Krishna As Lover: Part – II
There was a shudder in her whispering voice.
She was shy to frame her words.
What has happened tonight to lovely Radha?
Now she consents, now she is afraid.
When asked for love, she closes up her eyes,
Eager to reach the ocean of desire.
He begs her for a kiss.
She turns her mouth away
And then, like a night lily,
the moon seized her.
She felt his touch startling her girdle.
She knew her love treasure was being robbed.
With her dress she covered up her breasts.
The treasure was left uncovered.
Vidyapati wonders at the neglected bed.
Lovers are busy in each other’s arms.
Desire and inhibition, passion and fear, seduction and shame, ecstasy and the occasional recurrence of shame—the entire dialectic of a liaison is explored. But the many moods of union are not always delineated in predictable rainbow colours. The causeless hysteria and ingenuity of lovers, their random elations and depressions, their unfathomed joy and sorrow are also the subject of these poets’ attention. The following poem by Chandidasa expresses some of these feelings.
I must go.
In spite of my kisses,
My passionate embraces,
He keeps repeating
That he must go.
He goes half a step
And then he turns back
With anguished eyes,
Gazing at my face.
Wringing my hands
He promises returning
He flatters me so much
To meet me again!
Deep is his love,
My beloved one,
Of such terrible passion.
Candidasa says: then Rest in his heart.
The poets of this period chafed at the constraints of the hitherto accepted contours of the Krishna-Radha love games. As a genre their poetry came to be known as riti-kala or sringara-kala, wherein love, in all its aspects, was the unabashed theme. Their effor. was to take the Krishna and Radha humanized by Bilvamangala and Jayadeva and depict them in as many situations as it was possible for human lovers to find themselves. It was a case of the divine imitating the human, and the human, being enriched by the divine. Like any bold man in love, their Krishna was also capable of the most daring ruses. Their Radha could dress herself up as a constable to put Krishna in her place, or steal glances at him unnoticed through a peephole in her tresses as she combed them after a bath. Some of these bards literally revelled in the novelty of a new situation. A poem by Bihari {Bihari, The Satasai, translated by K.P. Bahadur) goes:
Exchanging clothes
Radha and Krishna
came to the rendezvous
for love making.
She was on top
but dressed as a man,
so they got the thrill
of novelty even
while seeming to
make love in the normal way!
Even so, established themes—Krishna’s bewitching flute and the primeval rhythm of the rasa—were not entirely forgotten, but the familiar invocation was often laced with startlingly new imagery.
