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Picture it. Evening has come down over Vṛndāvana, and the kuñjas have drawn their leaf-curtains close. Somewhere within the bowers a fragrance moves that has no name, the fragrance of two who belong only to each other, and the whole grove leans inward to listen. O sakhi, look closely, for someone is shining there. Not a king on a throne, not the Lord whom the Vedas circle with their careful praises. Someone else. The crown of all who know how to taste, rasika-śekhara, the chief of relishers, has appeared, and He has appeared not in His majesty but in His sweetness, lost and laughing and helpless inside the love of the groves.

He is the one to whom the tender play of the nikuñja is dearest of all, nikuñja-nava-nāgarī-kuca-kiśora-keli-priyaḥ. He delights in the adolescent love-games with the ever-fresh ladylove of the bowers, the nava-nāgarī, She who is forever new, forever first-blossoming, never once stale to His eyes though He has gazed upon Her ten thousand times. This is the secret the Vedas could not reach: that the Master of all worlds has come down into a grove to be a kiśora, a boy half-grown into wonder, that He has set aside His thunder and taken up tenderness, that the breast of His beloved is dearer to Him than the worship of the gods.

O sakhi, do you understand who He is? He is rasika-śekhara because He has chosen the one rasa the universe cannot give Him from above. The Vedas offer Him reverence, awe, the great hush of stuti, and He turns His face away from all of it. He has said it Himself, the tradition keeps it in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta: when My beloved grows angry and rebukes Me, that very scolding draws My heart away from all the reverential praises the Vedas sing. Think of it. The One whom existence flatters with its hymns finds those hymns thin and pale beside one frown of Śrī Rādhā. He has tasted reverence to its bottom and found it dry. Now He thirsts for the wine that only She can pour, the wine of nearness, of quarrel, of a love that dares to be displeased with Him. And the tradition adds, in Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī's Durgama-Saṅgamanī-ṭīkā upon the very first line of the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, that Kṛṣṇa's mastership in relishing mellows blazes out in its fullest splendor only here, only in the company of Śrī Rādhā and the gopīs, for in the presence of such associates His forms and qualities rise up in a way they rise nowhere else.

For there are two sweetnesses in Her, and He must drink them both. There is Her dākṣiṇya-rasa, Her yielding, Her soft submission, when She melts toward Him and hides nothing. He has drunk deep of that. But the master relisher is not content. He longs now for the other vintage, Her vāma-svabhāva, Her unsubmissive mood, the proud turning-away, the māna that bars the door of Her favor against Him. And so, because He is rasika-śekhara, He goes seeking the very anger that will wound Him, for in that wound there is a flavor unimaginable to any heart but His. O sakhi, see how rare this is: in Dvārakā, the Bhāgavata remembers in its tenth book, He once teased His own queen Rukmiṇī to draw out the sweetness of her māna, but she took His jest in earnest, swooned, and fell to the ground like a banana tree felled by the wind. The queens cannot give Him this. Only the Vraja-sundarīs can, who bless Him by making Him taste flavours He Himself could never have imagined, whose very bodies and minds and hearts were fashioned for this single purpose; and of them all, Śrī Rādhikā holds this power to its very utmost.

See how it begins, O sakhi. He leans close and starts to speak. "He priye candrā-," He says, and stops. He lets the half-word hang in the fragrant air, and then He startles, as though He has caught Himself in a slip. Śrī Rādhā hears it and Her heart goes cold: did He mean to call Her by Her rival's name, Candrāvalī? She draws into silence, Her whole body becoming a closed lotus. And He, the cunning sweet one, finishes the broken sentence as innocently as the dawn: "Priye candrānane, O lotus-faced beloved, why are You angry with Me now?" But She will not be soothed by so thin a thread. Her brows draw together like two drawn bows. "Ohe," She says, "can You hide the crash of thunder once it has sounded? The granddaughter of Karālā plays always in Your heart. Do not stitch Candrāvalī into Candrānane before My eyes and think Me blind. My Lord, I offer You My obeisance from across this distance. Go. Go to the one Your heart desires." And She falls silent, and turns away, and the grove holds its breath.

And now, O sakhi, behold the wonder, the thing this whole verse was sung to show. Kṛṣṇa gazes at that angry face and is undone by it. The tradition keeps His own thought in the Vidagdha-Mādhava: Her face afflicted with anger, Her eyebrows that shame the bow of Cupid and stand victorious in the war of love, Her eyes that defeat the lotus, this very anger-clouded face delights My mind beyond all delight. He tries every art to thaw Her and fails, fails wonderfully, fails as only a lover wants to fail. And then the rasika-śekhara does the thing that no Lord of the Vedas would ever do. He turns to Her girlfriends. He folds His hands before the sakhīs. He bows His head to them.

