Utkalika Vallari - English

Srila Rupa Gosvami Prabhu, being Sri Gaurahari’s topmost associate, was saturated with His mercy. As the acarya of transcendental rasa-sastras, he wrote invaluable literatures, including the most exceptional Sri Stava-mala, “A Garland of Prayers,” which was actually compiled later by Srila Jiva Gosvami. Utkalika-vallari, one of the flowers in this garland, is a poetic entreaty for the service of Sri Sri Radha-Krsna. Srila Rupa Gosvamipada’s sweet devotion to unnata-ujjvala-madhurya-mayi-bhakti – the brilliantly shining amorous mellow – is a honeybee whose delightful humming, here at its finest, has fully blossomed in this prayer. Utkalika means ‘very intense eagerness mixed with extreme restlessness,’ and vallari means ‘creeper;’ hence Utkalika-vallari means “The Vine of Intense Longings.”

Every verse in this composition is complete in itself. At the same time, there is a development in the presentation of the emotions. Thus, the reader and listener will continue to drink of it once, twice and more, never getting enough, living for the next drop until finally they become completely liberated from material miseries, and greed arises to become the kinkari, the maidservant, of Sri Sri Radha-Ramana. Srila Rupa Gosvami sinks beneath the waves of wondrous visions and revelations in the ocean of effulgent sweet devotion, then floats back up to the surface where, bitterly sobbing, he laments and loses consciousness time and again. After experiencing such visions, Srila Rupa Gosvami expresses his longing to obtain the merciful sidelong glance of the charming Divine Couple in his prayers to Vraja-bhumi, the Vraja associates and Sri Sri Radha-Krsna’s beloved sakhis. In these prayers he cries out piteously, yearning for entrance into the ever-fresh, sublimely transcendental and variegated amorous playful pastimes enacted between Lila-purusottama Sri Krsna and Vrsabhanu-nandini Sri Radha. This poem is the fruit of Srila Rupa Gosvami Prabhu’s pain-filled separation. In it he dives into the depths of mellows in the Divine Couple’s love to retrieve and distribute the unprecedented pearls of his realizations, ripe with heart-wrenching lamentation. Aspirants for vraja-rasa will obtain a semblance of the luster of these pearls, whereas the living entities who are bereft of the wealth of bhajana cannot even imagine this. With each successive verse Srila Rupa Gosvami’s prayers become more confidential, more developed and more ardent.