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Begin in the hush that follows the dance of the eyes, when the play of glances has spent itself and the grove grows quiet. Picture Nāgara, the dark beauty of Vraja, standing where He stood a moment ago, His mind sunk so deep into Śrīmatī's form, Her qualities, Her pastimes, that ecstasy has overwhelmed Him. He sways there, Śyāma lost in Rādhā, no longer certain where He stands, the kuñja around Him thinned to nothing by the flood of remembering Her.

And Nāgarīmaṇi, watching Him drowned in Her, decides to play. This is the jewel-among-heroines at Her sweet mischief: while He is absorbed, She slips away from the kuñja and hides Herself in another bower, taking only one maidservant with Her. There She too stands tasting Śyāma-rasa, turning over in Her own heart every remembered sweetness of Him. The arbour is lonely. No one has come. And the kiṅkarī beside Her, seeing Svāminī softened and brimming, knows what an hour this is.

Consider, O heart, the wonder of this maidservant. She is sakhī and dāsī at once, an intimate girlfriend who is also a servant at the feet, and in that braided nearness there lives a relish found nowhere else. Friendship gives her the boldness to ask; servanthood keeps her low enough to be trusted with the answer. So she leans close and whispers, "O Svāmini, O Rādhe, there is nobody here in this lonely arbour. Bless this maidservant: tell her something of how Kṛṣṇa loves You."

And Rādhā answers. O the answers She gives. From the very mouth and heart of mahā-bhāva the words come oozing, and it is not speech as we know speech, for from each syllable an incomparable ocean of love streams out, as though the letters themselves were melting into rasa. "O sakhi," She says, "Kṛṣṇa thinks of Me day and night. If He could, He would rip open His own chest to set Me inside His heart and keep Me there forever. When He meets Me, He is like one who has found, after long and aching effort, a single priceless jewel, and He cannot decide where to keep Me, for nowhere seems safe enough."

She speaks on, and the maidservant's thirst only deepens. "With His own hands He folds a pān for Me with camphor and lays it in My mouth. He holds My chin and draws My face close to His and laughs softly. He dresses Me Himself and takes Me onto His lap in ecstasy. When He lifts a lamp to gaze upon My face, tears of love run down His cheeks. And He takes My feet into His hands so that He may paint the red lac along their edges." Each tender word is sprinkled over with sweet Kṛṣṇa-rasa, and the more Svāminī speaks, the more the listener leans in, never filled, always thirsting for the next syllable, for such nectar can be relished nowhere else.

This is the cool that the maidservant drinks. Her heart had been scorched with longing, and now the nectar of Svāminī's words falls upon it like a downpour of soft rain, and the burning is soothed. It is the same coolness, the tradition reminds us, that Kṛṣṇa-kathā heard from the saints pours upon the parched hearts of the conditioned souls bound in this world. The Śrīmad Bhāgavata fixes it in its second canto, that verse the saints carry on their tongues: pibanti ye bhāgavataḥ: those who drink the nectar of topics of the Lord gathered into the cups of their ears, their hearts contaminated by material desires are purified, and these fortunate ones swiftly attain His lotus-feet. This is why such talk is called indescribable, anirvacanīya: no words can hold its sweetness, for the sweetness is larger than any word that would carry it.

And then Nāgara wakes. He surfaces from His own absorption, looks for Priyājī in the kuñja, and does not find Her. So He goes searching, grove to grove, until He comes upon the bower where She sits speaking of Him to Her maidservant. And it is as if the very words He overhears Premamayī speaking take shape and stand before Him: the sweetness of Her speech about His love becomes visible, almost touchable, in the air between them.

And as Śrīpāda watches all of this unfold within his inward eye, the vision thins and is gone. He returns to his outer self, to the ordinary breath of the body, to the world that does not yet hold Her face. And from that emptied place the whole prayer rises, simple and aching, the longing the tradition names the very thirst for such a conversation: O Rādhe, when will You speak such words to me? When will each syllable from Your lips be that incomparable ocean of love, that hundredfold shower of nectar falling without pause into the cups of these ears? These sweet and tender words are waves of nectar, a reviving elixir, the very essence of the topmost transcendental bliss, and who can describe their greatness? When will I sit in the lonely grove as Your servant and hear the soft, real, cooling sukathā of Your voice? This desire the tradition places in Prabodhānanda's heart, and through him into ours: fulfil it, O dearest beloved of Kṛṣṇa, by Your grace alone.