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Begin at the edge of the bower, where one girl waits with a song in her throat. She is not Rādhā. She is not Kṛṣṇa. She is the sakhī, the maidservant, and the whole of this verse is her single trembling wish: kadā vā, "or when," when will the hour come, when will I be sukṛtinī, the lucky one, to behold what I most long to behold?

Hear first how the hour begins. The maidservant lifts a sweet song of the Couple's love, and the song does its quiet work: it stirs Their hearts, until Priyā and Priyatama are moved once more toward love. Reading Their unspoken desire, she slips ahead of it; quickly she spreads a fresh lovebed deep in the kuñja, a clean and fragrant place made ready before They even ask. Overcome by amorous longing, the lovely Couple enter the grove and are lost in Their pastimes, and the maidservant keeps her place upon the terrace of the kuñja, watching, glad, asking nothing for herself. When the love-play is done she steps back inside to serve: she fans Them, she brings cool scented water, she offers betel-leaf, tending the two who are her whole life.

Now the tender comedy arrives. Rādhā's dress is in disarray, Her ornaments scattered and slipped from their places by the heat of love, and the maidservant turns on Kṛṣṇa with a fond mock-scolding: "Mādhava, only see what You have done to Svāminī's dress and ornaments. Set it right, and quickly, before Her girlfriends come and tease Her for it." Chastened and smiling, Mādhava takes up the task. He begins to paint musk-pictures of leaves upon Rādhā's breasts, vicitrāṁ patrālīm, designs so wonderful and so beyond telling that they can only be called kim api, indescribable. And the maidservant is no idle watcher here; she serves the very painting, handing Him the small brush, holding before Him the cup of liquid musk, so that His art and her service are one act.

O the trembling of it. As Nāgara, the gallant lover, draws upon His beloved, His own hands shiver with feeling, and the lines of musk wander and come out crooked. The maidservant sees the crooked leaves and cannot help herself; she covers her mouth with her hand and giggles behind it. And under Śyāma's touch Rādhā Herself shivers, vepathumatīm, and the hairs of Her body rise up in ecstasy, udañcad-romāñca-pracaya-khacitām, a whole host of standing hairs like studs of joy across Her skin. Her form becomes ati-madhura-līlā-maya-tanum, a body that is sweetness itself, play itself, the very embodiment of madhura-līlā. And rasikendra, the king of all who taste rasa, murmurs romantic word upon word as He paints, until Rādhā's face and eyes are adorned with bhāva-bhūṣaṇa, the living ornaments of loving ecstasy, ornaments no jeweller could fashion. Seeing these ornaments of love upon Her body, Kṛṣṇa Himself floats out upon oceans of rasa. This is what the maidservant aches to witness, and to help bring about.

And so she names herself sukṛtinī, the lucky girl, and the word opens two ways. She is sukṛtinī because she does su-kṛtya, good work, by her service: she rouses the love in Their hearts with her singing, she sets Śyāma to the painting, she straightens the disarray, and by all of this she makes the two of Them happy together. But she is also sukṛtinī, fortunate, simply because she gets to stand near such love at all, to drink in always the sweetness and the beauty of the divine Couple. She counts her luck not in what she keeps but in what she is permitted to see and to serve.

Why such weight on luck? Because the tradition is clear that this greed itself, this thirst for the sweetness of the Couple, is no achievement of the seeker. It dawns only by great fortune, and that great fortune is grace, divine mercy and nothing else. Without it, this could not be reached even in millions of births. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it forever in his teaching: kṛṣṇa-bhakti-rasa-bhāvitā matiḥ krīyatāṁ yadi kuto'pi labhyate, tatra mūlyam api laulyam ekalaṁ janma-koṭi-sukṛtair na labhate: if taste for devotion to Kṛṣṇa could be purchased anywhere, the only coin that would buy it is laulyam, sacred greed; it is not won by millions of births of good works. The service of Rādhā and Mādhava is the most precious of all attainments; and in this quarrelsome age Śrīman Mahāprabhu, through the ācāryas, has laid even this within reach of every longing heart. So the maidservant's whole prayer is folded into that one cry, kadā vā: when, O when, will I be lucky enough to help, and to see?