155

Begin in a trysting-kuñja at the falling of the day. The bower is dim and fragrant, woven of leaf and longing, and at its heart sits Śrī Rādhā, waiting for Her lover. She waits the way only love can wait, the whole body turned toward a footstep that has not yet come. Her glance keeps returning to the path; Her breath keeps catching; and the grief of separation lies upon Her like a coal pressed to the heart, for Her Prāṇanātha has not yet arrived.

And where is He, the dark and lovely One? Here is the wonder you must let yourself feel. Śyāmasundara, the omniscient Lord, has lost the way to the kuñja. He who holds the wheeling stars in their courses, who is the inner witness of every creature, cannot find the path to one small bower in Vṛndāvana. Drunk on the thought of Her, He wanders in the wrong direction, searching for Rādhā where Rādhā is not. O behold the prowess of Her service. This same Rādhā-ecstasy, long after, would seize Śrīman Mahāprabhu when He had taken sannyāsa, and send Him wandering and losing the way to Vraja through the Rāḍha country of Bengal, gazing at the Gaṅgā that springs from His own lotus-foot and crying out that it was the Yamunā. The very source of all rivers forgets which river is which, because love has flooded everything else away. Such is the power loosed in this play.

Now feel the heart of the maidservant, the kiṅkarī, for it is in her form that Śrīpāda enters this scene. She sees Her Svāminī suffering and cannot bear it. So she consoles Her, and then she rises and goes out into the dusk to search for Śyāmasundara. She searches and searches, and at last she finds Him: the bewildered Nāgara, His mind washed clean of direction by the wine of viraha. And here she tastes a secret sweetness most do not even know exists. She drinks in the sight of His loving anxiety, the eagerness of the Dearmost who cannot reach His Dearest. How eager Rādhā is to serve Kṛṣṇa, how eager Kṛṣṇa is to relish Her service, how each longs to make the other happy. Premamayī cannot tolerate the distress of being unable to pour upon Him the innumerable ingredients of Her mādana-rasa, that highest madness of love; and Kṛṣṇa, the transcendental Cupid of Vṛndāvana, cannot quickly come to be served, though the way is well known to Him, for love has hidden it. Full transcendental bliss, who is Kṛṣṇa, and full transcendental love, who is Rādhā, both lie helpless before the fire of separation; and only Their maidservants, most expert in service, are able to fill that aching void. This is the wonderful power of surrender at the lotus-feet of Premamayī.

So the maidservant takes the wandering Lord gently and brings Him back to His wits, leading Him through the leaves to Rādhā's kuñja; and as His shape appears in the doorway the twin fires go out at once, the fire in His breast and the fire in Hers, and the Two are made whole and happy again. This is the only wage the premika servant has ever wanted. Be happy, You two; I am made happy by the sight of Your happiness. There is no other heaven she asks for.

And now the gift within the gift. The maidservant, expert in yugala-sevā, has prepared a pān, a betel leaf folded over fresh cloves and a generous breath of camphor, "lulita nava lavaṅga, karpūra-puram": the lovely fresh cloves and abundant camphor that fill the leaf. With her own hand she places it in Kṛṣṇa's mouth. But mark this: it was never meant for Him alone, and the dark One knows it. He reads the unspoken wish hidden in the servant's heart, and so He does not keep the sweetness to Himself. He bends to Rādhā, and in the act of kissing Her He passes the chewed leaf from His mouth into Hers, the morsel now sprinkled with the nectar of His own lips, "priyatama-mukha-candra-udgīrṇa-tāmbūla-khaṇḍam": the betel-piece come forth from the moon-mouth of the Dearmost. The taste of it runs through Her like lightning. Up rise the goosebumps, dense and trembling, across Her cheeks, "ghana-pulaka-kapolā": Her cheeks crowded thick with the hairs of ecstasy standing on end, and the camphor's own coolness adds its shiver to the joy. This is what the tradition remembers in Mahāprabhu's own rapture, set down in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, that the betel Kṛṣṇa has chewed is beyond all price, the very essence of nectar, and that it is His delight to give the gopīs' mouths that gift while He kisses them. No higher reward exists.

But the play is not finished, and here the verse opens its deepest tenderness. Rādhā, having received, turns at once to giving, for She is "dāsī-vatsalā": She whose love for Her maidservant is the love of a mother for her child. She looks at the kiṅkarī who searched the whole dusk for Her lost Beloved, who walked Him home, who poured her whole self into bringing the Divine Couple together this night, and Rādhā thinks: how wonderfully My maidservant has served Us by bringing Us together here today; how much effort she has made; this delicious pān is a reward worthy of her. And She finds the answer in the sweetness still upon Her own lips. As She savors it ("svādayanti": relishing it Herself), She draws the maidservant close, She kisses her, and from Her own mouth She gives into the servant's mouth the very betel She has just been given, the leaf now twice-blessed, breathed through the mouth of Kṛṣṇa and the mouth of Rādhā both. The servant receives it and is full, full past all telling, for there is nothing in all the worlds higher than this, to be fed the remnant of the Divine Couple by the very mouth of Prāṇeśvarī Herself.

And then. Then the vision lifts. The kuñja fades, the dusk dissolves, the warm weight of that gift is gone from the mouth, and the servant of this poem stands again in his longing with nothing on his tongue but the memory and the ache. So he prays the only prayer left to him, the prayer that is this whole verse, headed by the tradition as a song of pure yearning, "abhilāṣā": O dāsī-vatsalā Rādhā, tender as a mother to Your maidservants, when, when will You draw me close as You drew her, and place into my unworthy mouth that "kim api", that indescribable morsel, the betel softened in Your beloved's moon-mouth and Your own, Your cheeks all atremble with bliss? "Karhi rādhā": when, O Rādhā? When?