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Begin in moonlight. Picture a bower-forest of Vṛndāvana under a full and tender moon, the dust of the grove silvered with light, the kadamba and the kuñja-creepers breathing their fragrance into the cool of the night. While Śrīpāda floats upon the waves of his own prayer, a sweet picture rises before his eyes by Śrīmatī's grace, and here in a clearing the moon has chosen for its own, the two who are the secret of all secrets are at play. Rādhā and Mādhava move among their dear girlfriends, and the whole grove leans inward to watch, as though every leaf and every flower were itself a sakhī craning to see.

See how They walk. Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura sings it for us: Rādhikā, a very mine of cleverness, Her limbs adorned with jewelled ornaments, and Giridhārī holding Her right hand in His, the two of Them stepping forward slowly, sweetly, as though each footfall were a verse. Before Them and behind Them the sakhīs go, raining flowers down upon Their heads, and one beloved friend lifts a yak-tail fan and stirs the warm air over Them. They come at last to a jewelled platform, and there, hand in hand, Rāi and Kānu begin to turn, dancing round and round, while the dust at Their feet is greyed and the moon pours its coolness down. And O, the wonder of it: where Their bodies touch, the skin rises into goosepimples of ecstasy, the hairs standing erect like a field of new blossoms, simply from the nearness of the beloved. The sakhīs take musk and sandal-paste into their palms and shower the fragrant king of flowers; tiny beads of fatigue-sweat gather on Mādhava's moon-bright face, and for a moment even the flute falls silent at His lips, for what music could compete with this? So Narottama's every wish is fulfilled, drinking in Their joking, rasika words, while the friends weave wonderful dresses of flowers and arrange Their hair, and the eye-enchanting play goes on.

After such dancing the loving Pair enter a kuñja and sink down upon a jewelled throne to rest a little, and the sakhīs settle on the floor before Them while the devoted maidservants bring cool water, garlands, sandal-paste and betel-leaves. And now everyone may relish the sweet exchange of love between Rādhā and Mādhava, the love the verse names kām api: "a certain love," some love beyond all naming, for it has no comparison anywhere and cannot be carried across into words. Jīva Gosvāmī fixes it in the Bhakti-Sandarbha, that anya-anya priyatā sudhā parimalas tamonmādābhiḥ: Their mutual love forever intoxicates Them like a fragrant enchanting unguent, like nectar, like vermilion. It is so prodigious that it does not even wait for nearness to break into bloom; the sakhīs and mañjarīs, seeing the sweetness of the Pair, twirl round and round singing "Jaya Rādhe Śyāma!" and "Rādhā-Rādhā Ramana!", and the marvel is this: when Rādhā simply hears the name of Śyāma, when those two syllables, śyā-ma, enter the gateway of Her ears, the very bearer of that name slips in along with the sound, and Her body bristles all over with the thrill of Him. And when Śyāma hears "Rādhā" fall from the lips of Her friends, His whole self is flooded; among all the girls of Gokula, He says, not one name can stir Him as this one does. This is the wonder of pūrva-rāga, of first-love, when the name itself is the meeting.

O Rādhe, the ācāryas keep Your secret tenderly. Before ever You had seen Śyāma's face, You heard those two syllables and they would not let You go; they gave You no time to think, but seized Your heart at once and made You surrender at the lotus-feet of Rasamaya Śyāmasundara, though You knew not who He was, nor where He lived, nor what His nature might be. Your passionate love drew You toward the forest-path, yet You could not go, for You are a daughter of the house, bound by the eyes of the world; and neither could You stay at home, for the name had already taken You. So You stood helpless, repeating śyā-ma, śyā-ma, while the hairs of Your body opened like clusters of blossoming kadamba and the tears came down in torrents like the rains. And when Your alarmed girlfriends asked what had overcome You, You held their hands and confessed: "Sakhi, who has sung me the name of Śyāma? It entered through my ears and pierced into the very marrow of me and made my life-breath restless. I do not know how much honey is hidden in that name; my mouth will not let it go; I am overwhelmed by repeating it, how can I ever forget Him?" And Śyāma, bliss itself made restless by a single word, asked His friends: "Sakhi, who spoke this name Rādhā? My heart was soothed the instant I heard it. So many names there are in Gokula, yet none can agitate My heart like this one. What sweetness fills my ears with nectar at that sound. When Her form unfolds within Me, I feel I am floating upon an ocean of nectar." Thus Yadunandana weeps. So the two of Them love, before They have even met, by the name alone, and the love only deepens as it grows.

