107

Begin with the spring. It has come down quietly into sweet Vṛndāvana, and the trees and the climbing vines have answered it all at once, every branch breaking into blossom, every tendril heavy with flower. A soft Malayan breeze comes wandering through and lifts the fragrance off the petals, and at the touch of that scent the whole forest shivers. The moving creatures shiver and the still ones shiver, the deer and the parrots and the very leaves trembling with a joy they cannot name. Around each cluster of flowers the bees gather and hum, and their humming is not noise but a kind of singing, a low golden murmur that fills the grove. The cuckoos answer from the high branches, and their calls are arrows of longing, stirring the heart toward love. O Vṛndāvana, you arrange everything; you leave nothing undone for the perfection of Their springtime play. And today, into this ocean of pastimes, the Yugala steps eagerly, ready to bathe. The Rādhāvallabha singers give this scene its own bright name: viśada-nikuñja-keli, the radiant bower-play, and they show us the Couple already richly arrayed and adorned, settled into their games like jewels into a setting.

They have a golden ball, and They throw it between Them. Watch how it flies. O Rādhe, listen to Your own bangles, how they jingle and ring when You lift Your arm and send the ball arcing toward Śyāma. He should catch it. He means to catch it. But He cannot, because He is looking at You, and the sight of You has emptied His hands of all their cleverness. The ball falls past Him. And You clap, Prāṇeśvarī, You clap Your hands together and cry out in delight, "You are defeated! You are defeated!" How sweet that cry is, and sweeter still the glances that go with it, glances that fall on Śyāma like the very flower-arrows of Kāma.

Slowly He gathers Himself again. "Throw it once more," He says. "If I miss it this time, then truly I accept defeat." So You throw it once more, and with what a gesture, turning a little, so that the loveliness of Your side and the grace of Your form are shown for one breath in the throwing. And again He is undone. The ball goes by Him untouched, because He is not watching the ball, He has never been watching the ball. You laugh aloud, the whole grove ringing with it, and clap Your hands and call it again, "Defeated! Defeated!" And Nāgara stands there drowning in the sweetness of Your laughter, lost in the sweetness of every small motion of Your hands.

Now You will tease Him a little further. You give a word to Your maidservant, and she steps up to Śyāma and scolds Him with mock severity. "Oho. Why are You still here? Why do You not go off and herd Your cows? What pleasure can a cowherd boy, a mere rākhāl, find in games like these? Do not come challenging my victorious mistress again." And You add, gently, with a smile that cuts deeper than any scolding, "Sundara, I cannot play this game with You; You must practise more first. But listen, here is another game. You hide, and I will come and find You. Yet if I am the one who hides, You will never find Me, not without the help of My sakhīs and My mañjarīs." "Surely I will find You," He says. "Very well," You answer. "Then You hide first."

So the hide-and-seek begins. Śyāmasundara slips away into a forest of dark Tamāla trees, and there He all but vanishes, His dark beauty melting into the dark of those trunks until He seems to have become the grove itself. And now You come searching, with the maidservant at Your side, and oh, how cleverly You read the forest for Him. Rūpa Gosvāmī keeps Your very words for us in the Vidagdha-Mādhava: where the honey no longer drips from the trees, where the birds are too dizzy with the wine of love to find each other, there, You say, the peacock-crowned thief of all three worlds' hearts has not passed. And then, coming nearer the Tamāla grove, You read the signs again, as the same play records them: the bees so drunk they have forgotten to drink the flower-honey, the parrot so stunned it cannot lift the ripe pomegranate, the doe so dizzy she lets the green grass go uneaten. Here, You say. My Lord has come this way, walking like the noblest of elephants. The whole forest faints in His wake, and the fainting itself is His footprint.

You enter the Tamāla grove, the maidservant following like Your shadow. But here a sweet bewilderment takes You, for the Tamāla trees are dark as Śyāma is dark, and You see Him everywhere and nowhere, His shape in every shadow. You pass close by the very tree where He stands hidden, and You do not see Him; and He, watching, laughs to Himself silently and signs to the maidservant not to give Him away. She drinks in the sweetness of that secret smile and keeps it. But the bees do not keep it. The little bumblebee-girls come drifting from another quarter, drawn helplessly toward the fragrance of His body, and they fly straight to the Tamāla tree where He hides. You follow the bees, O clever one, and so You catch Him, crying out, "I have got You. I have got You. You are defeated, You are defeated." And the maidservant covers her mouth and shakes with hidden laughter.

But Śyāma will not let it rest there. "Defeated, how? Now it is Your turn to hide. If I find You, the score is even; if I cannot find You, then I accept defeat." "Very well," You say. "Sit here. Now I will hide." And how do You hide? This is the marvel the line keeps for us in the words prāpta-saṅgopanādyaiḥ: the complete concealing. There stands a nearby arbour set with golden statues, and You go and take Your place among them, standing still as they stand still, and at once Your golden radiance pours over them so that every statue glows as lovely as Yourself. This is the wonder the tradition calls abhirūpya, the making-alike: the dead gold lit into Your living likeness, so that the whole row seems a row of Rādhās. Śyāmasundara enters that kuñja and stops, undone. Which is She? He cannot tell. He decides He must find out by touch, and goes from form to form, laying His hand on each. And when at last His hand finds You, the touch itself betrays You to no one, for You are struck motionless with ecstasy at His touch and give no other sign, and He, not knowing, passes on to the next. You smile the faintest smile, and again the maidservant tastes its sweetness. In the end it is only with her help that Śyāma finds You out, and so by the rule He is defeated again, for He was to find You without the sakhīs. And the joy of that maidservant overflows all its banks. Standing there in the flood of it, she lifts her voice and sings the last line for us all: jīyād rasika-mithunaṁ klṛpta-keli-kadambam: glory, all glory to the Relishing Couple and the boundless garland of their love-play.

This is what the humming grove is for. The bees, the breeze, the blossoming Tamāla, the golden statues, the very dizziness of the deer, all of it is Vṛndāvana arranging itself so that this one couple may toss a ball and lose at hide-and-seek and laugh. And we who remember it are given the smallest, most precious office: to be near, the way the maidservant is near, holding a secret, drinking a smile, ready to fetch the ball, and at the end to sing.