And here is the very heart of the verse, prakaṭa-pūrṇa-natyutsavaḥ: His obeisance becomes a full and manifest festival. He does not bow to them dryly, as a man bows merely to gain his end. No. Each bend of His head is a celebration, each folding of His hands a holiday of the heart. For He knows the secret the sakhīs hold: the madana-mahābhāva of Śrī Rādhikā, Her highest love, is in their keeping. Through them alone the closed door opens. And so the proudest one in all the worlds finds it the sweetest joy to be humble before Her handmaids. The Rādhāvallabha singers of Vṛndāvana fix this in the very name of the verse, calling it Abhilāṣā, the heart's longing, and saying it plainly: He whose joy is unhesitating, complete humility before the sakhīs, niḥsaṅkoca and pūrṇa-vinaya, that rasika-śekhara is shining in the groves. How beautiful Nāgara is in that moment, O sakhi, how achingly beautiful, the master of the three worlds with His head lowered before the friends of a cowherd girl, begging them to carry His sorrow to Her.

The sakhīs take pity on Him. They go to Śrī Rādhā and gently chide Her, for they are on Śyāma's side: He would never make such a slip, Svāminī, Your anger has no ground; be pleased with Him again, the moment is ripe, for if You hold this huff too long He will rise and leave and You will weep for it after. And Śrī Rādhā, hearing them, begins to soften within: they are right, how many times has Nāgara called Me Candrānane? The sakhīs read Her loosening face and understand that Her pride is melting and that She will forgive everything if only He comes now. They return to Śyāma: "Her anger fades, but bowing to us will not finish it. Now You must fall before Mānamayī Herself and beg Her pardon. Only so will Her mercy be Yours." And an ocean rises in His heart when He hears that He has their leave to go to Her.

Then comes the moment that drowns the whole grove in bliss. Rasika-śekhara floats upon a sea of rasa as He falls at the rasamayī feet, the nectar-soaked lotus-feet of His dearmost, nija-priyatamā-pade rasamaye, and lays His own crowned head upon them. The One whom the Vedas crown bows His crown to Her feet. And She, looking down upon that bowed and beautiful head, lets Her māna dissolve like dew, and forgives Him. The two are one again. And now, O sakhi, now the sakhīs and the mañjarīs drink the meeting of the Divine Pair, the Yugala reunion that their own hands have woven, and there is no joy in all the worlds to set beside it. The Vraja groves know it too, what the Gīta Govinda sang of Him in the arbour, śliṣyati kām api cumbati kām api, how He kisses one and embraces another amid His girlfriends; and the kinkarī stays beside Svāminī all the while like Her very shadow, surrendered wholly to Her service.

Do you see why the mañjarī prays here to Kṛṣṇa and not to Rādhā? Because He has become dear to them in this, dear precisely because He is wholly conquered by Her love, fully under Svāminī's sway. In their eyes He is beautiful only when He is Hers, only when His crown is at Her feet. So they do not pray, "Show us Your majesty." They pray, "Show us how You belong to our Svāminī. Make us float in oceans of bliss by letting us watch You give Your whole head, Your whole self, to Her." This is the prayer that ends the verse, and it ends not with a plea for the Lord's grace alone but for a place, a sthiti, a firm and unmoving standing-room, an avichala sthāna as the Hit singers name it, at those rasa-drenched feet.

For the handmaids never worship Him alone. The tradition has set it down forever in the Alaṅkāra-Kaustubha: without Rādhā, Kṛṣṇa gives no happiness, and without Kṛṣṇa, She gives none either; as the night is nothing without the moon and the moon nothing without the night, and the kumudinī-blossoms of the pond open for neither alone. The mañjarī worships Śrī Kṛṣṇa only to reach Śrī Rādhā, and tastes the full nectar of sweetness simply by serving Her; the beauty of such hearts can never be grasped by those who worship Bhagavān alone. Without Svāminī their world goes dark, and not even the Lord's own mercy can light that darkness. So when they beg for a place at the feet, it is Her feet they mean, and they ask Him only because He, being Hers, can give it. And the tradition leaves a second reading too, soft as a turned leaf: that Her māna subsides through the sakhīs' own loving labor, that they themselves arrange the Yugala's reunion, and the kinkarīs float in bliss simply seeing how dear Svāminī is to Śyāma once Her anger lifts. Either way the prayer is the same: O Rasika-śekhara, O Śyāmasundara forever conquered by love, grant me always a place at the delicious lotus-feet of Your dearmost Priyājī.