Now there is a tender riddle in the words themselves, and the masters turn it over with care. The verse calls this love ujjvala, amorous and dazzling, śṛṅgāraḥ śucir ujjvalaḥ, yet sets it in kaumāra, in childhood, in śaiśava, in infancy. How can the amorous mellow shine in childhood, when such sweetness is the gift of kaiśora, of adolescence? The answer the ācāryas give is that here these tender words mean ādya-kaiśora, the very first blush of youth, when Rādhā and Mādhava's bodies are still so soft, so newly opened, that the words for "child" are lovingly laid upon them. Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja explains the same in his Sāraṅga-Raṅgadā commentary, where these words recur in Bilvamaṅgala Ṭhākura's Kṛṣṇa-Karṇāmṛta; and some say further, from certain tāntrika scriptures, that the age of kaumāra may last up to sixteen, which would also fit. And here the tradition is careful, and we should love its care. Some quote the Bhaviṣya Purāṇa, bālye'pi bhagavān kṛṣṇas taruṇa-rūpam āśritaḥ, that though still a child the Lord put on a grown form to sport with His dearest Rādhā. But Rūpa Gosvāmī and the ācāryas who follow in his footsteps set this aside, for such conjuring does not suit the purely human, purely sweet flavour of the pastimes of Vraja. Rūpa Gosvāmī writes it in the Bhakti-Rasāmṛta-Sindhu, bālye'pi nava-tāruṇya prākaṭyaṁ śrūyate kvacit, tan nāti-rasavāhitvān na rasajñair udāhṛtam: the knowers of mellows do not accept, as a pure mellow, that Kṛṣṇa reveals His adolescence within His childhood. And Jīva Gosvāmī seals it in his commentary, krama-yogenaiva rasaḥ sampadyate netaratheti: the sweetest mellow is the human-like one, in which Kṛṣṇa attains adolescence in its proper course; other courses of growth are not relishable. The rasa ripens in its own order, as all sweetest things ripen, and is loved the more for ripening so.

And now, O the prank of the sakhīs, the very heart of the festival. The loving Pair has come to rest upon the jewelled throne, sunk so deep in one another's sweetness that the whole world has dropped away. One sakhī steals up from behind and quietly knots the hem of Rādhā's garment to the cloth of Śyāmasundara, as though to make of Them a newly wedded couple. So lost are They in each other that They do not feel it. The friends nod to the mañjarīs: go, gather the flowers, weave the garlands. And then, laughing, rolling against one another in their delight, the sakhīs hang the garlands round the necks of Rādhā and Mādhava, and one raises the ulu-dhvani, the sacred wedding-cry, and one waves the lamps of ārati before Them, and the others throw down a rain of petals. A marriage-festival in the play-bower, made all of flowers and laughter.

And Rādhā, surfacing for a moment from the ocean of Mādhava's sweetness, grows suspicious at all this glee. There must be some hidden reason, She thinks, that they laugh so. She looks all around her, and her glances beautify the kuñja as she turns. But when she rises, her clothing tugs and holds; she looks down and sees the hem of her garment bound fast to the garment of Śyāmasundara. "Oh," she says, with a flash of beautiful anger upon her face, "so this is why you are laughing!" Who has ever seen her so put-out with her dear ones? "O foul-faced girls," she scolds, half in earnest, "is this how you reveal your own longing to be wedded to this cowherd-rogue? Very well, come then. I myself shall arrange the marriage of each one of you. I shall be the priest who fulfils your every wish!" And O, how lovely is the anger on Śrīmatī's face; Nāgara drinks it in, lost in the mellow of her mock-displeasure, and that, precisely that, was the whole secret aim of the sakhīs' game. They knotted the garments not to wed her but to wake that face.

So when the devotee cries kadā, "when, oh when," and lets fall that wistful bata, that "ah!", he is not asking to officiate any legal rite. There is no real wedding here at all, for in Śrī Vṛndāvana only the pure parakīya rasa lives, the love that overflows every bound of the lawful and dwells nowhere but in Vraja. Some, it is true, will call this a Gāndharva union, a marriage proceeding wholly from the love and mutual inclination of a youth and a maiden, with no ceremonies and no consulting of relatives; yet even so, the Caitanya-caritāmṛta sings, parakīya bhāve ati rasera ullāsa, vraja vinā ihāra anyatra nāhi vāsa: the extramarital mood is the most blissful and most tasteful of all, and has its dwelling nowhere but in Vraja. So the devotee longs only to be admitted, even as the least of the flower-pickers, to this grove of play: to gather the fresh, ever-new blossoms of Vṛndāvana and carry them into the hidden kuñja and be one more pair of hands in the festival of laughter and petals; to stand near enough to glimpse that knotted hem, that beautiful frown, that flood of love that rises at the sound of a single name. He aches to serve the secret wedding that is no wedding, the play-marriage of those who have loved each other always, since before time, since the dawn of Their tenderest youth.