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Picture the afternoon in Yāvaṭa. The light has gone long and golden, the hour the cowherds call uttara-goṣṭha, when the cows are still out at pasture and Vrajendranandana has not yet turned His herd toward home. Into this hour the heat of separation pours like a slow fire, and Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī sits within Her inner chamber while the day refuses to end. For Her a single moment without Kṛṣṇa is like millions of ages. The sakhīs gather close, watching the One they live to serve, and they try to soothe Her: "O Rādhe, be a little patient. He will come now, just now, with the cows, His curls greyed by the godhūli, the dust the hooves throw up at dusk; His smiling moon-face will rise over the lane and the burning in Your eyes will be quenched at the sight of Him. Only wait." But is there any consoling Her? She has already cried out to them in the words the tradition treasures from the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, "avitatham asau kiṁ drāghīyān gamiṣyati vāsaraḥ": O fair-faced friend, will this long day pass in vain, or will that most blessed evening finally come, in which the burning in My eyes is extinguished by the smiling moon-face of the prince of Vraja, His locks greyed by the dust the cows' hooves throw up? And here is Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda himself, in his kiṅkarī-form, threading the maidservants' anxiety into this very verse so that we might see how She fills the unfillable hours.

Now watch what She does with that unbearable interval, O devotee, and let your heart break and bloom at once. She turns to Her pet parrots, the green śukas of the bower, and She begins to teach them. Not idle chatter. She teaches them ślokas marked through and through, yaśoṅkitān, with the spotless fame of Her Preṣṭha. Listen to the reasoning of love in this. She is on fire with viraha, and She has found the one water that cools it: speaking of Him. If She cannot have His darśana, She can at least fill the air around Her with His glory, and so She pours those verses into the little birds, syllable by syllable, until the grove itself learns to praise Kṛṣṇa. The sakhīs, distraught, wonder how on earth to save Her life; and Śrīmatī, more skilled in love than all of them, has already found the medicine and is dripping it into a parrot's throat.

O Rādhe, in this gesture the whole secret of the bhramara-gītā lives again. The tradition remembers it from the Śrīmad-Bhāgavata, the song to the bumblebee at 10.47.12 to 21: how, when Madhusūdana had gone to Mathurā, You took the buzzing bee at Your feet to be one of His messengers and glorified Him by reciting His "faults" one after another, that You might keep speaking of Him without seeming to want Him. And You imagined the bee humming back, as if to ask why, if Your Lord has so many faults, You never cease to speak of Him; is He so good that You must forever recite His faults? And You answered with the truest word a lover has ever spoken, dustyajas tat-kathārthaḥ: I can renounce everything, even Him, but I cannot give up speaking of Him. His kathā is My only support; let Me fall silent about Him for a single moment and I cannot remain alive. This is why She teaches the parrots. The verses about Kṛṣṇa are not Her pastime; they are Her breath.

But love is never long content to be soothed. Even as She teaches, the mood within Her turns. A thought pierces Her like a thorn: "Alas, what am I doing? Am I only easing My own pain, comforting Myself, while I forget the very thing that is My life, His service? How unfortunate I am." The self-tending lover is ashamed of having tended herself. So She rises out of that small relief into something purer. She calls Her maidservants and sets them to work, and works with them: a fresh wreath of guñjā berries, those small red-and-black seeds the cowherds love, strung into a mañjula-hāra; and a mukuṭa of peacock-feathers, the crown that will rest in His dark curls. As Her fingers move over the seeds and the plumes She is no longer thinking of Her own fire at all. She is remembering how happy these gifts will make Her beloved, seeing already the pleasure that will cross His face when the garland touches His chest and the crown catches the light. And in that turning, from My-pain to His-joy, She finds a deeper relief than any consolation could give, the relief that comes only when the lover forgets herself entirely into the beloved's delight. The Bengali song of Śrīpāda sings Her here as svāminī-mukuṭa-maṇi, the crown-jewel of all mistresses, Śrī Haripriyā teaching Her parrot Hari's fame while playing on the very waves of prema; and again as kuñjeśvarī, queen of the bowers, Vṛṣabhānu's tender princess, Kṛṣṇa's own priyatamā, fashioning the new guñjā-hāra and the enchanting peacock-crown for Her beloved.

And then, O devotee, comes the gesture that should make us fall silent and simply bow. Sometimes the fire will not be argued with by parrots or garlands. It rises until She can bear nothing but Him. So She takes up the work of Her own hands again, but now She draws. With Her loving tears for ink, prema-jale, the tradition sings, She traces the form of Her prāṇa-priyatama, the very mūrti of the One who is Her life, making many entreaties to it as Her breath runs wild. And when the likeness stands before Her, She does not look at it as at a picture. A picture of Kṛṣṇa is not different from Kṛṣṇa; the self-realized know this. So with an anxious heart, with ākula prāṇa, She gathers that drawn form to Her breast and presses it, rubbing it against Her heaving kuca-yuga, as if the painted likeness could return the embrace She is dying for, as if through this rendering She could close the distance the long day has opened. There is no pretense left here, no composure, only the raw and holy ache of a love that has nowhere to put itself and so pours itself onto an image and clasps it to the heart.

O my Svāminī, see how You spend the hours You cannot fill with Him. Teaching, stringing, drawing, embracing, each a different shape of the same single longing. And see why the tradition calls You here priya-svāminī, the dear Mistress: it is the cry of the maidservants who cannot bear to watch their beloved Queen suffer so, the helpless tenderness of those whose whole existence is to serve Her and who, in this hour, can do nothing but love Her and ache with Her. Thus in this way, sings Śrīpāda, separated from Hari, Rādhā always spends Her days at home, gṛhe divasa yāpana; and blessed is Śrī Prabodhānanda, blessed are these pastimes, blessed indeed is the very vision of them. The day at last wears thin, and the evening that will bring Her dark Beloved home comes one slow hour nearer.