98

Begin in the dark before She comes, O heart, while the arbour is already built of leaf and vine and Nāgara is already inside it, waiting. See how He waits. He is the Kuñjābhisārikā's Beloved, and She, Kuñjābhisārikā Śrī Rādhā, is even now stealing out along the dark path to meet Him in the bower, passionate, secret, drawn by love alone. And following close behind Her, soft as Her own shadow, comes the kinkarī, the maidservant in whose form the tradition itself enters this līlā, keeping nothing for herself, carrying nothing of it away. Inside the grove, the Lord of all worlds is reduced to a single trembling listener. A dry leaf loosens from a branch and falls, and at that small rustle His whole chest blooms with joy, for He is sure it is the sound of Her foot upon the path. Again the wind drops a leaf, and again His heart leaps up; He turns His face to the entrance, He listens, He hopes. This is what love does to Him.

Then the path itself catches fire with sweetness, for before She is seen, Her splendour arrives. O wind of Vṛndāvana, you carry it first: the fragrance of Her body floods the grove, and Śyāmasundara's nose is maddened, drunk on a perfume that has no name. His ears too are gladdened now, caught by the sweet small chiming of Her ankle-bells and the bells at Her waist as She nears. And then comes the light. Her body breaks out in the luster of millions of lightnings, gātre koṭi-taḍit-chavi, and the whole kuñja is lit gold, and the gold runs out past the kuñja and floods all of Vṛndāvana, and His eyes are pleased by that golden aura of Her divine body. Now understand the mercy hidden in this. Ordinary lightning stabs the eye, it wounds, it makes you flinch and look away. But the lightning that pours from Her limbs does not wound. It is cool. It is a sweet, transcendental, soothing light made wholly of love, and the eye that meets it is not hurt but healed and fed. Only one who has tasted this by Her own grace can know what is being said here; to everyone else it is only a word. Where stands a small, insignificant soul, and where stands the topmost love of Rādhā? The distance is unmeasurable, and yet She lets the maidservant stand inside that golden flood and live.

Yet hear the deepest secret, O seeker, before you grow drunk on this beauty: it is not the beauty that conquers Him. His nose may be maddened, His eyes pleased, His ears gladdened, and still none of it would steal His heart. The tradition keeps in memory His own words, for Rūpa Gosvāmī sets them down in the Lalita-Mādhava, in the fifth act, when Kṛṣṇa speaks to His own carrier Garuḍa: sakhe bhavatu kim etena yad eṣa rūpa-mātreṇa na hāryo hariḥ, O friend, let her be as beautiful as you say, there is no need to go on describing her; Hari's heart cannot be stolen by mere beauty alone. No catalogue of limbs, however perfect, has ever captured this Heart. What captures Him is the love that the beauty comes wrapped in. And because Rādhā's love is the greatest love that is or can be, She, and She alone, captures Kṛṣṇa completely. So when you see Her body flash like lightning, do not stop at the flashing; the flashing is only the outermost garment of a love so vast it leaves Him speechless.

Now see Him receive Her. When She steps into the bower, Kṛṣṇa carefully takes Her inside, draws Her down, and with His own hands washes Her travel-tired feet, and dries them with the yellow dhotī from His own shoulder. The Master of the universe kneeling at Her feet with His own cloth for a towel. Then He seats Her close beside Him, and She, this ocean of love, speaks like one who owns nothing: "You love Me this much? So many qualified girls are waiting for You, and I am so unqualified. I cannot even freely serve You as I should. I am all shortcomings." And as Her humble words fall, the luster of millions of lightnings gushes out of Her body again, for even Her self-forgetting humility is unbearably beautiful. This is pravitatānanda-chavi śrī-mukhe: the bliss on that lovely face does not stay the same size. It keeps expanding, widening, overflowing its own borders. And the maidservant drinks that ever-widening sweetness of Her face through the savouring of Śyāmasundara Himself, tasting His tasting.

Then She asks Him the question He cannot answer. "Tell Me," She says, "what have You ever gotten from Me, that You should love Me so?" And He has no answer. The fountainhead of all explanation is left without one. He only stares at Her face with eyes brimming over, tears standing in them, lips parting to speak and finding no speech, struck dumb by the wave of His own ecstasy. And here is the wonder: the longer He gazes at Her face in that helpless silence, the more the beauty of that face increases under His gaze, blooming the more it is beheld, and this is why the praise sings pravitatānanda-chavi śrī-mukhe, the ever-expanding bliss-splendour of Her face. So She reaches up and touches His silent chin and asks softly, "Can You really find no answer?" And as She speaks, the luster of Her Bimba-cherry lips becomes manifest, the red of fresh coral, bimboṣṭhe nava-vidruma-chavi. Her teeth do not show; She is not laughing aloud; only Her lips, just barely blooming, can be seen, and that small half-opening blows Nāgara's mind to pieces.

With that same love She lifts the edge of Her veil and wipes His tear-soaked face, and now the maidservant sees Her hands: kare sat-pallava-chavi, as soft and splendid as fresh banyan leaves, tender new shoots that touch His cheek. And the touch undoes Him further. Relishing Her sweetness, Śyāma Nāgara grows eager for the play of love, and sweet Rādhā meets Him there, serving Him with every ingredient of mādana-rasa, the maddening honey of union. And the maidservant, standing aside, relishes the sweet sight of Her breasts, that shine like the buds of golden lotuses, hemāmbhoruha-kuṭmala-chavi, two closed gold lotus-buds caught in their own light. And when, in the heat of love, Nāgara grows forgetful and fumbles the lessons of His own amorous art, She corrects Him the way a stern teacher corrects a pupil who has lost the page: She pierces Him with the arrows of Her sidelong glances. How beautiful, how sweet those eyes, opening wide and blue as the Indīvara lotus, aravinda-īkṣaṇā. And so the tradition lifts up its praise: I bow to that radiance named Rādhā, sweetened through and through by Her play in the new bowers, tan-nava-kuñja-keli-madhuram. I bow to the light that is Her very name.