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Picture it. The bower has grown quiet. The amorous Couple have been together, and now Their hair and garments and ornaments lie all in sweet disarray, the way the dawn finds a garland that danced all night. And before the day can ripen, before the sakhīs come laughing through the kuñja, Svāminī turns Her face a little and asks the one thing She will ask of no one else: "O Beautiful One, set My hair right again, quickly, before My girlfriends arrive and tease Me." Hear it, O heart. The Mistress of all sweetness does not call a maidservant for this. She calls Him.

And He comes to the work. The maidservant, glad beyond telling, gathers the paraphernalia: the jewelled comb, the strand of jewels, the jasmine garland she has strung with her own hands, the rubies, the loose flowers. She lays them near and then stands aside, and from that edge of the room she drowns, simply drowns, in oceans of bliss to watch what unfolds. For Śyāma sits down behind Svāminī's back, and the hand that upholds the worlds takes up the comb and begins, slowly, to draw it through Her long black hair.

O wonder. Each single strand passing between His fingers is dearer to Him than millions of lives. He does not comb the way a servant hurries; He lingers, because to Him this hair is not hair, it is the dark wealth of His Prāṇeśvarī. And when His fingers brush the nape of Her neck, Svāminī's whole body erupts in goosepimples of joy, romāñca rising along Her limbs like the first touch of spring on a vine. He feels Her tremble and is afraid He has hurt Her; He leans, He looks over Her shoulder into Her face to read it, anxious as only love is anxious. And She, to quiet Him, smiles back: "Why are You worried? It did not hurt at all." And hearing that, Kṛṣṇa smiles. The God before whom the worlds fold their hands is here made glad by a single word of reassurance from the One He is serving.

Then the braid is built, ornament by ornament, exactly as the speaker's longing names it. He binds its length with the strand of jewels. He weaves in the jasmine the maidservant strung, garland upon hanging garland, until the thick perfume of mallī lies heavy and sweet all down its course. Here and there along the middle He sets single flowers, studding the dark plait like stars caught in night. And overwhelmed at the beauty rising under His own hands, He cannot stop: He strews still more loose blossoms over it, and at the very end, at the rear, He hangs a cluster of fine rubies, a tassel of great jewels swaying as She moves. This is the veṇī-chabi, the splendor of the braid, and every jewel of it is the work of Hari's hand.

This is the marvel the tradition presses upon us, and it should make us still. He who is served by all has found His sweetest office kneeling behind His Beloved, comb in hand, watching Her face for the least shadow of discomfort. The highest Lord is here the lowest servant, and He would have it no other way. Rūpa Gosvāmī and the elders guard the truth that keeps this scene pure: this love between the gopīs and Kṛṣṇa is no mundane appetite. It is natural, it is the very taste without which these pastimes would have no sweetness, and what looks like desire in them is not the world's craving at all but a particle of Kṛṣṇa's own transcendental love entered into their hearts, which He Himself kindles only to deepen the play. So when His fingers tremble at Her braid, that trembling is not the world's heat; it is the rasa of Goloka, descended into a comb and a strand of jasmine.

And notice, O heart, where the speaker stands in all this. She does not ask to be Rādhā, nor to take Kṛṣṇa's place behind Her, nor even to be near. She asks one small selfless thing: to see this. To see Hari's hand holding that braid. The whole longing of the verse is the longing of the maidservant at the edge of the bower, who wants nothing for herself, only to witness the Lord turned servant in the care of His Prāṇeśvarī, and to hand Him the flowers when He reaches for them.