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Picture the night first, before the morning that breaks the heart. O Rādhe, You are vāsaka-sajjikā: You have bathed and dressed and braided the flowers in, You have prepared the bower and made Yourself beautiful for Him, and You wait. The whole night You wait, and the fire of separation rises in You hour by hour, and still the path stays empty. Dawn comes the way a wound comes, and with the first grey light He arrives at last; but He arrives wearing another's night upon His body. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes this exact heroine in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, in the Nāyikā-bheda, that she whose lover breaks the appointed tryst and comes at daybreak marked with the love-signs of another girl becomes the khaṇḍitā, and her whole state is roṣa, niḥśvāsa, and tūṣṇīm-bhāva: anger, the long deep breath, and silence. That is You now, O Svāminī, the wronged one, and Your silence has teeth in it.

Hear how You name what You see. Your lotus-eyes look tired, Mādhava, from a whole night kept awake; another's lipstick is on Your reddened lips, Her eyeliner clings there too, a spot of Her foot-lac is printed on Your very forehead. Give up Your false excuses. That artful girl was no reluctant partner in Cupid's battle; Her nails have torn open Your chest and lifted the jewels of love out of it. Who will trust a man so emptied of his own treasure? You have become a necklace without a string. So Rādhā, the offended one, becomes māninī, hardened in Her rightful pride, and turns away.

Now watch Him try. The Nāgara attempts every art of appeasement, and not one of them touches the locked door of Her māna. So He does the astonishing thing: He takes shelter of the maidservant. He calls Śrīpāda, the sakhi in her kiṅkarī-form, out from the bower and begs her, "O sakhi, today your mistress is angry with Me for no reason at all; I am burning in the fire of separation; please soften Her, please bring Us together." But this dāsī was awake too. She answers Him without mercy: "For no reason? Cheater, are You not ashamed? You named this very trysting-place to Her, and then You went and spent the whole night in the camp of Her rivals while my mistress burned. I know, because I stood here the whole night. And now You come strewing salt in Her wounds, shameless, wearing the enemy's love-marks on Your skin, and You dare call Her anger groundless?" He pleads His thin defense: He only wandered lost in the dark forest, His eyes are red from sleeplessness, the thorns of the night bruised His skin, the cold wind cracked His lips, and these spots are His own and no other lady's. The dāsī will have none of it: "We are Rādhā's own servants; we read Your tricks easily. Say no more. Get out quickly, for if Svāminī or one of Her loyal friends sees me speaking with You, there will be no place left for me in Her kuñja."

And here, O my heart, comes the gesture this verse is built upon. When He hears her refusal, the prince of Vraja falls down at the feet of this small girl, presses a blade of grass between the edges of His teeth, and speaks word after pitiful word, "kāku-vādān bravīti," the coaxing of one who has set every shred of dignity aside. The straw in the teeth is the oldest sign of total surrender: I am lower than the lowest, lower than the grass underfoot, have mercy. Stay with what is happening. This is Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Person Himself, the One a single speck of whose foot-dust the greatest sages and mystics cannot catch in the deepest reach of their meditation; and this selfsame Kṛṣṇa now lies in the dust at the feet of a servant girl, begging. She turns and runs from His pitiful pleading, and He follows her, "nityaṁ anuvrajati," following and following with folded hands, every endeavour aimed at one thing only, "saṅgamāya udyamam," the labour to win union with You.

This is the extraordinary greatness of Rādhā's maidservice. Mark it well: the glory of the scene is not Kṛṣṇa's power, for His power is exactly what He has laid aside; the glory is the worth of being Her servant, that even the Lord of all will fall at such a servant's feet. Seeing His eagerness at last, the dāsī relents. She hides Him in a nearby bower and goes in to You and says, "O Praṇayini Rādhe, the prince of Vraja knows You are angry with Him, and so he fell at my feet, a straw in His teeth, speaking such pitiful words, and followed me everywhere begging me to soften You. Please forbid Him to harass me so." And notice the cleverness folded into that one word, praṇayini, ladylove. By it she reminds You quietly that You are not truly other than Kṛṣṇa, that You can never stand against Him for long, and that if You do not fulfill His desire soon, You will be the one left sorry. Blessed is this maidservant; blessed is her clever service of slackening Svāminī's proud huff.

And under all of it runs her own small trembling, which the verse lets us overhear: "udvegaṁ me," my own agitation, my own distress at being caught between His weeping and Your silence. How, O Rādhe, am I even to lay this before You? That tremor is the truest note of all, for it is the agitation of one who loves the love itself and only wants it mended.