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The līlā has come to its hush, and the bower holds its breath. The woven leaves of the kuñja still tremble from the breeze that the loving Pair stirred within them, and over everything has fallen the hush that comes after the ocean has rocked two lovers upon its swells. Through the small gaps in the foliage a maidservant has been watching, not as one who pries, but as one who waits with her whole being for the single moment when she might be of use. She sees Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa swimming upon the waves of the ocean of Their own loving pastimes, lost so utterly in one another that no obstacle could reach Them through that ecstasy. And her one prayer, beneath her breath, is this: let me be the smoothing of every roughness, let me be the unseen hand that keeps Their joy unbroken.

See what happens when the līlā itself snags. Their hair, dark and loosened, has tangled, and even the tangle threatens to interrupt the current of Their love; yet so deep is Their ecstasy that They do not so much as notice it. The kiṅkarī does not hesitate. Swift and soft, she slips into the grove. And here is the wonder the tradition treasures: the playful Couple, seeing her come, feel no shyness at all, for to Them she is not an outsider, she is the very form of Their own playful ecstasy taken shape. They do not draw back; They do not pause. With her small fingernails she parts the knotted strands, frees the tangle, and is gone again into the leaves before a single beat of Their delight has been lost, so that the pastimes may flow on unhindered. Blessed is this maidservant. Blessed, blessed is her service. To be so trusted that one's presence does not even register as a presence, only as the continuation of love itself, this is the height the longing heart reaches for.

Now the kuñja-pastimes are over, and the maidservant knows her hour has truly come. She enters again. The Divine Pair are dishevelled, Their hair loosened, Their garments disarranged, Their limbs moist with the dew of loving exhaustion. And look at the handmaids, how the very hairs of their bodies stand erect with joy, for the season of their serving has arrived. One waves a fan to cool the warmth of the līlā. One gathers the tumbled tresses and gentles them back into order. One restores the tilaka to Kṛṣṇa's brow and the sindūra to Rādhā's parting, the marks that the wildness of love had washed away. One lifts off the old garlands, their blossoms bruised and spent, and brings fresh ones whose flowers no bumblebee has yet so much as smelt. One offers cool scented water; one carries betel sweetened with camphor to those two lotus mouths. O what delicious loving services these are. Each one a feast, each one a fragrance, each one the heart pouring itself out through the hands.

And our maidservant searches for her own task. She sees that Śrīmatī's deep, black, curling braid has come wholly undone, snarled and scattered by the long sweetness of love. So she takes it up with infinite care, untangling each curl with the tips of her small nails, and weaves it anew into a marvelous plait. The tradition keeps the song of Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura close to this moment, his "caudike sakhīra mājhe, rādhikāra iṅgite": while I stand encircled by Her girlfriends, Śrī Rādhikā gives me the smallest wink, and at that wink I take the comb in my hand and draw all Her curling locks together into a wonderful braid once more. To be summoned by nothing more than a glance, to read the wish of Rādhā before She speaks it, this is the intimacy the longing reaches for.

Then the maidservant sees that the bodice over Śrīmatī's breasts, those golden pitchers, divine and gleaming, round and round like burnished kalaśas, is soaked through with the dew of exertion. So she draws it gently away and clothes Her instead in a fresh garment, dry and soft and breathed through with perfume. And last she gathers up the jeweled anklebells that slipped from Rādhā's feet amid the lovesports, and she fastens them once more about those lovely ankles. So, one service flowing into the next, she does all things with the sure and tender skill of love.

But here is where the heart breaks open. As she binds the jeweled anklebells, the maidservant is enchanted beyond herself by the beauty of those ankles, that radiance of jewels upon that softness. And when at last she is permitted to draw those feet to her breast, the very joy of it overwhelms her sight, and she can no longer see. From within that swoon she cries out the cry of her whole heart: O Rādhe, when, when will I become Your suparicārikā, Your good and skilled handmaid? Be merciful, and let me be the one who fastens the jeweled anklebells upon Thy lotus feet. And the ācāryas of the tradition have confessed a desire smaller and humbler still: not only to fasten the anklebell, but to become the anklebell itself, so as never, never to leave those feet. As Ṭhākura Mahāśaya sings in his "yābo go vrajendra pura, hobo gopikāra nūpura": I will go to the abode of Nanda Mahārāja and become the anklebell of a gopikā there, and forever, sweetly, sweetly will I jingle upon her feet. This is the whole of the longing in these lines: not to be loved, not to be noticed, but to serve so closely and so constantly that one's very self becomes an ornament at the feet of Rādhā.