62

Picture the long Vraja afternoon when the light leans gold and the leaves hang heavy, and somewhere in a kuñja the bed is already strewn, the garlands already strung, the betel already prepared, the lamps already lit, and Śrī Rādhā waits. This is the heroine who has made every preparation and still Her Beloved does not come. The tradition gives Her a tender name for this very hour: vāsaka-sajjikā, the one who has adorned herself and her trysting-grove and now sits trembling at the edge of expectancy. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes the mood in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, that when the innocent lover delays and delays, the heroine grows anxious and impatient, her heart aches, she shivers, she speculates why he has not come, she sickens, she sheds streams of tears, she pours out her state to her girlfriends. Begin there, with Her at the door of waiting, because everything that follows rises out of that one ache.

Hear how Caṇḍī Dāsa sang Her very voice: "For My friend I made the bed, strung the flower-garlands, prepared the betel, lit the lamps to beautify the place. Friend, all this will turn out otherwise! I did not meet Kṛṣṇa, My lover, the ocean of qualities. I deceived My mother-in-law and My sister-in-law to come into the deep forest, I decorated My youthful form to meet My friend, and how many times have I stared down the road, how many times have I consoled My own mind?" And then, against all the heartbreak, the singer dares one bright hope on Her behalf: the crown-jewel of relishers is coming now.

She had refused Him; remember that. When Nandanandana, hungry-eyed, pressed His silent suit again and again, glance heaped upon glance, She tossed Her head and seemed to send Him away. Yet in the very gesture of refusal, like a single petal slipped beneath the door, She let fall the name of the grove. This is the art of love in Vraja, where no is a kind of yes and the turning-away is itself a beckoning. The beautiful trysting-place arose out of the pretext of refusal itself: udita-udāra-saṅketa-deśaḥ. She drew the map of meeting with the very hand that pushed Him off. O the wit of Her, O the sweetness of a refusal that hides a doorway.

Now the maidservant. In her kinkarī-form she sits forever at Śrīmatī's feet, consoling Her, staying beside Her in joy and in sorrow, for the maidservant's heart and purpose have become one with Her mistress's own. How sweet is Rādhikā's service. Svāminī has said it plainly: give your whole mind to Me, first be Mine, and then serve Me. We cannot grasp such things as long as we cling to a material male or female body; we must become gopīs. So Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura prays, when will I be born as a daughter in a cowherd's house in Vṛṣabhānupura, in Varṣānā? The heart must grow scented with that one desire. And Rūpa Gosvāmī asks the question that undoes every defense: yuvayor guṇa-mādhurī, who will not be maddened by Your, that is by Rādhā-Govinda's, ever-fresh sweetness? One drop of that nectar can madden the mind, and so the devotees are told to turn these heart-prayers of the Gosvāmīs over with one another, for they are filled with the saints' own transcendental experience.

He did not come, and Her heart wore itself thin against the silence. The maidservant, unable to bear the suffering, rises and goes out into the forest to fetch Him, searching every kuñja of Vṛndāvana, growing more anxious with each empty bower, for how can she save Svāminī's life unless she brings Śyāma quickly? Then, half in dread, she thinks: let me look once in Candrāvalī's bower. And there He is. There is Śyāmasundara, lounging in rasika talk with His other beloved, while Rādhā breaks at home. The maidservant's heart twists: how will she draw Him out of this grove into theirs? But mark the wonder the tradition lingers over. Just then the wind lifts the fragrance from her garments into Śyāma's breath, and at once He startles upright, for the clothes she wears are the merciful leftovers of her Svāminī, worn first by Rādhā Herself and so steeped in Her divine scent. One breath of that perfume and He thinks, "Surely Rādhā, or one of Her girlfriends, has come to seek Me." O the power of even the hem of Her garment, that the cast-off cloth perfumed by Her body can disarm the Lord of all worlds.

