16

Picture the night just ending. In the deep cup of a kuñja, screened by jasmine and the dark leaves of tamāla, the sky is only now beginning to pale at the rim. All through the dark hours, on a bed of strewn flowers, Śrī Rādhā has been awake. Not from sleeplessness, but from the sweetest fullness, the whole night passed in joyful play with Her rasika nāgara, Her connoisseur lover, the cowherd prince whom the Rādhāvallabha singers tenderly name Śrī Lālajī, He who relishes every flavour of Her heart. They have lain facing one another, Śyāmasundara resting His dark head upon a flower pillow, Svāminī making a pillow of His left arm. They have whispered, teased, laughed the soft laughter of lovers, traded romantic and playful words, and let their two hearts float in every direction on the rising waves of love-nectar. Their friend Nidrā, the goddess of sleep, hovered all night with nothing to do, for there was no doorway for her where two such hearts were so wholly drunk on each other. This is what the tradition means by ujjāgara, the vigil of love: not weariness, but a wakefulness so full of sweetness that sleep could find no room to enter.

And now, as the morning comes, the maidservant comes too. She has waited through the night at the edge of the grove, holding her own heart in her hands, and now she is granted the highest fortune: to gather Her Svāminī up and serve Her. First the bath. She leads Rādhā to the Yamunā, and look how the river herself conspires in the remembrance, for the water is cool and blackish, the very colour of Śyāma. So when the kiṅkarī bathes Her, Śrīmatī is bathed twice over. She has already been bathed all night in the stream of Kṛṣṇa's sweetness; now she is bathed again in water that wears His complexion. Both are kṛṣṇāmṛta, both are the nectar of Kṛṣṇa, and that is the whole reason the word here is su-snāpitā, well bathed, bathed completely, bathed in body and in soul. As she leads Her home the maidservant speaks softly of Śyāma, keeping His name like a lamp before Her steps, for she knows that her mistress, parted even a moment from Him, is a woman mad with love, kṛṣṇa-prema-pāgalinī, and the only mercy is to fill that parting with His remembrance. Is it a small thing to serve one who is mad with love? No one on earth knows how to do it with the full, trembling awareness of Her feelings the way these kiṅkarīs do.

Then the dressing, the ornaments, the braiding of the hair, the sandal-paste and the flowers, for at home Her girlfriends and Her maidservants complete Her adornment, and every stroke of it is in truth a service offered to Kṛṣṇa. The sakhīs take their time over it, for as they adorn Her they are deep in talk of Kṛṣṇa, and the talk itself is the ornament. But the maidservants hurry through their part, because their love wears a particular flavour, a fierce sense of mineness, my Svāminī, mine to feed, mine to settle, mine to guard from the smallest discomfort, and they are eager to make Her something to eat. The tradition remembers this mineness in Govinda dāsa, Mahāprabhu's faithful doorkeeper at the Gambhīrā. Mahāprabhu, who descended to sanctify the age of Kali, sat there relishing the sweetness of Rādhā's separation, sleepless through the night, still sunk in trance when the morning had nearly slipped away; and his servant Govinda dāsa lay rolling in the dust on the floor and wept his prayer to Svarūpa Dāmodara: Śrīpāda, please bring the Lord back to outer awareness, the morning is almost gone and I have not even been able to make Him drink a little water. That is the servant's heart, and it is the heart of the kiṅkarī who cannot rest until her mistress has been fed.

So she prepares the food, but not just any food. The maidservants know a secret about Īśvarī: that She will eat nothing in all the world except the remnants of Kṛṣṇa. So into the honey-sweet morsels they fold a little of the nectar left from His own last meal, the prasāda of His lips. And now watch what happens as She eats. Madhunaiva subhojitā: She is fed, fed well, on honey-sweetness that is His. She can no longer tell whether she is tasting honey or tasting the very nectar of Śyāma's mouth; the two have become one upon Her tongue. And this is no wonder, for She who, even in separation, feels Him present simply by the force of unbroken meditation, will surely taste His lips in any sweetness that has touched His remnants. The maidservant feeds Her this, and in feeding Her, feeds Him.

The meal is done. She rinses Her mouth, takes the betel the maidservant has rolled, and gathers Her sakhīs around her, and now She would happily hold court till noon, talking of Him, laughing of Him, living in Him through every word. But the maidservant, in her tender shrewdness, sees what the others in their delight have forgotten: She has not slept. All night the love-games, all morning the talk, and the body that holds this ocean of feeling is, in its sweet way, in need of rest. Svāmini, the kiṅkarī murmurs, You have been awake the whole night through; come, lie down a little. And the sakhīs, hearing it, praise her aloud: O, you truly know how to serve. We had clean forgotten that our Rādhikā should rest. Go, sakhi, go and tend her.

Then the most fortunate moment of all. The maidservant takes Śrīmatī by the hand and leads Her to a bed she has made with her own hands of fresh flowers, a sukhada śayyā, and Śrīmatī lies down. The kiṅkarī draws over Her a cādara of deep blue, choosing that colour on purpose, for even as She closes Her eyes the blue is Śyāma, so that She may sleep wrapped in His colour, sink into rest as into His arms. And now the grace beyond grace: the maidservant is permitted to take those lotus feet into her own soft hands and to stroke them, the saṁvāhana her heart has longed for. Lālita, the word says, lālanā, affectionate service: not mere massage but tenderness made into touch. She pours every soft thing in her heart down into her palms so that not one stroke shall be rough, so that the pressing shall be only love, and the beauty of those feet pours up into her eyes and blesses her. Śrīmatī's breathing slows; She has fallen asleep. And the maidservant, half drunk on her own fortune, now and again lifts those feet to her breast, now and again presses her lips to them, and there is no bottom and no shore to the bliss of that hour.

Then the vision lifts, as visions do. The grove dissolves, the blue cādara fades, and the one who was, for a breath, the kiṅkarī cradling Rādhā's feet is once more a small sādhaka with empty hands and a hungry heart. And out of that hunger rises the whole prayer, the cry that holds everything: rādhe kadā svapiṣi mat-kara-lālitāṅghriḥ. O Rādhe, when, oh when, will You sleep while my hands are caressing Your feet? When will such fortune be mine? Not someday in heaven, not as a reward, but as service, the lowest service, the foot-service that asks nothing and gives everything. The longing is not to embrace, not to be seen, not to be near the dazzle of the love-play, but only this: to be the pair of hands beneath Her sleeping feet. That is the summit the heart climbs toward in these vasantatilakā lines, and it climbs it on its knees.