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Begin with Her lips. Look closely at the red blooming at their corners, for it is not cosmetic, and it is not Hers alone. Śyāmasundara has tenderly cupped Her face in His two hands, and even as He kisses Her He has pushed His own chewed betel from His mouth into Hers, so that the juice runs to the edges of Her lips and stains them. Because it is given with such love, those reddened corners become beautiful past all telling. O the tenderness of it: the nectar of Her lips is the one food on which the Cakora-bird named Śyāmasundara lives; without it He would die outright; and now that life-nectar has grown sweeter still, for His leftover pān is mingled into it. See what has happened here. The very colour of love has fixed itself onto Transcendence Himself. He is the formless Truth, and yet the red of Her passion, Her love for Him, is now plainly visible, sitting in those betel-stains upon Her mouth for any servant in the grove to behold.

Now He asks something of Her. "Priye," Śyāmasundara says, "sing Me a wholly new song now, with tunes and rhythms never made before, something that will astonish Me with its sweetness." And Svāminī, reading His desire the instant it forms, takes up Her vīṇā Citrabhaṅgī and begins. The tunes are Her own, composed on the spot; the rhythms are Her own; the words glorify His form and His names, His qualities and His pastimes. And here is the wonder: though Kṛṣṇa is the art-teacher of all the worlds, the source of every melody ever sounded, He has never heard a song like this. He is astonished. Again and again He praises Her, praises the self-made song, the nectar of Her voice, the coquettish play of Her eyes and face and neck, the sweet way She sings His glory.

And why should this song undo even the master of all arts? Because of a secret He once confided to the sage Nārada. "nāhaṁ vasāmi vaikuṇṭhe yogīnāṁ hṛdaye na ca, mad-bhaktāḥ yatra gāyanti tatra tiṣṭhāmi nārada": O Nārada, I do not dwell in Vaikuṇṭha, nor in the hearts of the mystics, but wherever My devotees sing My glories, there I take My stand. And Nārada himself testified to this before Vyāsa, in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavata: "pragāyataḥ sva-vīryāṇi tīrtha-pādaḥ priya-śravāḥ, āhuta iva me śīghraṁ darśanaṁ yāti cetasi": when I sing His mighty deeds, the Lord, who loves to hear His own glory sung (priya-śrava) and who is Himself the gathering of all holy fords (tīrtha-pāda), comes swiftly, as if summoned, and shows Himself within my heart. If the song of an ordinary devotee draws Him so, then who can measure His bliss when premamayī Rādhārāṇī Herself, love embodied, glorifies His every quality in tunes never before sung?

Then watch what His joy works in Her. She sees how happy Her Beloved has become, and at that sight every sāttvika ecstasy rises in Her at once. Her skin is beautified all over with goosebumps of bliss, great pulakas, the body's own ornament. Her mind floods so full with the remembrance of Him that with each stroke of the rhythm Her neck bends to one side and Her eyebrows lift and contract together, raised yet knit, sweeter than sweet. She sings in the pañcama-rāga, the fifth high note; the daughter of Vṛṣabhānu, who loves Her Priyatama more than millions of lives, stands at the left side of Rasamaya Nāgarendra, the king of all gallants, and the vision of this Rasavatī Rāi, this wonder of bhāva beside Vallabī-vallabha, steals the very hearts of Śyāmasundara and of every maidservant looking on. Mark where Her joy is rooted: not in Her own artistry, but in His delight. The song is precious only because it gladdens Him. So stays this bhāvamayī gāyikā, this emotion-drenched girl-singer, beside Kṛṣṇa in the kuñja, pouring out endless sweetness without end.

And in the corner of this grove, kneeling at the edge of it all, is the one through whom we are even permitted to see. The tradition holds that Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda, present here in his maidservant form, engaged in Their service, is the one who reveals these intimate nikuñja secrets in verse. Yet even he does not presume. In his outward consciousness he prays, and prays small: feeling himself deprived of Śrīmatī's mercy, he begs only for Her merciful glance. This is the yācaka-rīti, the beggar's own manner: a beggar may long for the whole treasury, but out of humility and a kind of holy despair he asks only for a little, for one glance, for the right merely to behold and to serve.