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The noon is past. Śrīmatī has come home from a morning of blissful love-sports with Her beloved, by Rādhā-kuṇḍa and Kusuma-sarovara and Sūrya-kuṇḍa, and now the fever of separation climbs in Her again, hotter for having so lately been quenched. Her sakhīs gather close and try to console Her, but their words do not land. To Her the in-laws' house has become a dark blind well, and Her own bashfulness, that veil She cannot lift, presses on Her like a thunderbolt. O Rādhe, what comfort can a roof give when the One who is the home of Your heart is walking somewhere out in the dust?

And so She does the one thing that helps even a little. She says His name. "Śyāma, Śyāma." The tradition lingers on these two small syllables: amṛta-rasa-saṁsrāvi varṇān, the letters that pour out nectar as She murmurs them, because the name is not other than the One She loves. When She says it softly, sweetness drips from it. And how much sweeter it sounds sung in Her own nectarean, love-laden voice; only Her maidservants, hidden close, can feel in their hearts of hearts what that voice does to the name. Then, in a single instant, premotkaṇṭhya, the upward surge of longing, takes Her, and She can no longer keep it low. She lifts the name aloud, uccair lapantī, and Her whole body answers: romāñca, the hair standing on end, goosebumps erupting on Her beautiful limbs as big as the buds of the kadamba flower. For as She sings Śyāma's name She is seeing Him within, every quality and form and pastime of Him rising before Her eyes, and the body cannot hold such seeing without trembling.

There is a sharp word here, and the old teachers draw it out tenderly. Sarvatra uccāṭanam iva gatā: She is, as it were, driven from everywhere. The tradition catches the exact force of it. Uccāṭana is the name of a cruel rite, a kind of black magic worked to rob an enemy of all rest, so that he cannot sit still even in his own house, hunted out of every room of his own life. Just so, says the tradition, does separation work upon Svāminī. Bitten by the snake of viraha, the venom of missing Kṛṣṇa in Her blood, She cannot find peace in any corner. She climbs to Her watchtower, the candra-śālikā; She goes out upon the balcony; She walks the terrace; She comes back and watches the road, eager, hoping that any moment now She will see Śyāma coming. The Rādhāvallabha stream names this very condition prema-vaicittya-daśā, the state of love-bewilderment, where the mind itself is uccāṭita from every side and the heart is left vihvalā, undone; and it hears in the verse the bhrama, the delusion of separation, that sends Her wandering with His name on Her lips.

Hear Her speak to Her friends, O wind that carries every word of the bowers. "O fair-faced ones, it is only a few hours before Śyāma walks past My house on His uttara-goṣṭha-yātrā, His curly locks framing that sweet smiling face, greyed by the dust the cows throw up with their hooves. How long, how long until then? These few hours will not end. They last like thousands of ages. Has the creator made the hours into a rod, that they should grind My heart to pulp afresh every single day?" So She passes the daylight, duḥkha-duḥkhena, in misery laid upon misery, wanting only that the day be over, until at last She turns Her wrath upward and is angry, vainly angry, at the sun itself, dinakaram alaṁ krudhyatī, because it hangs there and will not set and let the dark bring Him nearer.

The tradition sets a hush around this grief. No worldly sorrow, it says, comes anywhere near the sorrow of even one minute of Rādhikā's separation from Kṛṣṇa, and the door to this realization stays firmly shut to anyone who will not enter the mood of Her own sakhīs. And then, gathering all of it, the prayer rises. May that Rādhā, who thus counts out Her minutes in misery, protect us all. In the tradition it is Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda who kneels at the lotus feet of his Īśvarī and pleads it: may Gāndharvikā, my mistress Śrī Rādhikā, forever guard me. She who can find no shelter anywhere is asked to be our shelter; She whom the sun will not pity is begged to pity us.