7

The night is still trembling. The vernal Rāsa hangs in the air over Vṛndāvana, the thousand moonlit gopī-faces still circling, but Śyāmasundara has slipped away from them all. He has left every heroine of the dance to be alone in one hidden bower with the single face from which all those other moons borrow their light. Picture the bowerhouse: leaves laced overhead, the floor strewn and decorated, the lamplight soft. In the verse before this the seeker had lost sight of that sweet face and prayed only to glimpse it again, and now, by Śrīmatī's grace and never by his own striving, his heart floats once more onto the waves of that vision, as if he stood directly before Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. Mark this from the very first: these sights are not seized. They drift in unbidden, spontaneous, a mercy and never the wage of effort.

Within the bower the youthful Cupid of Vṛndāvana has fainted in the sheer intensity of love, and Rāseśvarī revives Him, sprinkling Him back to life with the nectar of Her own nearness, playing amorous games with the one who is amorous sweetness made into a body. When She turns naughty, Nāgara turns naughty; and Svāminī goes mad with a love that can never have enough of Him. He, the connoisseur of every flavour, is here served by the mādana-rasa, the very topmost ecstasy of Śrī Rādhikā, and He sits like a beggar in a palace hoping to be fed, for She is His art-teacher, and the submissive dark prince bows His head to learn from Her the arts of śṛṅgāra. And there at the latticed window of the kuñja stands the seeker in his maidservant-form, and through the woven gaps of the leaves the sweet pastime is given to his eyes. To look through that lattice at all is grace.

Then watch how love turns. Suddenly Svāminī's mind changes. In the middle of Her own joy She remembers Her hundreds of sakhīs still wandering the Rāsa-night, searching for Her and for Him, and grief brushes across Her happiness. "How sweetly We are playing here," She thinks, "and how sad that My dear ones cannot taste this." Understand that this is no flaw in Her bliss; it is the līlā-śakti, the pastime potency herself, stirring Rādhā's heart so that the play of the Yugala Kiśora might widen and deepen. For the sakhīs are no bystanders. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Ujjvala Nīlamaṇi, that prema-līlā-vihārānāṁ samyag vistārikā sakhī: the girlfriend fully extends and increases the loving pastimes of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. They carry word of His love to Her and of Her love to Him across every separation; they engineer the meetings; they ripen a jealous anger in the heroine to make the hero burn more brightly for Her; they joke, they encourage, they outwit the elders, and by a thousand devices they swell the river of that love. Without them the wonder cannot rise at all.

So Śyāma, the jewel of rasikas, reads the wistfulness on Her face and thinks, "If She is so anxious for Her friends, there is no more joy for Us alone; let Me go and find them." He rises and goes out into the forest to seek the sakhīs. But the moment He is gone, the sakhīs arrive from the other side and gather around Rādhikā. And now, seeing that Śyāma does not return, a darker thought enters Her: "Tonight the Rāsa is dancing, the woods are thick with thousands of lovely Vraja-gopīs; surely that king of charmers has met some other beauty." Jealousy and proud anger rise in Her, and Svāminī becomes māninī. The tradition is careful to tell us what this anger truly is. Again Rūpa Gosvāmī sings in the Ujjvala Nīlamaṇi: snehaṁ vinā bhayaṁ na syān nerṣyā ca praṇayaṁ vinā, tasmān māna-prakāro'yaṁ dvayoḥ prema-prakāśakaḥ: fear cannot arise without affection, jealous pride cannot arise without love; therefore this very māna reveals the love of the lover and the beloved both at once.

