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Begin in the half-dark of the bower, where the appointed grove waits. The sky has gone the colour of a bruised lotus, the leaves hang heavy with the day's last warmth, and Śrīmatī has come early. She has slipped breathless from the watching eyes of Her elders to stand at the threshold of the saṅketa-kuñja, the trysting-arbour where, by a wordless sign exchanged hours ago, Śyāma promised to meet Her. The bed is ready. At Her own faint indication the maidservant has already gathered the softest new sprouts and spread them leaf upon leaf, anupallavam, so that not a single hard stem can touch the Prāṇeśvarī's tender limbs. Everything is prepared for the meeting. Everything except the One who is missing.

He does not come. The minutes stretch and curl like smoke, and Śrīmatī's eyes go again and again to the path; Her hope lifts at every rustle of the wind and sinks again when the path stays empty. Watch the anxiety gather in Her the way dusk gathers in a grove. And seeing Her Svāminī grow restless, the kiṅkarī, the little maidservant whose whole life is folded into Rādhā's happiness, slips out into the forest to find Him.

Now turn to Śyāma, for He is in no better state. The dark moon of Gokula has been overwhelmed by His own separation; so drowned is He in the ache of not-yet-meeting that He has lost the very path to the trysting-bower. This Lord who holds the three worlds cannot find one grove in Vṛndāvana. He wanders, unmoored. And then the wind, that tender go-between, that servant of lovers, lifts the fragrance of Rādhā's limbs from the distant kuñja and lays it gently against His nostrils. Like one waking from a swoon, Śyāma lifts His head; consciousness returns; He follows the scent the way a thirsting deer follows the smell of water, drawn helplessly along the thread the wind has spun for Him.

The maidservant sees Him first, from far off, and her heart blooms. She reads His eagerness in His face, in the searching of His eyes, in the way His whole body leans toward the grove He cannot find. How beautiful is His longing. And then His restless glance falls upon her, and hope brightens His whole heart. He hurries to her, and the words tumble out: "Sakhi! Where is your goddess? I have lost the way to the trysting-bower and I am dying to see Her. I have searched everywhere. Wherever She is, take Me to Her now."

But the maidservant, who loves Him too, loves also to draw out this sweetness a little longer, the way one cups a flame against the wind to keep it burning. So she answers gravely: "O King of lovers, today Your hope is in vain. Nāgari-maṇi, the jewel of Vraja's beloveds, stays at home today." His face falls. "Will She not come into the forest, then?" And she invents her tender obstacle: "Today Her elders have set Her to housework. Jaṭilā found Her churning water instead of curd, lost in thought, and decided She was undone by love for You, so she scolded Her and kept Her behind closed doors." Śyāma will not believe it: "But sakhi, I just now caught the fragrance of Her very limbs." And the clever maidservant, smiling within, deflects even this: "O Nāgarendra, that is not Her body's perfume. It is mine. I am wearing one of Svāminī's leftover garments, and it still carries Her scent. That is what reaches You." And He, trusting, sinks into despair: "Alas. Will My cloud-dark heart not be lit today by the lightning of Rādhā?"

Behold the mercy of these maidservants. Seeing Nāgara's heart filling with the darkness of despair, she will not let Kṛṣṇa, who is bliss itself, remain even one moment longer in grief than the rasa requires. This is their greatness: they must give bliss to the very source of bliss, for they are the instruments in the hands of mahā-bhāva, born to give joy to joy itself. So now, having tasted His longing to the full, she relents, she sheds light into His clouded heart, and she leads Him to the very kuñja where Śrīmatī waits.

And on the other side of the leaf-curtain, Śrīmatī too has caught Śyāma's fragrance arriving on the breeze before He Himself appears. Her whole being lifts. And She turns and praises the wind aloud, this messenger that has done what She could not: "O Gandhavaha, O carrier of scents, what austerities did you once perform, that you should be permitted to touch the most precious fragrance of Śrī Gokula-candra's beautiful limbs and carry it to Me? Had I known such fortune could be won that way, I too would gladly have undertaken those very penances." So great is love's longing that Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, paraspara-vaśībhāvaḥ prema-vaicittyakaṁ tathā, aprāṇiny api janmāptyai lālasā-bhara-unnataḥ: among the signs of anurāga is this, that the lover so fiercely desires the meeting that he would gladly take birth even as a lifeless thing, a leaf, a breeze, a grain of dust, if only that birth could touch the Beloved. The maidservant has accomplished what neither lover could accomplish alone. She has joined the eager Pair.

And now the reward. Śrīmatī, overflowing and most pleased with her service, wishes to give Her maidservant some token of pleasure. Śyāma, in His tenderness, places a little of His own chewed betel into Rādhā's mouth, but Śrīmatī, in the exquisite contrariness of māna, screws up Her face and cries, "Yek. I will not eat the leavings of a lusty cowherd who kisses a hundred girls," and spits the remnant out onto a leaf lying just outside the bowerhouse. And that, that spat-out fragment on a leaf, is the maidservant's delicious prasāda: tat tat prasādam abhitaḥ. To the world it is nothing; to the servant it is the whole of heaven, a relic carrying the touch of both Their mouths at once.

There is a second sweetness folded into that word prasāda. It can also mean an order, a command to serve. For the divine Couple, in Their love, will lovingly turn to the maidservant and ask her for some service, and to be commanded is itself the gift. So Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura sings the maidservant's longing, ājñāya āniyā kobe vividha phula-vara, vacana śunabo duhuṅ miṭhi: "On Their order I will run to bring armfuls of the finest flowers, and while I gather them I will drink in Their sweet words." To be told "do this for Us" is the maidservant's blessing, never her burden.

And so the night deepens into wandering. The first play-bed is crushed beneath Their love, and Śrīmatī turns to the maidservant with a wink, the faintest signal of Her eyes: "Make Us a new bed in the next grove." And the maidservant, glad beyond telling, spreads fresh sprouts in the next kuñja, anu, in every grove, leaf upon tender leaf. The rasika Couple wanders from bower to bower through the whole of the night, free and unburdened as a pair of royal elephants moving through the forest, and wherever They go the maidservant goes a step ahead, preparing the next soft bed, and a step behind, witnessing the sweetness she has made possible. To serve Their meeting and to watch Their meeting are, for her, one single joy.

Then, as a vision must, this fades. And the one who has been seeing it all, the singer of these longings, sits alone and laments: "I am sitting here, only desiring such services. O Rādhe, the tree of my desires stands barren. Without Your mercy it cannot bear fruit, no matter how long I water it with longing." There is no other watering that works. Not effort, not merit, not the heat of one's own desire, only Her glance. And so the cry that gathers up the whole scene, the bed of leaves, the lost Beloved, the wind, the betel on the leaf, the elephant-wandering through the groves: śrī rādhike, mayi vidhehi kṛpā-kaṭākṣam. O Śrī Rādhike, place upon me Your merciful sidelong glance, for it alone can make the barren tree of my desires bear fruit.