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Picture it. Evening has gathered in the kuñja, and Śyāmasundara comes at last to the trysting place, but He comes a little late, and so He comes a little afraid. He knows what lateness costs at this threshold. For earlier, in the long ache of His absence, Rādhā had wept so deeply that all the creatures of Vṛndāvana wept along with Her, the vines, the does, the very birds carrying Her sorrow. You would think His arrival would melt everything at once into joy. But love runs by its own amazing course. The moment He enters, She who longed for Him now turns away. She draws Her veil up over Her head and shows Him only Her back.

Do not mistake this for the small souring of a small heart. This is māna, and the tradition is exact about what it is. In the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi the order of love is traced: sneha ripens into praṇaya, and from praṇaya rises māna; and māna, in its turn, melts back down into praṇaya, so that the two are forever feeding one another, cause and effect passing back and forth between them. "janitvā praṇayaḥ snehāt kutracin mānatāṁ vrajet": affection deepens into intimate trust, and that trust, in some sweet turn, becomes this proud refusal. A heart can only sulk like this with one it loves without any reserve at all. The turned back is not the failure of love; it is love at a height.

And so He sets Himself to win Her. Consider who He is who must now coax and plead. He is named Hari because He steals the hearts of every being in creation with a beauty and sweetness that has no rival. Many forms of the Lord are called Hari; but this Hari is so attractive that He enchants the very mind of Viṣṇu, who is also called Hari. The singers of the Caitanya-caritāmṛta press the point until it shines: "ye mādhurī ūrdhva āna, nāhi yāra samāna", there is no sweetness above His or equal to it; He is Himself the avatārī, the fountainhead of all the Viṣṇu-forms that descend from Vaikuṇṭha, and this particular mādhurya is simply not found in Nārāyaṇa. And there is a witness to prove it: Ramā, Lakṣmī Herself, Nārāyaṇa's own beloved, worshiped by every chaste and faithful woman, grew so hungry for Kṛṣṇa's sweetness that She set down all her enjoyment, took firm vows, and bent herself to severe penance to taste it. He is the very quintessence of sweetness, a jewel-mine of every excellence, and He has lent His own qualities out to all the divine manifestations so that their glories are only His gift shining in them.

This is the One. And yet, O wonder of wonders, Rādhā steals the heart of the heart-stealer Himself. The universal thief is robbed by Her, and stands now disarmed at Her veil. He tries everything to soften Her, and nothing reaches Her. Here Rūpa Gosvāmī numbers, in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, the means a lover may use to break a beloved's pique: "sāma bheda kriyā dāna natyupekṣā rasāntaraiḥ", there are seven, appeasement, the showing of difference, worship and the giving of a gift, the offering of obeisance, the feint of ignoring, and the taking of shelter in another mellow. He passes by the rest and chooses the humblest, the lowest, the one made entirely of meekness. "kevalaṁ dainyam ālambya pādapāto natir matā": to fall at the beloved's feet leaning on nothing but one's own lowliness, that is called nati. And so He does it. The crown that the three worlds bow before, He sets down. Hari lifts Her feet onto His own head and prays, "O Premamayi, You who are made of love itself, forgive Me."

Now look where the maidservant is standing, and look at what she sees. The peacock-feather crown of the enchanter of all the universe is rolling, viloḍhita, in the dust at Svāminī's lotus-feet. Aha, she breathes, what an enchanting beauty is this. How sweetly Transcendence falls at the feet of the Pinnacle of Love. She is undone by it. And it is precisely here, in this fall, that she finds the truest name for Him: "rasa-ghana-mohana-mūrti", the very form of deep, condensed, enchanting rasa. The Upaniṣad had already whispered it: "raso vai saḥ", He, the Supreme, is rasa. And here that rasa stands thickened into a body that bows. Rasarāja, the king of all sweet relish, is never more enchanting than in the moment He lays His crown at Rādhā's feet. Power has become surrender, and surrender is the most beautiful thing the maidservant has ever seen.

But she carries also a sober warning, and she gives it plainly. This sweetness cannot be drunk by just anyone who reaches for it; it opens only to one who has taken on the mood of Rādhā's own maidservants, mañjarī-bhāva. Think of sugarcane. It is sweet through and through by its very nature, yet not a drop of that juice reaches the tongue until the cane is crushed and pressed. A toothless infant cannot chew it out; a toothless old man cannot either; only one with strong, sound teeth can draw the sweetness free. Just so, a heart with no love and no devotion for Kṛṣṇa, however near it stands, tastes nothing of Him. The aspirant must therefore truly want to love Him. And here is the secret of the whole bower: it is Śrī Rādhikā who, with the mill of Her spotless love, presses every drop of sweetness out of Kṛṣṇa; and only those who take shelter of Her, of Her sakhīs and Her maidservants, get to share in what flows, each one according to the measure of love she has grown. This is the rare and matchless greatness of the shelter of Svāminī's lotus-feet.

And the scene does resolve, for His loving cleverness wins. When Rādhā sees Her hero seated there at Her own feet, the māna breaks all at once into tears; She bends and lifts Him up and folds Him into Her arms. And so Hari is "vicitra-keli-mahotsava-ullasita", flooded with gladness by a great festival of wondrous love-play. The maidservant peers in through the gaps in the leafy vines to witness that ecstatic festival, and grateful, only grateful, that she was let near enough to see such a sight, she folds her hands: "rucira śikhaṇḍaṁ hariṁ vande", I bow to Hari, who wears the beautiful peacock-feather crown.