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Begin after the heat of the pastime has gently subsided. The rasika līlā is complete, and the kuñja has been served. The handmaiden has slipped in with cool syrup in a little cup and tender betel-leaves folded just so, and she has fanned the exhausted young Couple until Their breath grows easy again. And now, restored after a short rest, They want the open grove. They want trees and birdsong and the smell of flowers on a wandering breeze. So They rise, and They walk out of the bower together, and the way They walk is itself the thing to be remembered forever.

See how They go. Not apart, not even side by side in the ordinary way, but with each one's arm laid across the other's shoulder, the arm slender and supple as a flowering vine, golden as a creeper of gold. And where Her arm touches His shoulder, where His arm touches Hers, the skin lifts into horripilation, a field of fine goosebumps rising at the mere contact, sphurat-pulaka: the thrilling that erupts because Their bodies cannot keep still under so much love. The arms are creepers; the shoulders are the trees they have climbed and crowned. You could not pry them apart without grief.

In the free hand of each, a lotus turns. Śyāmasundara twirls His playlotus in His right hand; Śrīmatī twirls Her playlotus in Her left; and as the flowers spin, something else is spinning too, for each is twirling the other's whole mind round and round upon a stem. The lotuses are only the visible part of it. The unseen part is two hearts revolving helplessly about one another, dizzy, drunk, smaronmatta, intoxicated by love, unable to look anywhere but at the beloved face beside them.

And the smile, the laughter. The tradition lingers here, because sahāsa-rasa-peśalam means the laughter is not a passing thing on Their lips; it is a taste, a rasa, a whole flavor of beauty that makes Them charming. They laugh softly, They joke, They lean and sway against each other in the telling of it, and the laughter spills out across the grove like nectar poured from an overfull vessel until the whole of Vṛndāvana is illumined by the luster of Their sweet forms and inundated with the nectar-flood of Their joking. The creatures fall under the spell. Every bird and bee is enchanted.

For the grove answers Them. The Govinda-līlāmṛta sets the scene tenderly, that somewhere the bees take up a hum and sing with the cuckoos; somewhere the cāṣa-birds sing with the forktailed ones; somewhere the gallinules sing with the peacocks and the cātakas; somewhere the cranes sing with the swans; somewhere the parrots sing with the kikhī-birds; and the larks and the haritakas, always, blissfully and lovingly, sing of Their qualities and Their fame. O grove, you cannot help yourself either. Bird answers bird in pairs, as if even the forest must couple to praise Them, and your singing is your worship.

Now watch Their gait, for this is the heart of the remembrance. Mada-karīndra-bhaṅgī-śataiḥ: They move with the slow, swaying, majestic step of two great elephants, the king of elephants flushed and reeling with the wine of passion. There is no hurry in it. Every footfall is a gesture; every turn of the body is a new sweetness; They make not one or two but hundreds of lovely movements, leaning, swaying, pausing, glancing, each posture more enchanting than the last. So regal, so drunk on love, that, as Prabodhānanda sings in his own sweet rhyme, the pride of a hundred rutting elephants is humbled and undone by the beauty of how this Couple simply walks across the grass. The tradition calls Them rasikayoḥ dvayoḥ, the two relishers, two connoisseurs, and what They are relishing as They wander is each other.

And mark this well: there are no sakhīs crowding round now, no circle of friends. The grove has emptied of every eye but one. The Couple is free, utterly free, to enjoy this forest-roaming with nothing held back, like two elephants intoxicated by love. Only the maidservant remains, and she follows Them like Their own shadow, engaged in Their loving service, asking nothing, taking nothing, present only to serve, ready with the fan, ready with the cup, ready to lift a fallen garland or smooth a tousled curl. She is the shape your own heart longs to take.

Sometimes They stop to gather flowers and to deck each other with them, His hands at Her hair, Her hands at His chest, the decorating itself a slow caress. Sometimes They fall still to listen to the prattling of the male and female parrots high in the branches, the two birds prattling their nonsense as if they too were a little Couple. Sometimes a cool breeze comes carrying the fragrance of blossoms across the path, and They simply stand and let it touch Their faces, and even that is bliss. Sometimes They sing, low love-songs in which each describes the sweetness of the other's love and the wonder of the other's form, so that even Their speech becomes a mutual adoration.

The tradition adds a tender truth here. Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī fixes it in the Prīti Sandarbha, that vidagdhānāṁ tu yathā vanitānurāgāsvādane vānchā na tathā tat sparśādāv api: for connoisseurs, the longing to taste a lover's affection outweighs even the longing for touch, for kiss, for embrace. There is more bliss in this sportive wandering, this exchange of feeling between the lovers, than even in the union just past. So do not hurry past this scene as a mere interlude between greater things. This is the great thing. This unhurried elephant-gait through the singing grove, lotuses turning, arms entwined, skin thrilling, is itself the summit.

Śyāma is the dark raincloud, full to bursting, moving slow across the sky of the grove; Rādhikā beside Him is the golden statue come alive, the lightning that the cloud cannot do without. And the prayer of the one who gave us this, the prayer Prabodhānanda sets in our mouths, is the simplest and the largest of all. He prays for himself, may I remember Rādhā and Mādhava's fascinating walk through the Vṛndāvana forest, and then he turns to us: O mind, O heart, remember this. Smarata: remember Their beautiful gait through beautiful Vṛndāvana. Hold this picture and let it hold you.