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Picture it. The day has thinned to that soft hour when the forest leans inward and grows quiet, and at the very borders of Vṛndā's woodland, where the cultivated kuñjas give way to the deeper green, the divine Couple have slipped away from the others. A little before this, Svāminī had shown the trembling of prema-vaicittya, that wonder of love where the beloved is in the arms and yet the heart fears separation, and now the two of Them have come out into the forest for vana-vihāra. The natural beauty of the woodland rouses sweet amorous longing in Them both. A moment ago the sakhīs were near. Then Lalitā found a pretext, some blossoms that simply had to be gathered, some garland that simply had to be strung, and with a knowing tenderness the girlfriends drew back into the trees. They leave the Two alone. The grove itself seems to hold its breath.

O bower at the forest's edge, you become a temple now. The wind that moves through you is shy. The flowering creepers lower their faces. For within your latticed walls a festival is beginning that has no name large enough to hold it, and Svāminī, our Rādhā, is at the very center of it. And do not think this is only for tonight. Sadā, the song says: always, forever, on these borders of the bowers She is given over to this play.

See how the tradition tells it. There are three kinds of amorous festival in this love. In the first, Śyāma leads and Svāminī follows. In the third, both move as one. But this one is the second, and this one is Hers. This is no mere anaṅga raṅgotsava, no ordinary revel of Cupid; this is svānanda raṅgotsava, a festival of Her own joy, and here Svāminī takes the lead, and Śyāmasundara, the dark and beautiful one, follows after Her. The honey of His lips, that nectar which maddens every gopī and which forever floods the open holes of His all-conquering flute, She drinks fully, drinks deeply, and even at the very threshold of the festival She is already intoxicated, already swaying, already drunk on the sweetness of Mādhava's mouth. Adbhuta, the tradition calls it: wondrous, astonishing. There is no measuring this.

And what is this nectar of His lips? The tradition itself marvels at it through the very mouth of Mahāprabhu. For in the Gambhīrā at Purī, taking on the inner mood of Śrīmatī Herself, the Lord tasted this same intoxicating nectar and sang of it: "Nāgara! Listen to the pastimes of Your lips." Those lips, He sang, turn everything upside down. They intoxicate the minds of women and draw their very tongues toward them. They are so brazen, so shameless, that they attract not only women but men, and even the flute itself, that dry hollow reed which is male, which they teach to forget every other flavour and drink only this. They wake the unconscious into consciousness; they are great magicians, great tricksters, that give a dry piece of wood a mind and senses and then make it drink its own sweetness without pause. Where the nectar of the lips and the vibration of the flute meet, the whole of the three worlds is pulled off its feet. And when the gopīs try to stand firm out of fear of propriety, the flute only mocks them; it loosens their girdles before their very elders, strips away their shame and their morality, and, as if taking them by the hair, drags them off and makes them, willing or unwilling, into His own maidservants, while the people who hear of it only laugh. In this way the nectar of His lips makes women dance. Such is the honey Svāminī is drinking now. Such is the wine that has made Her drunk inside the bower.

But here is the secret the tradition guards most tenderly, the secret that turns this whole verse into a cry. All this while, one has stayed. The maidservant, the mañjarī, has remained beside Svāminī like Her own shadow, and when the Couple withdrew into the sweet kuñja to love, she did not withdraw; she went and stood at the latticed window and looked in, witnessing the sweet pastimes, watching, waiting, ready. And now the time of her service comes. When Svāminī grows so intoxicated by Mādhava's lips that She can no longer continue the festival, when the honey of His sweetness has carried Her past Herself, someone must enter the kuñja, gently, at exactly the right moment, and bring Her back to sobriety, restore Her to Herself, so that the festival of Cupid may begin again. How expert is this blessed maidservant, who alone can do this. She slips inside and does the one thing no one else may do.

For this is a service that no one else in all of Vṛndāvana can render. Not Govinda's own dear companions, the cowherd friends, govinda-priya-varga-durgama, for it is hard for them even to draw near. Not even the sakhīs, sakhī-vṛndair anālakṣita, unseen by the whole band of girlfriends; not even Lalitā, not even Viśākhā, the great sakhīs who are Rādhā's very life. The mañjarīs stand more prominent than the sakhīs here, not in rank of love but in this one thing: they can enter the most confidential chamber, the deepest fold of the bliss, where even the dearest girlfriends do not go, and serve there.

O Rādhe, do You see why the heart breaks here? It is not that Your servant longs for nearness for nearness's own sake. It is that there is a service only a maidservant can give You, a service Your greatest girlfriends cannot reach, a service that exists only in the innermost chamber of Your joy, and the one who sings this verse wants nothing of this world or the next except to be that one. Not to be seen by the sakhīs; durgama, beyond reach; anālakṣita, unnoticed; to be the small unseen hand that tends You when You are drunk on Mādhava's mouth, that makes You ready once more for the festival of Your own joy.

And so the whole song narrows to a single ache, a single trembling word: kadā nu, when, when, when. When will the Queen of Vṛndāvana, Vṛndāvanādhīśvarī, look on this one with mercy and place this impossible, hidden, unreachable service into these hands? Not as a right. Not as a thing earned. Only kṛpayā, by Her mercy alone, dāsyaṁ dāsyati, will She give the gift of being Her dāsī. The verse does not demand. It does not even hope with confidence. It simply kneels at the border of the bower it may never enter and asks: when, O Queen, when will You be so kind?