Radha feels a strong repulsion for making herself up, the idea of it nauseates her in the absence of Krishna. “Whom should I adorn myself for?” asks she peevishly. She wipes the vermillion mark off her forehead, and casts her pearl necklace into the Jamuna river. Sandalwood paste and soft moonlight scorch and burn her like hot summer winds and aggravate her pain and agony. The cool fragrant breeze of the monsoon bites her and enkindle her passions. She fondly hopes to meet Krishna in a dream but the Almighty is so cruel-hearted that she fails to get to sleep. And when, perchance, she drops off for a moment and sees Krishna in her dream she wakes up disturbed and writhes with pain. She spends the night restlessly tossing about on her bed.
A crow’s cawing gives her great solace and comfort for according to popular belief it lignifies the return of her lover. She promises the crow a bowl of milk-rice and assures it to gild its beak.
Radha has been reduced to skin and bone and her maids fear to fan her with a lotus leaf lest she should be blown away with the puff of breeze. When her maids prompt her to forget such a callous lover who has renounced her and gone away, she regrets her inability to do so, for her very existence is bound up with his memory. The moment she drives him off her thoughts she would cease to exist. She is reluctant to die as she has no one in mind to whom she can bequeath Krishna. Radha is haunted by the memory of Krishna. She wistfully remembers the days spent in his company. She wishes she had the wings of a dove and could fly and meet him. She fondly asks,
When shall I get rid of this endless sorrow?
O, when shall I re-enjoy the moonlight
and play with the lotus like a bee?
She recalls his qualities and recounts them to her maids. Her anxiety grows every moment. She longs to meet him. “When will he be back and stroke my breast and kiss and caress me and fulfil my desires?” Her condition deteriorates, she has fainting fits and even the cool and fragrant breeze fails to revive her. Nothing less than the touch of Krishna’s hand can save her now. Her suffering reaches its climax when she becomes delirious and forgetting her identity imagines herself to be Krishna and invokes the name of Radha. Then a feeling of tedious numbness overtakes her. Her eyes are bedimmed and she wails listlessly:
Madhava, no longer can I live without you,
You have gone to Madhupur.
Oh! how shall I cast this mortal bond and fly unto you.....?
Radha’s love is not unreciprocated; Krishna is equally afflicted with separation from her. In these yearnings of Radha and Krishna to meet each other the devotees have seen the individual soul’s yearning to meet the supreme soul.
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