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Picture the bower as the sakhīs slip away. They have read the unspoken wish in the eyes of the amorous Couple, and so, on the gentle pretext of picking flowers, they go, leaving Rādhā and Mādhava alone upon Their play-bed. The loving bewilderment that had veiled Śrīmatī's senses a moment ago has lifted now, and across Her face move three things at once: a flush of joy, a tremor of shame, an eagerness She cannot hide. In Her absorption the veil has slipped from Her head. And standing a little behind Them, fan in hand, gladly serving, is the maidservant whose voice this verse is. She does not look at Herself, does not look for any place in the love before Her. Her eyes have found one thing only, the braid of Śrī Rādhā, and into that one thing she pours all her wonder.

Look with her, O heart. The braid hangs heavy, dark, glossy. It is strung with a garland of the greatest jewels, mahā-maṇi-vara, gathered through with clusters of fresh flowers, kusuma-sañcaya. It carries the splendour of great emerald, mahā-mārakata-prabhā, and yet its black gloss is so deep that it steals the very luster of the emeralds and enchants darkness itself: mohita-śyāmalam, that which has bewitched even what is dark. But do not mistake the source. The kiṅkarī sees it clearly, and the tradition fixes it without flinching: the jewels and the flowers do not lend their beauty to the braid. The beauty runs the other way. It is the braid that beautifies the jewels, the braid that beautifies the flowers, and they only borrow what shines from Her. For every limb of Śrīmatī is made of mahā-bhāva, the highest, fullest blaze of love, and this is the very reason She holds Kṛṣṇa wholly in Her power. The glossy darkness of that braid is not a thing of oils and ornaments; it is mahā-bhāva taking visible form. The shine comes from inside Her; the ornaments are lit by Her, never She by them.

And so the maidservant, in her kiṅkarī-form, sees this braid as something more than lovely: she sees it as the vicitra-siddha-āsana, the wonderful, perfect throne, the seat of the king of great rasa, mahā-rasa-mahīpati. Here a word of the greatest care is owed, for the king of that rasa is named as Cupid, and great rasa is named as the amorous mellow. The old verse the tradition keeps says it plainly, ādya eva paro rasaḥ: the first, the foremost rasa is the amorous one, and Cupid is the king of that mellow. But hear what kind of Cupid this is. He is not the mundane Cupid who agitates all the boys and girls, all the men and women of this turning world. He is Cupid's transcendental counterpart, the one who eternally engages Rādhā and Mādhava in Their ever-fresh amorous play, and the countless worldly cupids are only His parts and parcels, descended from Him to the earth. Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī seals this for us in his Bṛhat-Krama-Sandarbha upon Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.29.46: the love of the gopīs is premā, spontaneous and innate, sāhajikaḥ, and not kāma at all; yet without the play of what looks like longing the līlā would not run sweet and full of rasa, surasā, and so the Lord Himself heightened even a seeming desire in their hearts. And that desire, Jīva insists, is in no way mundane; it is that very portion of Bhagavān by whom the descent of Cupid takes place, set down within their minds. So the throne the braid becomes is the seat of that transcendental Cupid alone, the ever-fresh attraction of Rādhā and Mādhava and nothing of this world.

This is why the wonder deepens past all measure. The braid does not merely enchant the servant. It enchants the Enchanter. Even Śyāmasundara, the youthful transcendental Cupid of Vṛndāvana, the dark beauty before whom all the world melts, is Himself agitated, drawn, undone with amorous longing when His eyes fall upon Rādhikā's braid. He who maddens all is maddened here. And the maidservant, standing behind with her fan, her mind wholly poured into that one dark, jeweled, flowering, emerald-shaming weight of hair, asks only the single question of the whole verse: kadā nu, when, O when, tava rādhike, will I behold it? Not possess it, not enter it, only see. Ālokaye: that I might look. The Rādhāvallabha singers of Hit Harivaṃśa's line name this very mood the kabarī-chabi-varṇana, the telling of the braid's beauty, and they too behold the same throne: the braid that has enchanted even darkness, the very siṃhāsana of rasarāja-śṛṅgāra, the king of amorous rasa, and they too ask in the maidservant's own feminine voice when she will be granted the sight.