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Begin in the grove, in the green hush after the storm of māna has passed. The quarrel is over. Earlier there were the tears, the turned shoulder, the long proud silence, and the sakhīs hovering at the edges of it, anxious and tender, reading the weather of Her face. Now they have understood that Rādhikā's proud huff is spent. They have read it in the softening of Her brow, in the easing of Her mouth, and so they have done the most loving thing a maidservant can do: with a glance and a nod among themselves they have turned the Nāgara-maṇi, the jewel-prince of all lovers, back toward Her bower. Go to Her now, their silence says. She is ready, though She will never say so.

And He goes, eager, that Nāgararāja, hungry for the smallest taste of Her sweetness. But She is not finished being unfindable. Here, O Rādhe, You are standing and speaking with me, Your kinkarī, Your own little servant, and when He arrives before You, You will not see Him. You will not hear Him. He stands close, His eyes thrown upon Your lotus-face, drinking it, waiting like a beggar at a door, coaxing You with His sweet flattering words; and You string the thread of Your conversation with me as calmly as if You were stringing a garland of forest flowers, smiling a small private smile, looking everywhere but at Him.

O the gravity of this indifference. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes the wonder of it in the Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi, in the Anubhāva of the anubhāvas, where one day Śrī Rādhā strings a flower-garland for Kṛṣṇa and keeps on stringing it even after He has appeared before Her, pretending not to see Him at all; and Śyāmalā-sakhī leans in to chide Her: "Sakhi, Aghadamana is waiting and staring at Your lotus-face. O bewildered girl, how amazing, that still You keep stringing this garland of forest-flowers with a smile, how inconceivably grave is Your mood of indifference." The tradition gives this emotional ornament a name, vivvoka: the proud heroine who pretends to ignore the very gallant She most inwardly desires. But no name holds it. For this is not coldness. This indifference is itself a very elevated way of serving Him. Śyāmasundara is most helplessly drawn to exactly this sweet, grave, unreachable girl; the more You pretend not to want Him, the more He cannot bear to be without You. You are doing this for His joy. Even Your turning-away is an offering.

He cannot stand it long. He comes nearer. And here, O Rādhe, comes the moment my heart waits for: He reaches out and catches the soft falling edge of Your fine cloth, the dukūla-pallava, the leaf-tip of Your garment, and gives it the smallest, most daring tug. And You cry out, "aho!", and whirl Your eyes upon me, upon Your kinkarī, with a round wide-eyed wonder and a little flush of feigned anger, as if to say: Who does this bold boy think He is? Stop Him, sakhī. Save Me from the hands of this rascal. From the very corners of Your eyes the plea slips to me, O kinkari, hold Him back. But O, the eyes that beg me to stop Him are the same eyes already shining. There is no anger in them that the heart cannot see straight through. The protest and the welcome are folded into one glance, and I stand there flooded, holding both at once, undone by the streams of sweetness gushing from this single small look.

Then He takes Your arm. Giridhārī takes the soft creeper of Your forearm, the bhuja-vallī, the tender vine, and holds it with such adoring care, with so much reverence in His daring, with such ādara, that I cannot tell anymore who is the lord and who is the servant here. And at the wonder of Śyāma's touch upon Your skin, O Rādhe, the small hairs of Your body rise and stand and tremble, a whole garland of horripilation blooming along Your limbs, romāñca after pulaka, a necklace of ecstasy strung of standing hair that no jeweller could string, the roma-srajā that no goldsmith could equal. You blossom, You are gladdened, ullasita; Your smile changes. It is no longer the small private smile of indifference. It opens. It is helpless now, true now, the smile of a heart that has stopped pretending.

And then, O then, the thing for which there are no words. Your whole form sinks into rasa and is lost in it. You who are savour personified, Rasamayī, You who are rasa itself made into a body, now merge with the very nectar You are made of and become One with it, the savourer and the savoured no longer two; rasa-līna-mūrti, the form dissolved in flavour, the way salt dissolves into the sea and is the sea. And I, Your little servant standing at the hem of Your garment, taste every drop of this through Śyāmasundara, for it is His joy in You that overflows back through me, and there is no edge, no floor, no ceiling to the bliss that fills the kinkarī then.

This is the ache that Prabodhānanda pours into these lines, the one He gives to His own servant-heart. Not "may I have this," never that, but only: when will I be allowed to see it? When will I be given eyes to stand at the edge of this grove and watch Your form merge into rasa, and then, after, to see Your smile break open, Your hāsya bloom upon Your face? The whole prayer is one ache of waiting. The servant does not ask to enter the picture. She asks only to be permitted to behold it, to be near enough that His delight in You spills over and wets her too. O Rasamayī, O daughter of Vṛṣabhānu, O Hāsyamayī, smiling Rādhe whose laughter is the dawn, when, O when, will I see Your rasika form?