This is one among several renderings made by Mumbiram where we see an older maiden blissfully allowing if not encouraging advances by a younger paramour.

Once Mumbiram asked Kishori Baba of Old Kaaliya Doha Road in Vrindavan if Radha is older than Krishna. The saint in his late eighties had snapped back, “In the very first verse of Jayadeva’s Gita Govind, Nanda Baba is asking Radharani to bring the boy Krishna to his home because he is afraid of the dark”.

Indeed, the same verse goes on to tell us:

“Ordered in this way by Nandamaharaj, Radha happily took Krishna along. The Confidential Leelas of Radha and Krishna along the Bank of the Yamuna, at every turn of the road, at every Nikunja, along the way and under every tree that they liked, have become universally accepted as the Most Glorious Theme of Meditation”. (From Mumbiram’s “Conjugal Fountainhead”)

The loving couple seen in this rendering by Mumbiram is engaged in just such a Leela. Mumbiram’s art is not created as illustrations to any existing text. Mumbiram’s art is inspired by real happenings between the artist and his muses. They share the same rasa as is invoked in the texts of the ancient classics. The couple seen here certainly reminds you of Krishna with his beloved. That is exactly what Mumbiram’s Prema Vivarta mood is about.

The title is from Iceberg in the Bayou which is second of the “Deluges Of Ecstasy” trilogy which was composed when Mumbiram was living in an abandoned cowshed on a farm in Potomac Maryland (1978-79). Deluges of Ecstasy take us to a brave new world of a brave new idiom and brave new images. The ambiance is charged with the energy and candor of first love. It has the outrageous promises and audacious threats of adolescence. It has the desperation of teen infatuation. The landscape stretches from icebergs to bayous. It is dotted with cowsheds and hermitages. This is no ordinary dust of day. It turns into stars of night. Waters of the river are deep. It does not deter the lovers from making a rendezvous.

It appears the couple is sitting on a swing with invisible ropes. They are levitating ! They are above the clouds. Higher than the Moon ! Everything except the moon is either blue or black. Then why is it called Blue Moon ?

It will be wrong for us to to try to describe any of the delectable details of their physical meeting. That Rasa is everybody’s own intimate experience. Suffice it to say that this is a glorious example of the “Nectarean Ways of Love in the Beloved land of Vraja Vrindavan”. ( व्रजअनुरागरीति )