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Picture the grove at the turning of the night. Picture an arbour deep among the kuñjas that She decorated with Her own hands, where flowers were strung, where a soft seat was readied, where the whole long darkness was meant to be poured out in meeting. And picture the One who waited there: Śrī Rādhā, Prāṇeśvarī, the golden daughter of Vṛṣabhānu, who passed the entire night alone in that bower, listening for a footstep that never came.

Begin there, with the waiting. Feel how the lamps of the kuñja burned low; how every rustle of leaf in the wind was taken for Him and then was not Him. The princess of Barsānā had crossed who knows how many obstacles to reach this trysting place, and the night spent itself, and still the dark One did not arrive. Only at the first pale edge of dawn He came at last, and He came carrying upon His limbs the unmistakable marks of another's love, the tokens of Candrāvalī upon His body, as if to strew salt into the wound of His absence. Bata: alas, that He should come so.

So now feel Her mood. Her eyes redden. This is no soft, yielding heroine; this is the dhīrādhīra nāyikā, the one whose love is so vast that its wounded dignity, its māna, becomes its own splendour, and whom no amount of meek apology can quickly soothe. With crooked, cutting words She turns Him away. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes Her very speech in the Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi, among the divisions of the heroines: "O Dāmodara, surrender to that goddess who fulfils Your every desire, the one by whose mercy You are now made happy, and serve her: she whose footlac now stains Your head, whose chewed betel still gleams at the corner of Your mouth, whose spotless garland that first lay upon her bud-like breasts now hangs at Your throat." Go to her, She tells Him. Go and serve her.

And here, O heart, is the marvel this remembrance is built upon. The selfsame Kṛṣṇa for whose mere glimpse the great mystics sit through ages, for whose darśana the gods and the perfected sages pray and are not answered, this very Kṛṣṇa now stands with folded hands, not before Rādhā, but before Her maidservant. He has nowhere else to turn. The māna of Svāminī has shut the door, and only one road back remains: through the mercy of the kiṅkarī. The greatest yogis beg Kṛṣṇa for His audience and do not receive it; and Kṛṣṇa begs Rādhā's serving-girl for Hers: O make Me qualified, He pleads, to receive Her mercy.

So watch Him flatter. Watch the Lord of all worlds become a suppliant at the feet of a serving-girl. For this kiṅkarī follows Svāminī like Her own shadow, sad when Svāminī is sad, glad only when Svāminī is glad, holding no desire apart from Her. Who else but you can bring Me to Her, He asks her. To whom shall I go when you abandon Me? And the maidservant does not melt at once. Your offense is not small, she answers. How many obstacles our tender princess did not overcome to meet You here; how miserably She has spent this night alone; and a womanizer like You cannot even feel the pain You cause when You go to another's bower and come to Hers only at morning to show Her another girl's love-marks. Go, suffer for what You have done; I will not plead to my Svāminī for Your sake. And she presses harder still: such a liar, such a womanizer You are; when my Svāminī's tender golden body must unite with one like You it would burn to ashes; I should protect Her from people of Your kind. Blessed, blessed are these maidservants, that the One whom Brahmā cannot command must beg their pardon to win a single glance from their Lady.

And here is the secret sweetness folded inside the scolding: every cutting word the maidservant flings gives Kṛṣṇa not pain but an inconceivable joy. For He is an ocean of love and a mine of jewel-like qualities, and what He thirsts for is precisely this, the nectar of Śrī Rādhā's māna, the heightened rasa that only Her wounded pride can pour. The maidservant, scolding Him, calling Him liar and womanizer, vowing she must shield her tender golden mistress from one such as He, is in truth serving the very relish of the divine love-play. Her chastisement is itself a service.

At last, moved by His pitiful eagerness, she relents a little. Sit here, she tells Him; let me go in first and see what may be done; but never do this again, and remember always how You suffered this time. She slips back to Svāminī and reads Her face. The pique has cooled a touch. Śrīmatī breathes deeply; the storm has begun to settle. The clever maidservant thinks: if I praise His sweetness now, just a little, She will let the māna go. And so, wisely, she will not even speak His name. She names Him only Vṛndāvana's Cupid, so that at the sound of it the whole flood of His attributes rises unbidden in Rādhā's heart, the flute upon His lips, the dark beauty, the sweetness past telling, and Svāminī understands in Her own depths how useless it is to hold the pride longer, how She will grieve later if She lets this moment pass and must send a dūtī searching for Him through the groves again.

Then come close, O reader, to Her very feet, for this is where the remembrance lifts into adoration. Māninī sits in a pensive hush, Her lowered head resting in Her left hand. And Her lotus feet are moist with tiny drops, sweat-beads that gather and tremble like honey welling from the heart of a lotus and slipping down its petals. The maidservant sees Śyāma's passionate gaze fixed upon those feet, and a thought blooms in her: it is as though Kṛṣṇa's own anurāga has come trickling out of Her feet in the form of these honey-drops. This is the very heart of the praise, sāndrānanda-ghana-anurāga-laharī-niṣyanda-pādāmbuja-dvandve: from this pair of lotus feet stream the waves of dense bliss and dense, swelling, blissful love, ceaselessly, like honey, like nectar, the whole ocean of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa's passion welling up and overflowing at Her soles.

And now the meeting. The maidservant returns and tells Him softly that the pride has come down, that if He goes now and falls and begs, the mercy will be His. With those few words she sets a wave of rasa surging in His heart. With great passion Śyāma Nāgara gazes once more at the long-cherished feet, and then He falls there, at those feet beyond all price, and begs forgiveness. And Śrīmatī gives up Her māna. From that surrender a new meeting is born for the divine Couple, hot and sweet together at once, like boiling sugarcane juice, the sweetness all the deeper for the fire it passed through.

O feet of Śrī Rādhā, from which such love forever flows. O daughter of Vṛṣabhānu, before whose serving-girls the Cupid of Vṛndāvana himself stands pleading. The tradition, in Prabodhānanda's own voice, sings: O beloved of Śrī Kṛṣṇa, O princess of Vṛṣabhānu, to win the great festival of Your mercy, Vraja's own Cupid, Śrī Mādhava, flatters Your maidservant with praises; intense bliss and the play of passionate rasa flow like waves from Your lotus feet; and so I praise those divine lotus feet, and circle them in reverence every single day. To that pair of feet, O Śrī Rādhe, I too bow, always.