Candrāvalī, seeing Him so disturbed, asks what troubles Him, and here is the cheat the maidservant will name. He invents an errand: His mother had asked Him to do something and He forgot it in His eagerness to meet Candrāvalī, and now He must go. The trusting one believes Him, says she waits here full of desire, and bids Him hurry back. Śyāma slips out, and on the path the maidservant is waiting, and the sweet thunder begins. "O crown-jewel of cheaters! My Svāminī wastes away from missing You, and here You are at Your ease in the enemy's grove, forgetting Her wholly. If it is Candrāvalī You wanted, why did You make an appointment with my mistress?" He plays the innocent: "I do not even know where your meeting-place is. Why are you after Me?" The maidservant lifts her brows and lays the truth bare: "O rogue, when You begged Her with Your glances and She pretended to send You off, She still pointed You clearly to the lovely Manohara kuñja. Did You not catch it? Then why have You not come?" Śyāma protests He misread Her, that He took the refusal for true and never knew of Manohara kuñja. But the kinkarī answers with her eyes alone: You understood everything. Everyone knows how clever cheaters are; it is Your nature to dupe innocent girls; You betrayed my mistress and ran to the grove of Her rival. Come, I will tell Svāminī all, and let Her decide Your punishment.

Here is the secret the tradition keeps turning in its hands like a jewel: that Śyāma loves this. The maidservant can freely chastise Him because she is Rādhā's maidservant and Her friend at once, and the harsh words of the gopīs are dearer to Him than the reverent hymns of sages and the Vedic scriptures themselves. He has confessed it to Uddhava in the Lalita-Mādhava, gokula-kula-jaratīnāṁ paruṣ vāg api yathā pramodayati, that He does not get from the munis' sweet hymns the pleasure He gets from the harsh chastisements of the old women of Gokula. And if the scolding of the elders is so sweet, what then of the indescribable nectar of the scolding from the lips of a sakhī or a mañjarī, half servant and half friend, who alone has the freedom to call Him a liar to His face? So this Nāgararāja, this king of lovers, stands and drinks it in, and even folds His hands: "Sakhi, I truly did not understand Her hints. I thought She was rejecting Me, and the agony of losing Her drove Me out to search, and just as I reached Candrāvalī you came. Sakhi, never tell Rādhā you found Me in Candrā's bower. Tell Her I was wandering the Kadamba-garden crying 'Rādhe, Rādhe,' and that you brought Me back to My senses and led Me here."

But the maidservant will not be bought. "O Ma, just listen to Him. Should I say that? O crown-jewel of liars, dhūrta-śiromaṇe, come along to Śrīmatī, and there You will hear what I tell Her and what I do not. It is good for cheaters like You to be punished now and then." And speaking such nectarean words she takes Him by His own consent toward Nāgarīmaṇi's kuñja, and on the way she lets fall the words that crown the whole scene, the very speech this prayer exists to win the right to utter: that Svāminī, afraid of His cheating, will not enter the bower alone; that no well-mannered girl would walk into a lonely Kadamba grove with the likes of Him; and who can imagine the mischief that would have come had the maidservant not gone along today. O deceiver, keep Your message; Rādhā goes nowhere alone with You, for She knows You.

There is even a tenderness hidden in the very title She flings at Him. In the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi Rūpa Gosvāmī defines two kinds of cheating lover, the śaṭha and the dhṛṣṭa, yet he never defines the dhūrta, the very name the maidservant uses here. Because Kṛṣṇa is akhila-rasāmṛta-mūrti, the form of all nectarean flavors, every definition of every kind of lover fits Him; but Rūpa left the dhūrta undefined, for the Rasācārya Bharata Muni left it so before him, nokto dhūrtādi bhedas tu muneḥ sammaty-abhāvataḥ. So the deceiver the maidservant scolds is the one no treatise could ever fully name, the cheater of every heart, who stands here cheated of His escape and folding His hands before a servant girl.

This is the prayer hidden in the whole scene, and it is not a prayer for the tryst. It is a prayer for the errand. The singer does not ask to be Rādhā, does not ask to be Kṛṣṇa, does not ask even to watch the meeting. The singer asks for one thing only: diṣṭyā, by great fortune, when will Rādhā trust me enough to send me as Her own, to walk beside Her, to guard Her, to scold Her Beloved on Her behalf and lead Him safely to Her feet? The whole sweetness here is that the rebuke is itself the highest service. To be allowed to defend Her, to stand between Her and His deceit, to be the cloth perfumed by Her body and the voice that shames the Lord into folding His hands, this is the fortune the heart begs for. O Rādhe, when will You turn and say to me, "Go, and tell him"?