43

Begin with the night. The moon has tilted west, the houses of the village have gone still, and in an inner room a single lamp burns low. There Pranesvari Rādhā stands at the threshold, and She is not at rest. Something has risen up and taken Her. The form of Śyāma, that emerald-dark youth with the peacock feather catching the lamplight, has lifted itself up in Her heart and will not lie down again, and a heart so flooded can no longer keep the body indoors. She must go to Him. She must go now.

This is the daśā the tradition names unmāda, the sweet madness of love. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it for us in the Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi, in the chapter on the kinds of love, with a line that has become the very definition of the state: sarvāvasthāsu sarvatra tanmanaskatayā sadā, atasmiṁs tad iti bhrāntir unmāda iti kīrtitaḥ. That bewilderment in which the mind is absorbed in the beloved always and everywhere, until one sees Him even in what is not Him, this the wise call unmāda. The old Bengali singers caught the same fever in a breath: śyāma rūpa jāgaye marame, day and night, in dream or in waking, the form of Śyāma rises in My heart. And Caṇḍī Dāsa, dearest of singers to Mahāprabhu, gave Her madness its wandering shape: to find Her lover, She vows, She will become a yoginī and hang an earring in one ear; She will go district to district, asking every soul she passes for word of Him; She will stop taking food and put on the saffron cloth, and so, like a mad woman, set out to meet Śyāmasundara. This is no flight of fancy. The tradition remembers that Mahāprabhu Himself entered this very unmāda at Jagannātha Purī, in the nights He spent with Svarūpa Dāmodara and Rāmānanda Rāya, tasting in His own body the love-madness of Rādhā.

The same Rūpa Gosvāmī painted the dawn of this fever, the pūrva-rāga, the first rising of love, in his play the Vidagdha-Mādhava. Viśākhā, finding Rādhā's mind already wandered far away, shows Her a likeness she has painted of Śyāmasundara, and the madness that takes Rādhā then is, they say, unrivalled in all the kingdom of love. Her grandmother Mukharā, frightened, confides in the brāhmaṇa-girl Nāndīmukhī: in dream and in waking this lotus-eyed girl speaks broken, difficult words, scolding a garland for the cruel bees that have touched it, crying I am only a young girl, am I to be mocked, get off My yard, and so She wears away her days and nights in distress. When Her dearest Lalitā and Viśākhā ask what has befallen Her, She can only answer that a young boy, His body lustrous as an emerald, a peacock-feather in His hair, stepped living out of His own painted form. At that Her voice chokes; the friends sit amazed and speechless. Grown calm again She tells them: when that boy smiled the smallest smile and let His glance fall on Me, I went mad, and the moon turned hot as fire and the fire turned cool as the moon. Was it a dream, the sakhīs ask. And She answers, as the play has it: whether dream or waking, whether day or night, I no longer know anything at all; I am wholly drowned in the streams of blue nectar pouring from that effulgent moon, and my heart is shaken to its depths.

O Radhe, if a mere painting could set You ablaze so, who can map the ocean You enter when His living form, His voice, His touch, His very pastimes flood over You? Rūpa Gosvāmī himself lays down the question and leaves it open: if the picture alone maddened Her, none can describe how She floats on the waves of rasika madness when she meets Kṛṣṇa's own form and qualities and play. And it is into precisely that ocean You are walking tonight.

Now turn and see the one who watches all this from the corner of the room. A maidservant, an anucarī, small in the scene and easy to overlook, who wants nothing in the world but to be overlooked no longer. Into her arms she gathers the things of Your service: sad-gandha, true perfumes that breathe out their fragrance; mālya, fresh garlands of jasmine still cool with dew; and a sampuṭa, a little casket, packed with tāmbūla, betel-leaves folded around nava-candra and lavaṅga, fresh camphor and clove. These are the small sacraments of the tryst, the offerings that will sweeten Your mouth and crown Your braid when at last You stand before Him. She holds them close, and she holds her one prayer closer still.

For Rādhā has begun to move, and the madness lends Her feet a swiftness no calm walking ever knew. Here is the maidservant's whole anguish and whole sweetness at once: she cannot keep up. See her hurrying behind, arms full, breath short, the garlands swaying, the casket pressed to her side, and on her lips the cry of this very verse: O Adhīśvari, my queen, do not leave me behind in this empty room. Go a little slower, I beg You. I am Your anucarī; let me follow. Walk at a pace my poor feet can match, for I am laden with all I have prepared for Your joy and I cannot run as You run. Take Your pitiful little maidservant with You into the grove.

Listen to what is hidden inside that plea, for it is the whole heart of the verse. She does not ask to meet Śyāma. She does not ask to stand in the bower, or to be seen by Him, or to receive one thing for herself. She asks only this: let me carry. Let me carry the garland that will rest on Your throat. Let me carry the betel that will redden Your smiling mouth when You turn to Him. The word she chooses is the small one that turns everything: abhisaṁsarantī, You who go out toward Him, You whom my carrying brings to His side. Her highest heaven is to be the bearer of the things of Your tryst, near enough in the rush to set them in Your hands at the right instant, and then to step back into the shadow of the trees while You belong wholly to Him. The maidservant's love asks for the lowest place, and the lowest place behind Rādhā is higher than any throne.

And the maidservant carries a second, tenderer fear. Rādhā's feet are softer than butter, and She runs half-blind with longing over the dark uneven path to the bower. The maidservant trembles for those soles that the whole world should worship. There is a famous breath of this very pleading in the old song of the rendezvous; the Gīta-Govinda counsels the impatient lover, rādhe, pathe muñca sambhramam abhisāre, cāraya caraṇāmburuham dhīraṁ sukumāre: O Rādhā, on the path to the meeting let go Your agitation; move Your tender lotus feet softly, steadily. So the maidservant's prayer is double: keep me close, and keep You safe. Both are love, and both ask nothing back.

O Śrī Rādhike, hear now the one word on which everything turns. Karuṇayā. By Your mercy. The maidservant does not claim this service as a right she has earned, does not seize the casket and force her way into the procession. She knows that even to walk behind You is a grace only Your compassion can bestow. Vidhehi, she says: make me this. Fashion me, by Your kindness, into Your follower. She lays her whole hope not on her worthiness but on Your tenderness, and that, O Queen, is why the door opens to her.

So let the scene close as it must. The night air carries jasmine and camphor. Far ahead the dark grove waits, and within it the darker beloved. Rādhā flies toward Him, drunk, luminous, ungovernable. And just behind Her, never quite catching up and never falling away, runs a small breathless figure with her arms full of offerings and her heart full of one cry: let me follow, let me follow, let me carry these to the place where You will be glad.