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Picture the nikuñja in the deep hour, when the play is over. The vines hang heavy and still, and through the small gaps between their leaves a single pair of eyes is watching, fish-like, swimming in an ocean of sweetness it can hardly bear. This is the maidservant. She has been here all along, drinking the ever-fresh amorous battle of the Yugala Kiśora through the holes in the green lattice, and her whole being has gone soft with wonder. She is not a spectator who wandered in. She is a heart that lives only for this, and she has waited.

For the love within the bower never grows old. Just as a jewel never loses its fire, so the beauty of adolescent Rādhikā is ever-new, imperishable, fresh as a thing newly born in every instant; and because Her beauty is forever new, the love-battle too is forever new. There is no last time and no first time. There is only the next sweetness, rising. And when the maidservant, peering through the leaves, sees Her Svāminī victorious in the amorous battle, at that the maidservant's own heart swells with a proud, trembling joy, the joy of one whose beloved mistress has prevailed.

Now the tumult settles. The young Couple sink down upon the play-bed of the bower. They breathe deeply, the two of Them, and gaze into each other's eyes, and from Their limbs streams of sweetness seem to gush, for each understands that each has made the other happy. And see: Kṛṣṇa, who is rasa Himself made flesh, turns first and begins with His own hands to set His Svāminī right again. For She who was the very flower of the battle now sits disarranged. Her braid has come loose, tumbled free in the ardor. Her new pearl necklace lies broken, the pearls strewn all over the kuñja, scattered into the grass and the petals. The musk-tilaka that was drawn so carefully upon Her forehead has been washed pale by the sweat of Her passion. Her ornaments hang crooked, every one of them undone by love.

And to the maidservant, this dishevelment is not disorder. It is glory. It is the visible trace of the sweetness she watched, and at the sight of the sweet form of her victorious Svāminī she goes nearly out of her mind with ecstasy. So she knows her hour has come. Understanding that the lovemaking is finished, she enters the kuñja at last. First she takes up the fan and dries the sweat-drops from Rādhā and Mādhava, cooling Them both with slow waving. Then she brings water for Their thirst, and folded betel-leaves for Their pleasure. Only then does she turn to the work her whole soul has been aching toward.

O let me bind that braid. This is the cry of the verse, kadā, when. The hair that came undone in the love-battle, the dark heavy fall of it loosened across Her shoulders, when, oh when, shall these hands of mine be the hands that gather it up gently, smooth it, and rewind it, weaving through it a fresh garland of jasmine still wet with night? And the pearls. The new pearls that Śyāma snapped from Her throat in the heat of the play, scattered now across the whole floor of the bower, kadā vā, when shall I be the one to crawl among the leaves and find each one, and patiently thread them again into a necklace new as the love that broke the old? And the tilaka. The musk-mark that Her own sweat dissolved, kadā vā, when shall I dip my finger in the cool dark musk and draw it fresh upon that radiant forehead, the forehead of the yauvana-maṇi, the jewel of all young Vraja, restoring the sign that the heat of love wiped away?

Hear how each broken thing becomes an occasion for service. The loosened braid, the snapped string, the vanished tilaka, none of these is a loss to mourn. Each is a door the maidservant prays to be let through. She does not wish the love had been gentler so that nothing came undone. She blesses the very undoing, because the undoing is what gives her hands their work. The tradition recalls how Raghunātha dāsa Gosvāmī cried out in this same key, in the Prema-pūrābhidha-stotram, that O Rādhe, on the bed of amorous pastimes You jest with Kṛṣṇa without interruption, and Your embrace grows so close that the two bodies seem to melt into one body; delight my eyes for even a single moment. And when You grow weary of the passionate love-battle, You sleep upon the broad, blissful chest of Your beloved Kṛṣṇa, fanned by Viśākhā in her own delight; O Rādhe, delight my eyes for even a moment. That is the whole prayer of this love: not to possess, only to be allowed to look, only to be allowed to serve.

So the verse is not really a description of an evening. It is a longing thrown forward into time, kadā, kadā, kadā, when, when, when. The maidservant has watched a thousand such evenings and will watch a thousand more, and still her heart asks: when will it be my hands, when will it be granted to me, when shall I be the one chosen to restore my beloved Svāminī to Her gathered beauty after love has scattered it? It is the longing of a servant who wants nothing for herself, who asks only for the privilege of the after-hour, the quiet tender labor of fan and water and betel-leaf, of braid and pearl and musk. There is no greater wealth she can imagine than this. To touch that hair. To find those pearls. To draw that mark. To be, for one twilight hour, the hands that love Her back into order.

O wind that moves the vines, carry this prayer. O Rādhe, jewel among all the young ones of Vraja, let one such servant in. Let her dry Your brow. Let her bind Your hair. Let her thread Your pearls and set Your tilaka new. She asks for nothing else under heaven.