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The love-play has quieted, and the bower holds its breath. O Rādhe, O Mādhava, You have been together in the kuñja, showing between You the whole art of eros, the lalita-lalitānanga-kalā, the lovely amorous craft that none but You can teach the world. Now the meeting eases. You sit up upon the flower-bed, and Rādhā, soft and spent and shining, nestles Herself into Her hero's lap, settling against the chest of the One the heart calls nāgara-maṇi: nāgara, the lover; maṇi, the jewel; the very jewel among all amorous heroes, the jewel of Vraja. Into this hush steps the maidservant, the kiṅkarī, bearing betel-leaf and cool water, the small offices of love, asking nothing for herself but the privilege of waiting on the two who are her life.

And then Kṛṣṇa does a thing that wears the face of cruelty and is not cruelty at all. Having relished union with Śrī Rādhikā for so long, He now longs to taste a second sweetness, the sweetness of Her separation. So He slips away. He hides Himself, and from His hiding place He watches Her feel His absence. Do not call this unkindness, O heart, for the teachers fix the why of it deep in the rasa. Rūpa Gosvāmī's tradition declares in the Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi: na vinā vipralambhena sambhogaḥ puṣṭim aśnute, that without separation, union itself cannot attain its full nourishment. But the ācāryas press further still, and this is the marrow: separation is not merely the servant of union; it is its own rasa, relishable in itself, and they dare to say it is even more relishable than the rasa of union.

How can an ocean of pain be sweeter than an embrace? Viśvanātha Cakravartī answers it for us, writing upon that very verse. One might object, he says, that if separation only nourishes union it should be counted a mere limb of union, no rasa of its own, especially since it brings such misery; why then crown it as a rasa at all? And the answer is this: when the hero and heroine, bearing in them rati and prema and sneha, are parted, they remember each other, they see each other, they touch each other, in the mind, in the inner eye, in the very feeling of the body, embracing, kissing, uniting again and again within. So crowded is this inward meeting, so astonishing, that the separation in which it all happens can itself be named sambhoga-puñjamaya: an abundance, a whole heaped mass, of union. This is why Vraja is so full of separation, O wind, especially in the amorous mood: because the apart-ness is itself a thronged and secret togetherness.

So Nāgara vanishes from Śrīmatī's lap, and in a blink She is bereft. "O Lord! Where are You?" She cries, and falls to lamenting in an enchanted, swooning state. Now watch the maidservant, for this cry is hers. She is, in a sense, not other than Śrīmatī; what Rādhā feels passes whole into her, every pleasure and every pain alike. So when sorrow takes Rādhā, sorrow takes the kiṅkarī too: she drowns in the same ocean, and she faints away. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta sets the truth of it in a single image: Rādhā is the wish-yielding vine of love for Kṛṣṇa, kṛṣṇa-prema-kalpa-latā, and Her sakhīs are that vine's sprouts and flowers and leaves; and when the vine is sprinkled with the nectar of Kṛṣṇa's pastimes, the sprouts and flowers are made millions of times happier than if the nectar had fallen on them directly. The servant's whole joy and whole grief come to her through Rādhā, never around Her.

And here is the wound the heart circles back to press. The maidservant does not pray for that swoon; she mourns it. For while she lay senseless, she could not serve. She could not bring water, could not whisper comfort, could not console Śrīmatī in the very hour Śrīmatī wept. Had she only been strong enough to bear the weight of her own misery and stay conscious, she could have soothed Her Mistress through those bitter moments. This is the cry that rises here: kadā, when, when at last will I fall and faint and then grieve my own state for a long time, that I failed to comfort Her and broke instead? It is not the fainting she wants. It is the love that could make her faint, joined to the strength that would let her keep serving even so.

For the devotees are never glad when their own ecstasy gets in the way of their service. Rūpa Gosvāmī teaches it in the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, that once Dāruka stood fanning the Lord of Dvārakā, and the bliss of that very service so stunned and stiffened his limbs that the fan fell still; and Dāruka did not welcome that bliss, for it had blocked the direct doing of his service. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta says it plainer yet: the devotee grows angry at his own loving ecstasy when it halts his ecstatic service of Kṛṣṇa. Service is the kiṅkarī's very life. So when the mañjarī swoons and her arms go slack and Rādhā weeps unattended, the swoon is no prize to her; it is a grief to be mourned for a long, long while. And mark how the līlā closes in mercy: when at last Nāgara-maṇi has drunk His fill of the sight of Rādhikā's ecstatic separation, He steps from hiding and returns, and delights Her; and the moment Svāminī blooms again with joy, the maidservant too awakens from her swoon and blooms, her every season set by Rādhā's own. So sang Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī, crown-jewel among the great souls of Gaura's company, crown-jewel among the clever petitioners who offer prayers of pure gold and cintāmaṇi.