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Picture it. The play in the arbour has just hushed. The motion of love has stilled, and Vṛndāvana itself seems to lean closer, holding its breath. The flowers of the bower lie crushed soft and their fragrance hangs heavy in the air, and into this stillness, knowing that her hour to serve has come, the maidservant steps quietly through the curtain of vines.

She sees Her first. Śrīmatī's garment is loosened and tousled, slipping from one shoulder, and through that disarray the sweetness of Her youthful form does not so much show as overflow, as if the loveliness could not be held inside any cloth at all and were gushing out into the grove. Beside Her the dark Nāgararāja reclines, and His long fish-like eyes still swim in the ocean of Her limbs, unwilling to come ashore. The maidservant, beholding the two of Them, is herself drowned in an ocean of bliss. There is no name for what she stands in. She does not call it joy. She lives inside it.

And there is the braid. O the loosened braid of Śrīmatī. In the clashes of love, in the ratāmarda, it has slipped its binding, and it lies dark and scattered like the night come loose upon Her shoulders. The maidservant kneels to it. With what tenderness her fingers move. Each single strand of that hair is dearer to her than a million lives of her own, and she knows it as she lifts each one, gathering the dark river of it, twining it back, smoothing it, rebinding it with a care no jeweller ever spent on any jewel. This is the service she was made for. No outsider can do it. Without Śrīmatī's own grace no one anywhere can serve so finely as the maidservant serves, for Śrīmatī loves Her sakhīs more than Her own life, and gives Herself wholly into their hands.

And the maidservant does not stop at the hair. With a soft towel she wipes the sweat of love's labour from Śrīmatī's face, that face moist and tired and more beautiful in its tiredness than any rested face could ever be. She fans Her with slow strokes of cool air. She brings sweet water to Her lips to take the fatigue away, and folded betel-leaves, and then garlands, and the dark line of collyrium for Her eyes, and the red lac to redden the soles of Her feet. Each act is small. Each act is the whole of heaven.

This, the tradition tells us through Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī in his Prīti Sandarbha, is the Lord's deepest mercy. Already full in Himself, wanting nothing, He yet wants His creatures to dwell in an existence flooded with service, that they may learn the one secret: that happiness lives in serving and everywhere else is only misery. So in His tenderness He first plants in the heart the very desire to serve, and then crowns that desire with the fortune of serving. The longing is itself His gift. The maidservant's ache to rebind that braid was placed in her by the One she serves.

Now hear the secret talk. Śrīmatī, chewing the betel-leaves the maidservant has given Her, speaks low and sweet to Her beloved. This is the rahaḥ-goṣṭhī: the private conversation, words too intimate even for Her girlfriends to overhear. Yet before Her maidservants Śrīmatī feels no shyness at all. She lets these nectar-soft words fall freely in their hearing, and the maidservant floats away on the river of them. All five of her senses are fed at once: her eyes feast on the pastimes, her ears on the romantic talk, her hands on the touch of the Divine Couple's limbs, her nose on the fragrance that pours from Them, and her tongue on the betel-leaf left over from Śrīmatī's own mouth, Svāminī's prasādī, the sweetest prasāda there is. She lacks nothing. She is complete.

And why does the tradition dare to call Kṛṣṇa Viṭendra, the king of debauchees, and why does the Hindi of the Rādhāvallabha line name Him ati-lampaṭa, the utterly amorous beloved? Hear it rightly, O heart, lest you stumble. The lightness, the moral smallness that clings to any earthly paramour, does not touch Him at all. That lightness counts only for the worldly lover. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi, in the Nāyaka-bheda, that "laghutvam atra yat proktaṁ tat tu prākṛta nāyake, na kṛṣṇe": the lightness ascribed to a paramour is for the mundane hero alone, never for Kṛṣṇa, who is the avatārī, the very fountainhead from whom all descents flow, and who has descended for one purpose: to press out the divine juice, the rasa, from His own transcendental play. A worldly man playing the paramour makes only rasābhāsa, a counterfeit, a mere shadow of rasa. He alone can be the true paramour. And the same Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi names the viṭa: "veśopacāra kuśalo dhūrta goṣṭhī viśārada kāma-tantra kalā vedi": one expert in dress and speech and all the arts of love's play. Though Kṛṣṇa keeps clever viṭa-companions like Kaḍāra and Bhāratībandha, who arrange His meetings with the beautiful gopīs, He Himself is their king, the Viṭendra. The maidservants know this well, and so the title is no slander on His name. It is praise. It names His unmatched mastery in love.

And see what the sweetness does. This blissful talk itself rekindles Them. The savour of the conversation makes the Divine Couple desire the play of love once more. The maidservant reads Their minds before a word is spoken. She gathers stemless flowers and weaves a fresh bed of them, a bed soft yet strong, strong enough to bear the very motion of Their loving, and for that reason it is called ramaṇa-talpa, the lovebed. Then, O the fortune of it, she takes Śrīmatī by the hand. Her own hand around the hand of the Queen of the play-groves. She leads Her gently to the new flower-bed, and there the Yugala sink once more into the intoxication of love, and the maidservant, near, serving, watching, drowns again in the sweetness of what she beholds.

Then the vision lifts. The grove fades. And the one who saw it, Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda, the seer of the tradition, comes back to the ordinary daylight of outer awareness, and from that distance, from this side of the curtain, he folds his hands and cries out. O Queen of the play-arbours, O kelikuñja-rāṇī. O Goddess Gāndharvikā. O proud and enchanting Rādhike, moon-faced, beautiful beyond beholding. When can I hear that sweeter-than-sweet talk You share with Your Viṭendra in the Nidhuvana bower? When may I take You by the hand and lead You to the lovebed? When may I rearrange Your loosened hair and Your tousled garment after the play of love? O Svāminī, when, when will You give me this, the festival of qualification, the adhikārotsava, the joy not of the service only but of being made fit to render it at all? He does not even ask to serve yet. He asks first for the eligibility to ask. That is how high the threshold stands, and how low he lays himself before it.