"Offer your lips nectar
To revive a dying slave, Radha.
My mind is fixed upon you
And My listless body
burns in love's desolation."
The artist takes the verse phrase by phrase and structures his composition faithfully. The two phrases which catch his fancy are the reviving of the slave 'jivaya dasam' and 'lips nectar' (adhara sudha). The Hindi text also paraphrases these explicitly. The painting is divided into several areas and planes. There are four bowers and a hillock. Three bowers are arranged in a symmterical zig-zag fashion. In two Krsna and Radha are together, in the third Krisna watches the empty bower intently.
The assurance of Krisna that he is faithful, the entreaty of Krsna to Radha to offer her lips and the eager expectation of the final union are recreated. The four figures in the foreground on a hillock are seemingly unconnected with the figures of Radha and Krisna in the bowers, but in fact they represent the phrase 'revive me in the same manner as a dying slave is revived.' The technique of pictorially presenting a simile is identical as the one where we have seen a deer appearing for the doe-eyed one.
There is an inner logic of the zig-zag vertical ascending lines of the arches. The first and third bowers with the figures of Radha and Krsna are on one plane, the second with Krisna alone and the fourth, which is empty, are placed in a diagonal relationship. Further the Krsna and Radha of the third bower with their lips meeting are related to the four figures of the right hand foreground where one man is trying to revive a slave. Visually all forces of lines and planes converge on the third bower where Krisna and Radha meet. A sakhi looks at them, Kama shoots his arrow at them, and the eye moves diagonally from the figure of the dying slave to that of Krsna sitting in the bower diagonally opposite. The image of the flame is also pictured as in the flame like bush in the left hand foreground.
From the above, it will be clear that the artist makes a sincere effort to incorporate all details of the verbal imagery, always bearing in mind that the pictorial composition must have a visual cohesiveness.
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