Now the door of the grove becomes the throne of the maidservants. Rādhā posts Her kiṅkarīs as gatekeepers and forbids them to let Śyāma pass. He returns, unable to find the sakhīs, and at the gate the maidservants stop Him. "O King of womanizers, where did You go, leaving our mistress? Svāminī is angry. You have no right to enter this grove. Go back to whichever girl You found. Leave this gate, for if You linger our Svāminī will rebuke us." And here unfolds the marvel the whole verse is built upon. The peacock-crowned Lord, before whom all the worlds fold their hands and beg, now folds His own hands before a few cowherd girls who guard a doorway, and offers prayer after pitiful, anxious prayer to be let in. His voice is anointed with humility. "Other than you maidservants I have no shelter. Make it clear to your Īśvarī that She is angry for no reason. I did nothing wrong. Only to please Her did I go out after Her girlfriends. Where shall I go if you let Me down now?" The one whom the Brahma-saṁhitā names the Supreme Male, kṛṣṇaḥ svayaṁ samabhavat paramaḥ pumān yo, God Himself, before whom the whole world prays for mercy, now stands pleading at a hedge of leaves. And the kiṅkarīs do not stir from their post for a single moment. The Rādhāvallabha singers name this very verse "the longing to become the broom," and they will not let the wonder be softened: to enter Her keli-kuñja, even Śrīlālजी Himself must beg leave of the sakhīs.

This is the indescribable greatness of Rādhā's maidservants. They love Kṛṣṇa, yes, but they love Him only because He is the beloved of Śrī Rādhā; they hold no separate, independent love of their own for Him. Should He make trouble, they would turn Him out of the grove. Without the permission of Śrīmatī Rūpa Mañjarī and her companions, He cannot so much as set foot in Rādhā's bower, what to speak of touching Her body. The Lord of all is, at this gate, in the hands of Her servants. No wonder Śrīmat Rūpa Gosvāmī prays in the Cāṭu-Puṣpāñjali to the Queen of Vṛndāvana: karuṇāṁ muhur arthaye paraṁ tava vṛndāvana-cakravartini, api keśi-ripor yayā bhavet sa cāṭu-prārthana-bhājanaṁ janaḥ: "O Queen of Vṛndāvana, I pray for Your mercy again and again: let me become the soul who is the object of even Keśi-ripu's coaxing, pleading prayers," the soul before whom Kṛṣṇa Himself folds His hands. And the tradition holds that this very service of Śrī Rādhā is the special, secret mercy of Śrīman Mahāprabhu to the world.

When at last the maidservants see how truly anxious He is, they let Him in. They do not run for Rādhā's permission, for they know Her secret better than She admits it: though She is angry, She is also aching, waiting for Him behind Her pride. And Śyāmasundara knows that once He has pleased Her girlfriends and Her servants Her pique will melt. So the crown-jewel of romantics, rasika-śiromaṇi, enters and softens the unfavourable mood of the jewel of romantic girls, rasikā-maṇi, until the thinnest sweet line of a smile, like a single bright thread, breaks across Her beautiful face, and He gathers His heart's beloved into His jewel-like heart and is lost again in love. Watching all of this from his servant-form, the longing one understands at last who Rādhā is: rasa-nidher vṛṣabhānu-jāyāḥ. If rasa be taken as Kṛṣṇa Himself, flavour personified, then She is the very jewel set in His heart; and if rasa-nidhi be taken in its other sense, then She is the boundless ocean of rasa, in whose sweet amorous waves She drowns Her lover and makes Him glad. Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī sings it in the Viśākhānanda-da-stotram: kṛṣṇa-mañjula-tāpiñcha-vilasat-svarṇa-yūthikā, govinda-navya-pāthode sthira-vidyul-latādbhutā: like a golden yūthikā-vine entwining a dark tamāla tree, like a steady ribbon of lightning standing fixed against a fresh Govinda-raincloud, Rādhā shines most fully exactly when She plays with Śyāma.

And then, as suddenly as it came, the vision is gone. The lattice empties. The grove withdraws. The one who watched is left kneeling in the dark of his own unworthiness, and from that emptiness rises the whole cry of the verse. "Am I fit at all for so precious a place as service to Śrī Rādhā? I dare not ask it. Let me be something far lower and still be of use. O let me become the broom in the courtyard of Her play-cottage in the bowers of Vṛndāvana, the broom held in the hands of those blessed ones who are truly Her maidservants. By Her grace, is not even this possible? Let me at least sweep the dust that falls from the soles of merciful Rādhā's feet." Kadā, when, the heart keeps asking, and the asking itself is the prayer.