14

Begin with the hour. It is the slow turning of the night in Vṛndāvana, when the kuñja still holds the warmth of nearness and the air hangs thick with the scent of crushed flowers and spent love. Deep within a bower among the vines, Rādhā and Śyāma have completed Their pastimes, and a stillness lies over the grove like dew. Picture the kiṅkarī, the maidservant of love, who during the love-play had slipped outside and watched the sweetness She is born to serve through a small hole in the creepers, that nectar-giving play-grove of kadamba which is her whole heaven. Now she returns into the kuñja to serve: to fan the youthful Couple, to bring cool scented water, to offer betel leaves. This is her entire fortune, not to be loved as the beloved, but to wait at the edge of love and be permitted to tend it.

And here is the tender confusion that makes this scene glow. Śrīmatī, whom the tradition calls Vilāsinī-maṇi, the very jewel of playful girls, is so drowned in the ecstasy of union that She has forgotten everything, has lost the count of the world. Though Śyāma is still beside Her, in the deep absorption of rati She believes She is alone with Her sakhi, and She mistakes the dark for day, or day for the dark. So out of that intoxication She turns to Her maidservant and says, in all innocence, "Sakhi, come, let us go down into Kṛṣṇāmṛta and bathe." Hear the word She has chosen. Kṛṣṇāmṛta: black nectar. She means the river-bath, for Kṛṣṇā is a name of the Yamunā, whose blackish water carries Kṛṣṇa's own colour, and the tradition keeps this clearly. But the word is śliṣṭa, double-edged, and it trembles with another meaning, for Kṛṣṇa-amṛta is also the nectar that is Kṛṣṇa Himself, the solitary union-rasa of the Beloved.

The maidservant catches that second meaning and cannot help her loving mischief. She had heard only a request for a Yamunā-bath, but in jest, to make the joy swell, she takes Kṛṣṇāmṛta to mean Kṛṣṇa's own intimate tryst-nectar, and answers, "Be patient, beloved. Just wait until night comes." For that nectar, she teases, is plunged into only by dark. This is the special wit the tradition prizes, the hāsa-viśeṣa, the laughter that hides a deeper promise: in another telling she says it tenderer still, "Wait, O Kṛṣṇamayī, O Kṛṣṇapriyā, until night falls, when no elders, no superiors can mark us; then I will lead You to a fresh bowerhouse in Vṛndāvana and let You bathe in the Kṛṣṇa-nectar as long as Your heart desires." See what she has done. She has taken Rādhā's slip of the tongue and turned it into a doorway, promising not a river but Kṛṣṇa Himself, the dark amṛta in which Rādhā longs to plunge. This is the wit of a servant who knows her mistress's heart better than Her mistress knows it in that moment.

Then comes the smile. When Śrīmatī hears these joking words, the ecstasy named rati rises in Her, and understanding Her own confusion, that She had mistaken the hour, She laughs softly. Even as She tries to press the symptoms of that mood down, to hide from Her maidservant how thoroughly love has undone Her, the corner of Her mouth lifts in a slight smile She cannot conceal. O that smile. The kiṅkarī, watching, feels herself made rich beyond all measure simply by tasting its sweetness; the maidservants hold the sight of that one curve of Rādhā's lips to be the greatest honour and the greatest reward. To have caused, by her play, that hidden smile is the maidservant's coronation.

And Rādhā chastises her for it. With sidelong glances filled with a slight loving anger, half tenderness, half play, She scolds the cheeky sakhi who teased Her. And here the morning's gift waits ready. At dawn the maidservants had gathered kadamba flowers to weave into ornaments and garlands for Śrīmatī's adorning, gathered them so suddenly, so eagerly, that the honey still wept from the blossoms. Rādhā reaches for one such honey-dripping kadamba flower and beats Her maidservant with it. Beats her, with a flower dripping nectar. And the maidservant, struck, is not punished but crowned, for she thinks: "How much honour merciful Śrīmatī pours upon me, that She should strike me with these honey-filled kadamba blooms, that I should be near enough in this very moment to drink the beauty of Her eyes and Her face." The blow is the blessing. The mock-anger is the embrace. This is the strange arithmetic of mādhurya service, where to be chastised by Rādhā's own hand, with Her own flowers, in Her own grove, is the highest fortune a soul can receive. From this jesting an incomparable joy is born, the very rasa-giving multitude of pastimes the maidservant longs to taste.

For the tradition opens the word kadamba in two directions, and both are sweet. Kadamba is the flower, the round honeyed blossom of Vṛndāvana. And kadamba also means an abundance, a thick gathering, a multitude. So rasada-keli-kadamba is at once the nectar-giving kadamba flower of play and the whole abundant treasury of nectar-giving pastimes. The maidservant longs not for a single blow of a single flower but for the entire profusion of intimate sport, the sweet nectar of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa's love-play that gushes out of the bower cottage and spills upon whoever is graced to stand near and serve.

And there is yet another way the tradition tastes this scene, threaded around the same words, for some editions read yāvatīti in place of yāvad eti. In that telling, today Mādhava has sent a message to Śrīmatī that She may meet Him in a grove of keli-kadamba trees, and so at night She goes out to the tryst. Because Her body shines like lightning and might betray Her, She becomes the abhisārikā: She smears Herself with blackish musk, drapes Herself in a blue sārī and a blue cape, hangs sapphire necklaces at Her throat and slips blue bangles upon Her wrists, so that no one will mark Her. Thus the golden girl merges Herself with the dark night, becoming dark for the sake of going unseen to Śyāma; the old pada sings it, how the fair one turned shadow-coloured for the abhisāra, dressed in new love and in night itself. The maidservant walks beside this secret splendour, readying the meeting, keeping the watch. And when at last Nāgara hears the faint jingling of Rādhā's anklebells in the yard of the trysting-bower, He eagerly draws Her within the kuñja, and Their two hearts melt as They behold each other. Rāi sits at Śyāma's left side, and the desires of Them both are fulfilled. Through every telling the maidservant's place is the same: to ready the meeting, to keep the watch, to fan and to serve, to be near.

And then, always, the vision lifts and is gone. The kiṅkarī, who in trance had stood within the eternal grove, finds herself suddenly returned, and out of the ache of that vanishing she folds her hands and prays the only prayer her heart now knows. O Rādhe Vinodinī, delight of all delights, be merciful and write my name among Your maidservants; when will You count me as one of Your own? When will You, full of loving bliss, affectionately command me, "Come, let us go and bathe in Kṛṣṇāmṛta"? And I will answer, "Just wait, O Kṛṣṇamayī, O Kṛṣṇapriyā, until the night, and I will bring You to the keli-kuñja and make You bathe in the Kṛṣṇa-nectar." And hearing my playful words You will be filled with joy, and You will take a fragrant, nectar-dripping keli-kadamba flower and throw it upon my body in tender chastisement. When, O when, will the hairs of my body stand erect with rapture because You have honoured me so? This is the cry of the whole prayer. Not give me Kṛṣṇa. Not give me the bower. Only this: let me be the maidservant who is teased and scolded and struck with flowers, let me be near enough to be beaten by Rādhā's own loving hand, and so become at last the rightful recipient, the adhikāriṇī, of this rasa-filled honour from the daughter of Vṛṣabhānu.