquisite reluctance, lifts Her hands to stay Him. Refusal and surrender braided into one trembling gesture.

Now turn your gaze, O reader, away from Them and toward her, the small one at the leaf-wall. The maidservant. She has done her loving work: she has brought the Beloved to where Her Lady waits. And then, with the perfect tact of a true servant, understanding that the yugala-vilāsa is about to unfold, she withdraws. She does not stay to be seen. She slips outside the bower and presses her face to a gap in the foliage, a cchidra, a randhra, a slit in the green, and through that single aperture she drinks the sight. She asks for nothing more than this. Not to be embraced, not to be the one drawn to the couch, but only this: to follow it all with her eyes, anu-nayanam, to let the two fishes of her eyes swim and swim upon the shoreless ocean of rasa.

This is the whole prayer of the verse, and it is staggering in its smallness. Kadā kuñja-cchidre bhavatu mama nayanam. When, O Rādhe, will my eyes find such a slit in the bower wall? Not my arms, not my lips, not my place upon the flower-bed. My eyes. Only my eyes, and only at a gap, and only from outside. The lover here does not pray to be loved. She prays to be allowed to witness the love of the Two, and counts that witnessing the highest fortune her birth could carry. In Swami Śrī Hitdas ji's tender Hindi rendering of the Rādhāvallabha stream, the cry is set in the servant's own first voice: kab dekhūṅgī, when shall I behold all this, pressed to the rift of the nikuñja-bhavana.

And see how this guards the holy ground even as it opens it. The seer stands outside. There is a wall of leaves between her and the Divine Couple, and she would not for all the worlds tear it down. The wall is not a sorrow; the wall is reverence made visible. She is content with the chink, content to be the unseen servant whose only reward is the swimming of her eyes upon the ocean of rasa. The tradition gives this its highest name. The Gosvāmīs fix it for us: anurāga evāsamordhva-camatkāreṇonmādako mahābhāvaḥ, when ripened love, anurāga, blazes into a matchless astonishment that maddens even the transcendental youthful Cupid Śrī Śyāmasundara, it is called mahābhāva. And the maidservant, pressed to her leaf-gap, is bathed in the spray of that ocean, asking only to go on watching.

So the verse seats us, gently, exactly where we belong: not on the couch of petals, but at the wall of leaves, hands folded, eyes brimming, whispering, kadā, kadā, when, O Rādhe, when.