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Begin with the song. Hear it before you see anything else: a thread of melody winding through the kuñjas, two voices that have forgotten they are two. O Rādhe, O Śyāma, You are singing, and the whole forest leans in to listen. Picture Them now, a pair of young elephants moving through the grove, arms laid across each other's shoulders, swaying as They walk, in no hurry at all, going nowhere except deeper into each other. Naughty Śyāma lets His left arm hang low over Svāminī's left shoulder, lower than it ought to be, so low it strays toward Her breast, and Svāminī, half-laughing and half-stern, slaps His hand away. How sweetly clever the two of Them are, even in Their singing, weaving the music and the teasing into one bright braid. And then, all at once, the play softens: She rests Her head upon His chest, and Śyāma, the dark Beloved, is made happy past all telling. Behind Them, never far, move the maidservants, following the divine Pair like Their own shadows, asking nothing, missing nothing, drinking the sweetness with their eyes.

They are forever decorating each other. See Svāminī's fingers in the blossoms now, plucking flowers with Her own hands and tucking them into Śyāma's curls, jasmine set in the dark of His hair like stars in night. And see Śyāma turn the game back upon Her, gathering fresh flowers to adorn His Īśvarī, His queen, until the two of Them wear the whole grove. Wandering and decorating and being decorated, playing freely through the forest, They come at last to the monsoon forest, the varṣā-harṣa-vana, the forest where the rains bring joy.

O what a forest it is. The yūthikā blooms open like clever society-women smiling, and the bumblebees, drawn by that smiling fragrance, forget their own wives, the jasmines, and rise from their laps to chase it. The earth herself smiles through her mālatī flowers blossoming everywhere. The forests shiver into goosepimples of ecstasy, and those goosepimples are the bursting kadamba buds. And the clouds, seeing Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Mādhava arrive, cannot hold themselves and weep streams of loving tears. Look up: the whole quarter of the sky has become a bride, the dig-vadhū, the bride of the firmament. The rainbow is the ornament upon her forehead; the darkness is her flowing hair; the lightning flashing through that darkness is the golden ketakī flowers braided into it; and the line of ducks flying across the clouds is the string of pearls resting upon her breast, for cloud and breast both bear the one name, payodhara. This bride of the sky stands there in all her beauty and quietly steals the hearts of both Rādhā and Mādhava.

Now the swing. In the heart of that rain-glad forest a jewelled swing hangs and rocks gently, and the youthful Pair climb on together and begin to sway. Kṣaṇam amanda-hindolataḥ: one moment swinging, and not gently for long. Rasika-Śekhara Śyāma, the crown of all who relish, pushes the swing higher and faster, and Śrīmatī grows afraid. The maidservant, seeing Her Svāminī frightened, forbids Śyāma and begs Him to slow, but He pretends not to hear and swings the harder. And O how lovely She becomes in that fear: Her braid loosens, Her veil slips from Her head, Her ornaments tumble into disarray. With one hand She fights to hold Her sārī down against the rushing wind, ashamed lest anything beneath be uncovered, and in that very effort She can no longer grip the ropes. Śyāma sees it all and only laughs, and only swings the harder, until Śrīmatī in her sweet terror flings both arms around His neck and clings there. The maidservants stand blessed, blessed beyond measure, that their eyes were made to see this.

Then down from the swing, and into the spring forest, where O wind, you yourself become Their servant: you carry the fragrance of fresh flowers straight to Their nostrils to please Them, you do nothing else, you live only to wait upon Them. The beauty of spring swells the amorous longing of the youthful Couple, and They turn aside into a kuñja, a bower curtained in vines, and there Their most intimate pastimes begin. The maidservants peer through the gaps in the creepers, through the little holes in the leaves, and marvel at the artful tenderness of the Pair, the surata-keli-śilpa, the very craft of love made sweet. They do not intrude. They watch and adore.

And what is the secret hidden inside all of this play? It is sad-rasa, the pure and selfless taste, the longing that wants one thing only: to make Kṛṣṇa happy. The sweet amorous way the daughters of Vraja accomplish this is what the tradition calls praṇaya-keli, the play of love, and there is no place on earth or in heaven fitter for this play than Śrī Vṛndāvana. And here is the wonder of it: in Their endless labour to make each other happy, Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa think Themselves to be one single soul. Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī sets it down in his Gopāla-Campū, in the Pūrva, telling how the gopī and Kṛṣṇa slip away to a lonely place and meet, embrace, kiss, gladden one another, speak words of love, give playful commands such as "dress Me!", and dress each other, until, lost in so many kinds of tenderness, they forget even to ask what they are doing, what they have done, or what they could possibly do next. Love has taken away the very questions. That is the air of this grove.

O madhura-praṇaya, O sweetness of love. The clever, tender heroine, the caturā nāgarī, the very jewel of nāgarīs whom the Rādhāvallabha stream names with reverence as Śrī Priyājī, plays in this nectar-filled, joy-filled Vṛndāvana with the king of all relishers, the rasika-śekhara whom that same stream names Śrī Lālajī; and this is the nitya-vihāra, the eternal play, that never ages. Every moment it is new again, nitui nautuna, ever-fresh, a fresh elixir of līlā poured out without end. Mādhavī and Mukunda singing their sweet songs; Gaurī and Govinda swaying on the jewelled swing; the wind made into a flower-bearing servant; the artful intimacy of the bower. This is what the tradition, through Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda, gazes upon in the highest bliss and reveals to us. And the one who hears these transcendental sports with faith, and lovingly tells them again, will feel his own grip on the dull material world quietly loosen, the way a clenched fist opens when the heart at last has somewhere worthy to rest.