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Picture it. The noon sun stands white and merciless over Vraja, and the sand of the path lies burning. Yet down that scorching road slips a girl who has fled Her own house, Her heart gone on ahead of Her feet. The hot grains scald Her soles, tender as the inside of a lotus, but She does not feel them, for there is only one fire She heeds, and it is not in the ground. It is the fire of longing for Śyāma. O Rasavatī Rāi, what road would You not cross, what door would You not forsake, to come where He has promised to meet You? You forget everything in this single desire, to please Him.

She reaches the trysting bower. The leaves hang still in the heat. And Śyāma is not there.

Begin, then, with Her eyes. The longer Svāminī waits, the more impatient She grows, and all the eagerness that carried Her down the burning road now floods upward and gathers in Her gaze, so that She becomes ākulākṣī, the girl whose eyes are restless with anxiety. She looks down the path. She looks again. Each empty stretch of road is a small death. And because He will not come into the grove, She brings Him into Her mouth instead, calling His names as if to name Him were to summon the named one. She remembers His form, His qualities, His pastimes, and She sings: "O Śyāma, Vṛndāvana itself is lit by the bluish luster of Your body, that shines like a fresh raincloud after the first rain. Who in all the three worlds is not enchanted by that sweetness? What housewife keeps her composure once she has known it? O Śyāmala, if I do not see You I will die. Show Yourself, and let Me live."

A maidservant comes near to soothe Her. "Be calm, O Rādhe. Your heart's lover comes, this very moment He comes." But how shall words cool a heart that is itself on fire? Śrīmatī answers, and there is grief in it: "O Sundara, O beautiful One, My life is leaving Me, for I cannot relish the sweetness of Your beauty. My eyes thirst to lick that nectar. How shall I be still without the sight of You? Ah, even My own sakhī, who loves Me, does not understand My state." For the tradition fixes it truly in the Caitanya Caritāmṛta, that the scriptures speak the truth when they say one person can never know the misery in another's mind: what to speak of strangers, even Her own prāṇa-sakhī, who tries so hard to console Her, cannot enter inside Her sorrow.

Now mark what longing does in Her. Śrī Rādhikā thrives by serving Kṛṣṇa; kept from that service, She suffers a pain past all bearing. And so, slowly, half-mad with separation, She begins to see Him. A vision rises before Her: there He stands, and He speaks softly. "O beloved, why are You sad? See, here I am. Where would I go without You? You are My everything." But the heart in love is not so easily caught. Even in the vision a thought stings Her: "This womanizer comes now from Candrāvalī's kuñja, and turns His flattery on Me." And so Her mood shifts. She becomes the dhīra-mānavatī, the girl calm on the surface and wounded beneath, and She says with cool dignity: "O Manohara, O thief of every heart, You steal the hearts of all the girls of the world, and so of course You must fulfill the desires of them all. Every lovely daughter of Vraja wants You. I am not the only one. Go, satisfy them, each and all." This is the solluṇṭha-vākya, the light sarcastic speech the offended one uses, and behind it stands what Rūpa Gosvāmī sets down in the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu: "O Mādhava, You are a magnet and the girls are iron; therefore wherever You go to play, they run in that direction." So it is only Your nature, She says; what fault is it of Yours?

And Mādhava, in the vision, pleads: "O Māninī, why this needless anger? I went nowhere. I am always with You. Do not torment Yourself over nothing. I have done no wrong. Be pleased with Me." But the words only feed the jealous fire, and Her mood deepens into the dhīrādhīra-mānavatī, the girl whose crooked, glancing speech now praises, now wounds, now turns away indifferent. She throws back at Him His own glory: "kandarpa-koṭi-lalita, You who are lovely as millions of Cupids." And lalita, as the tradition glosses it in the same Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, is the place where many amorous gestures are shown. "Every gopī of Vraja is under the spell of that form that shames a crore of love-gods. Then go, quickly, do not linger here. Prove to them all that You outshine ten million Cupids by satisfying every one. Freely come under their sway, do not trouble Yourself on My account. I am ever pleased with You." So the Caitanya Caritāmṛta describes her in the fourteenth chapter of the Madhya: the dhīrādhīra māninī speaks her joking words in a crooked way, sometimes praising, sometimes insulting, sometimes indifferent. This is the strange music of a wounded love.

Then in Her vision the Nāgara, seeing there is no end to the pique of His Nāgarīmaṇi, comes and sits at Her footstool. He takes Her feet in His hands. The thief of every heart humbles Himself before this one girl, and the tradition gives Him the very words of the Gīta Govindam: "O Rādhe with the beautiful teeth, if You are truly angry with Me, then strike Me with Your sharp nails, bind Me with the rope of Your arms, mark My lips with Your teeth. Do whatever may pacify Your anger and bring You joy. You are My life. You are My ornament. You are the jewel drawn up from the ocean of My existence. Be pleased with Me: that is My only desire."

And when even this does not move Her, when the desperate One still kneels and still She holds back, the wheel turns one last time. Now the anger breaks, and grief rushes into its place. She becomes the kalahāntaritā, the girl who has picked a quarrel and now repents it. She cries out: "He sunāgara! O My good lover! How long did You plead, sitting at My feet, and still I would not soften? Alas, what a fool I have been! I carelessly threw away a jewel and now I have lost the treasure of My very life!" And She strikes Her own head and Her breast with Her hands. "O sunāgara, come back. Forgive the offenses of this unfortunate girl. I chastised You so cruelly out of anger. Forgive Me, forgive My offenses. I am dying of separation from You."

O Rādhe, all of this in a single waiting noon. All of it while You stand alone in the empty bower, calling His names. This is why Śrīpāda, the devotee whom the tradition keeps unnamed, does not pray to see the meeting, nor the embrace, nor the triumph. He prays to see this: the restless eyes, the trembling names, the pride and the relenting, the whole storm of a heart that loves so much it cannot hold itself together. Sā rādhikā mayi kadā nu bhavet prasannā: "When will that Rādhikā ever be pleased with me?" For he knows the secret of his own hope: if She is pleased, She will appear to him, and let him stand near while these very emotions pour from Her in separation, and let him taste, as a servant tastes the leavings of the beloved's plate, the unbearable sweetness of Her longing talk.

And the tradition gives that hope its closing words, in the voice it ascribes to Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī: O moonfaced Rāi, with Your restless, anxious eyes, be pleased with me. Give me one wink, one small signal, and let me be the one who runs to bring the lord of Your heart to You. This, and nothing grander, is all I ask.