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At the edge of the trysting-grove the leaves draw close, a green hush gathered like a curtain Her own beauty has hung. Here sits Śrī Rādhā, and Her heart is full of a tender quarrel. She has slipped away from the meeting-bower and left Śyāmasundara behind, and now Her love has put on the costume of anger, the way a flame will lean away from the very hand it longs to warm. This is no cold displeasure. This is māna, the sweet sulk of one who loves too much, and even as She turns Her face the love beneath is leaning toward Him still.

And He, the clever One, the Beloved who can no more bear Her turning away than the lotus can bear the closing of the day, sends to Her a messenger. The tradition tells us this helper is a viṭa, and it fixes the word in Rūpa Gosvāmī's Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi, in the chapter on the Hero's companions: a viṭa is one expert in the making of dresses, bold of bearing, a master of speech, knowing all the arts of love's tantra; and the chief among them are named Kaḍāra and Bhāratībandha. So it is Kaḍāra who comes into the bower, folds his hands before Her, and begins to plead the Beloved's cause. O Rādhe, he says, do not think Śyāma is some ordinary boy of Vraja. Kala-krīḍad-vaṁśī-sthagita-jagatī-yauvata-dhṛtiḥ: when His flute begins its unclear, melting murmur, the steadiness of every young woman in the worlds dissolves like salt in water. Do not forsake Him, O doe-eyed One. I pray to You with folded hands, and know this: no doe-eyed girl in all of Vraja has ever turned away from my words.

And here is the wonder the tradition asks us to behold. Her anger was only love wearing a borrowed face, and as She listens to this honeyed pleading the pretty pique begins to melt. A smile rises, and She gives it up with satisfaction. O the lips of Her then. Reddened, glistening, they are like the ripe bimba-cherry and like fresh coral newly shining from the sea, for so the seers sing it, bimboṣṭhe nava-vidruma-cchabi, and from those lips the loveliness comes streaming out in little sprouting buds of light, prasṛmara, spreading, overflowing, so that the whole bower seems lit by Her speaking mouth. They say even Kṛṣṇa, He who is Himself the boundary and the source of all sweetness, grows faint with longing when He beholds those lips; sphurad-aruṇādhara-svādu-sudhādhara-kṛta-hari-mānasa-lobham, the Sangīta-Mādhava sings, that the sweet nectar of Her glowing red lower lip steals away the very mind of Hari. The nectar of Her moon-bright smile showers down as She converses, and the maidservant who attends Her stands enchanted, drowning in what she beholds.

Look now at the part in Her hair, the crown and threshold of Her beauty. There runs a single stripe of vermilion, sindūra, glowing red, and the tradition cannot stop turning the image over in delight. It is, they say, like the newly risen sun making friendship with the dense dark night of Her hair. And set along that part is a row of pearls, mauktika-paṅkti, a string of soft white light, and these, the seers imagine, are the stars themselves. The stars felt cold in the long night, and so they left their husband the moon and came to take shelter beside the warm red rising sun, the vermilion in Rādhā's part. So the whole heaven of an autumn night is gathered into the parting of Her hair: the dark, the dawn-stripe, the cold-fled stars come home to warmth.

And the teeth, daśana-kundavatī, the heart of this remembrance. When She smiles, when She speaks Her flattering loving words to Him, Her teeth shine out white as kunda-flowers, white as the jasmine that opens at night, white as moonrays poured into a row. This is the vision Śrīpāda is given, by Her own grace, and his whole heart sinks down into it as a pearl-diver sinks into the sea.

Understand the secret of Her anger, O heart, for the tradition presses it on us gently. Her displeasure is itself a service of love. She is only angry to please Him. Her outer form wears the māna, but Her substance is the sweetest sweetness, and it is the substance, not the form, that is to be relished. A serpent fashioned out of sugar-candy does not spit venom; it is only sweet, sweet through and through, however it may rear its little hood. So is Her quarrel. And one may stumble here and ask: why should She flatter a deceitful lover, one the tradition itself half-playfully names a viṭa, a shameless cheat, a clever womanizer? The experts answer that this very love is the most relishable of all, and that this is why in Vraja the love that breaks every fence is accepted and cherished. The seers answer with a deeper sweetness still. The Beloved's very crookedness, His naughtiness, His feigning, is wholly enchanting, every bit of it ramaṇīya. As Viśvanātha Cakravartī sings in his Prema-Sampuṭa, Kṛṣṇa Himself, dressed as a goddess, tells Rādhā the truth of His own heart: the prince of Vraja is an ocean of love and a mine of jewel-like virtues, and his deceit and fickleness and crookedness are all most charming; he makes his own boundless love appear like mere lust before the women, only so that their love may shine the higher, may seem to surpass even his. Were He not so artful, Her love could never blossom into all its rasika moods, the pique of the wronged one (khaṇḍitā), the sulk of māna, the tender war of separation (kalahāntaritā), and the tenderer peace that follows. So it is altogether right that She, the crown-jewel of all who know rasa, rasika-śiromaṇi, should speak to Her artful Hero exactly so.

And what is it She says, this ālāpa, this flattering loving speech the very word in the verse holds? The tradition fixes the word in Rūpa Gosvāmī's own gloss, cāṭu-priyoktir ālāpaḥ, that ālāpa is the use of flattering, loving words. And it lends Her the voice of Caṇḍī Dāsa's old song, the cry of the surrendered heart: Dear Friend, what more shall I say? In life, in death, birth after birth, You are the Lord of my heart. You have bound my very life to Your lotus-feet with the noose of love. I have given everything, become one-pointed, and made myself certain: I am Your maidservant. I looked through all three worlds and found none else who is mine; none even asks after Rādhā. Knowing Your feet to be cool and refuge-giving, I took shelter there. Do not push me away with tricks, I am only a weak and simple girl, and I have seen, after long looking, that without the Lord of my life I have no path at all. If for half a wink my eyes do not see You, I die. Caṇḍī Dāsa says, I have bound a touchstone at my neck and wear it. So Her flattery is no shallow thing. It is total surrender singing itself into sweetness.

Then, as suddenly as it was given, the vision lifts. Śrīpāda returns to his outer eyes and his outer breath, and out of the fullness of what he has been shown he says only this, the verse itself: blessed, blessed beyond saying, is anyone who can meditate on Śrī Rādhikā's kunda-flower teeth as She speaks Her sweet quarrel with Her Beloved. And humbly, lowering himself beneath the dust, he adds in his servant-heart: alas, I am not worthy to see those enchanting teeth shine while She converses with Her artful Lover; yet whoever can see it is fortunate indeed. So even the seer who is given the sight will not seize it as a possession. He receives it as a kiṅkarī, a handmaid absorbed in service, standing near enough to hear Their honeyed words, and even that nearness he calls a grace, not a right. And so the closing song of the tradition rises, that there is no comparison in all the three worlds to this private play of Rasamayī Rādhā and Rasarāja Kṛṣṇa, to the luster of Her red lips and the moonray grandeur of Her teeth, to the vermilion-and-pearl heaven of Her part; blessed is the one who meditates so, and Prabodhānanda prays not even to be that one, but only for his blissful company.