36

The love-night has ended, and still the kuñja holds its hush. Outside, the first grey is thinking of becoming light, the birds are stirring but have not yet sung, and the jasmine that climbed the lattice has spent itself in scent. Inside, on the flower-bed, Śrī Rādhā lies with Her garland broken, Her braid undone and tousled, Her ornaments scattered like fallen stars across the leaves. The night of nearness is over. And now, of all things, what rises in Her heart is not languor but a small, sudden urgency. Dawn is coming. Her sakhīs are coming.

"Quickly," She says to Her Nāgara, the dark beloved still beside Her. "Dress Me, decorate Me, before My girlfriends arrive and find Me like this and laugh." There is a shyness in this haste, and there is a queenliness too, and the two together are unbearably sweet. She wants the leaf-designs drawn again upon Her breasts and cheeks, the wet fragrant musk-paint traced in tender vines and petals. She wants Her loosened hair gathered and bound into the braid with fresh jasmine woven through it. She wants Her ornaments returned to their places, limb by limb, so that when the dawn and Her friends arrive She stands composed, sovereign, the unreadable Svāminī of the grove.

And Madhusūdana, Śyāmasundara, Nāgara-Śekhara, takes up the fragrant fluid to obey Her. He dips His finger to draw the first leaf upon Her breast. But His hand will not hold steady. He has been undone by Her sweetness. As He looks at Her, the hairs of His body rise in ecstasy, His fingers slacken, the line He means to draw wanders and fails. He who upholds the worlds cannot trace a single leaf upon His Beloved. He, the all-skilled, is here the trembling one, the helpless one, conquered by the very loveliness He set out to ornament.

See it, and let the wonder of it settle in you. The Lord of all rasa is here a stammering hand. The painter cannot paint. And Rādhā, Nāgarī-maṇi, seeing His condition, half-tender and half-impatient, turns to Her maidservant and says, "Quickly, you dress Me. My lover is out of His mind, He cannot manage it." And the maidservant, the dāsī, steps forward, gently moves Śyāma aside, and says to Him, "Move up. You cannot do this." She presses Him aside the way one moves a beloved, distracted child.

Now stay with what wakes in Śyāma's heart, because this is the whole secret here. He does not resent being moved aside. He watches. He watches the maidservant dip Her finger and draw, with calm sure skill, the very rows of leaves He could not draw, upon Rādhā's breasts and cheeks. He watches Her gather Svāminī's loosened hair and weave it into the braid with fresh jasmine. He watches Her fasten the ornaments, limb by limb, upon that body, expert, unshaken, serving. And as He watches, an astonishing longing wakes in the Lord Himself: "Alas, how unqualified I am. How blessed are these maidservants, who can do for Her what I cannot. I would be blessed indeed if I could attain their fortunate place."

Let that land. The longing here is not the lover's longing to enjoy. It is the Lord's own longing to serve. It is Kṛṣṇa wishing He were a maidservant. The summit of all enjoyment looks up at the dāsī and envies her. This is the upside-down glory of mañjarī-bhāva, the mood of the handmaiden: that the place lowest in the bower, the place of the one who paints and braids and clasps and then steps back, is a place the Supreme Enjoyer Himself yearns toward and cannot reach from where He stands.

And the tradition tells us He did at last reach toward it. In the age of Kali this very desire is said to have descended as Gaura, who in His inner room at Jagannātha Purī, the Gambhīrā, would sink into the nikuñja-līlā of Rādhā and Mādhava and there taste the mood of the mañjarīs. The Caitanya Caritāmṛta keeps the memory of it: when in His ecstasy He picked flowers because the divine Couple's girlfriends had asked Him to, told in the Antya-līlā's fourteenth chapter; when He gazed upon Their water-pastimes on the Yamunā's shore, told in the eighteenth. In those hours He was living from inside the very service this prayer aches for. The longing of the singer and the longing of the Lord become one longing, and it has one name: let me serve Her, let me be Her handmaiden, let me do the small near things for Her body and step back into the shadow of the leaves, content.

And understand why such a scene can be sung at all, and to whom. When Uddhava came to Vraja and entered the gopīs' company, they questioned him about Kṛṣṇa in private, "rahasi pṛcchāt", the Śrīmad Bhāgavata records in its tenth book. One might ask how anything is private when there are millions of gopīs gathered around. The Vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī answers: "rahasi vijātīya-bhāvāgocare", the secrecy is that it was imperceptible to any who held a different mood toward Kṛṣṇa. So it is here. These confidential things pass only between hearts that share the one mood; the rāgānugā devotee can open them only to another of the same longing, and to all other moods they stay sealed and unseen. This is not exclusion but protection: the bower closes itself to the wrong gaze.

So now hear the cry rise from this scene, no longer a description but a prayer. O Rādhe, rāja-nandinī, princess and daughter of Vṛṣabhānu's house; gāndharvikā, angelic goddess; ṭhākurānī, sovereign mistress; kṛṣṇamayī, girl who is wholly made of Kṛṣṇa; kṛṣṇa-priyatamā, Kṛṣṇa's own dearmost: when, in some hidden bower, in some nibhṛta nikuñja, will I paint the rows of leaves upon Your cheeks and breasts? O cāru-candrānana, beautiful moon-faced one, O Kiśorī, when will I bind fresh jasmine into the wonder of Your braid and clasp jewelled ornaments upon Your every limb with all my care? When will I look upon Your decorated body, that body which is itself the ornament that makes ornaments lovely, bhūṣaṇa-bhūṣaṇa-aṅga? The tradition gives this cry to Śrī Prabodhānanda, and through him to every heart that follows: O bhānu-kula-candra, O moon of Vṛṣabhānu's line, look this way; cast upon me Your merciful glance.

For notice what the singer asks at the last. Not the service itself, first. The glance. The Rādhāvallabha rendering hears it as a true petition for grace, a kṛpāvalokana-yācanā, and binds the two together as one motion: I hold only this hope, and may You Yourself so ordain Your grace upon me that the hope can be fulfilled. The whole skill of painting and braiding and adorning is not something the singer claims he can do, the way even the Lord could not do it. It is something only Her grace can grant. Vidhehi kṛpāvalokam: do this one thing, place Your merciful look upon me. Because the qualification to serve Rādhā does not rise from the servant. It falls from Her eyes. One glance, and the trembling hand grows steady, the unworthy is made fit, the outsider is drawn into the bower. So the cry ends not with reaching for Her but with bowing under Her gaze, holding out empty hands and the single hope that She will look.