Write ✍️ by Parmod Kumar Prajapati.....
The dust never settled in Anga. It hung in the air, a fine, golden haze that gilded the thatched roofs and clung to the silks of the merchants. From the balcony of his palace, King Karna watched his kingdom breathe. It was not Hastinapura, all granite and grim history, nor the celestial opulence of Indraprastha. Anga was earthy, prosperous, and loud with the sounds of forges, markets, and river traffic. He had built this. Not inherited, not granted out of pity, but won by the sweat of his brow and the peerless skill of his arm. Yet, as the sun, his divine father, beat down upon his bare shoulders, the familiar hollowness echoed within his chest.
The memory of the tournament at Hastinapura was a scar that never truly healed. The feel of the packed earth under his feet, the roar of the Kuru crowd, the incredulous, admiring stares as he matched Arjuna, arrow for arrow. Then, the silence. The cruel, echoing silence when his mother, Radha, his only mother, had stepped forward, her face a mask of terror, and the words had fallen like stones: He is not a prince. He is my son, a suta-putra.
And Duryodhana's hand on his shoulder, a lifeline in that sea of scorn. The gift of a kingdom, not as a subject, but as a friend. A king. Karna of Anga. The name was both a crown and a cage.
"My lord," a gentle voice interrupted his reverie. Vrishali, his wife, stood beside him. Her eyes, the colour of dark honey, held no awe for the king, only a deep, abiding concern for the man. "The envoys from Hastinapura have arrived. They are in the southern court."
Karna nodded, his jaw tightening. Hastinapura's envoys never brought simple messages. They carried the weight of Duryodhana's ambitions and the subtle venom of Shakuni's schemes.
In the court, the chief envoy, a man with the oiled demeanour of a career courtier, bowed. "Great King of Anga, Lord of Charity, Surya Putra. Prince Duryodhana sends his warmest greetings and seeks your counsel on a matter of dharma."
Dharma. The word hung in the air. Karna gestured for him to continue.
"A royal sacrifice, a Rajasuya, is to be performed by the Pandava king, Yudhishthira, in Indraprastha. He seeks the submission and tribute of all kings. Prince Duryodhana asks: Is it dharma for the righteous to bow to a king whose wife was gambled in a hall of dice? Whose own actions are mired in deceit?"
A murmur went through Karna's own ministers. The insult to Draupadi was legendary, a wound on the conscience of Bharat. Karna himself had been there. He had called her a woman of questionable virtue, words that now tasted like ash in his memory. He had spoken not out of personal hatred, but from a place of loyalty to the friend who had saved him from oblivion, and from a bitter, private resentment towards Arjuna, the prince who had everything Karna had been denied.
"My loyalty is to Duryodhana," Karna said, his voice low but clear, cutting through the murmur. "But my answer is not merely one of loyalty. It is of law. A Rajasuya is not built on righteousness alone, but on power. If Yudhishthira can enforce his will, it is politics. If he cannot, it is arrogance. Tell my friend I will stand with him. Anga will not submit."
The decision was made. Yet, long after the envoys departed, Karna walked alone in his gardens. The scent of night-blooming jasmine was heavy. His thoughts turned, as they often did, to his origins. The exquisite, invulnerable golden kavacha and kundala – armour and earrings – he was born with, a gift from his sun-god father. His adoptive mother, Radha, had whispered the story to him as a child: how she found him, radiant in a basket on the river, a child of the gods. He had believed it a fable, a poor woman's fancy, until the day he discovered he could not be wounded, until he realised his natural affinity for celestial weapons rivalled that of the great Bhishma himself.
A familiar, celestial warmth suddenly pulsed in the air. Before him, the light coalesced into the form of a resplendent sage, clad in bark, yet glowing with an inner radiance.
"Parashurama," Karna breathed, falling to his knees. His guru, the legendary Brahmin warrior-sage who had taught him everything, who had believed him to be a Brahmin youth, eager to learn.
But the sage's face was not as he remembered. It was etched with a profound sorrow. "Karna. Rise. Do not bow to one you have deceived."
The old wound tore open. "Gurudev…"
"I know the truth," Parashurama said, his voice like a distant thunder. "I know you are no Brahmin, but a Kshatriya. You lied to learn the invincible Brahmastra from me. My curse upon you, for that deceit, is known to you: that when you need that weapon most, its mantra will fail you. But that is not why I am here."
The sage's gaze seemed to pierce through Karna's very soul. "I come with a vision, my erring, brilliant student. I see the path you walk. I see the loyalty that is your strength and your doom. You cling to Duryodhana, who gave you honour in the eyes of men, while denying the honour of your own blood. You nurse a rivalry with Arjuna, who is, in truth—"
"Do not say it!" Karna cried out, a surge of panic gripping him. Some deep, forbidden part of him recoiled from the unspoken truth, a truth that had whispered to him in dreams he dared not remember.
Parashurama sighed, a sound of infinite weariness. "I will not speak what you are not ready to hear. But know this, Surya Putra: the greatest battle you will fight is not on the field of Kurukshetra. It is within your own heart. Your generosity is legendary, but what of the charity of truth? You give away wealth without a thought, yet you hoard the knowledge of your self like a miser. Until you face that, you will always be the charioteer's son, no matter how many kingdoms you rule."
With those words, the sage faded, leaving Karna alone in the scented dark, more isolated than before.
---
The wheels of fate turned inexorably towards war. The Pandavas' exile ended. Draupadi's humiliation demanded vengeance. Diplomatic missions failed, poisoned by pride and past grievances. Kurukshetra was chosen, a field destined for slaughter.
On the eve of the great war, a different visitor came to Karna's tent. Krishna, the charioteer of Arjuna, the divine statesman of the Pandavas. He entered not with celestial light, but with the quiet authority of a friend.
"Karna," Krishna smiled, his eyes holding galaxies of compassion and cunning. "May I speak?"
"You are in my tent, Vasudeva. You may," Karna replied, his tone guarded. He offered water, the eternal duty of a host.
Krishna drank, then set the cup down. "I come with a proposal, not from an enemy, but perhaps from a well-wisher. Come to our side, Karna. The justice of the Pandava cause is clear. You will be crowned King of Hastinapura. Yudhishthira will step aside for you. Arjuna will be your devoted general. The brothers will serve you as they served Dhritarashtra. All the honour you have ever desired, granted not by a grateful friend, but by the dictates of dharma and your own birthright."
Karna stared, stunned. The offer was unimaginably vast. Kingship over the entire Kuru empire. The validation he had craved since childhood. The defeat of Arjuna without loosing a single arrow. "Why?" he asked, his voice hoarse. "Why would you offer this?"
Krishna's gaze was piercing. "Because it is yours by right. You are not Radha's firstborn, Karna. You are Kunti's. Born to her before her marriage, fathered by Surya himself. You are the eldest Pandava. Arjuna is your younger brother."
The world stopped. The sounds of the preparing army outside faded to a dull roar. The words were not a shock, but a dreadful, confirming echo. They named the ghost that had haunted him. The inexplicable pull towards Kunti, the visceral, competitive fire he felt for Arjuna—it was not just rivalry, it was fraternity turned inside out.
He saw it all. Kunti, young and terrified, abandoning her radiant, armoured infant to the river. His journey to the humble charioteer's home. A life built on a foundation of sand.
"And she…" Karna managed to say, "She confirms this?"
"She does," Krishna said softly. "She bore you. She abandoned you out of fear. Now, in her fear for her other sons, she seeks to reclaim you. She came to you before me, did she not? She asked you to join your brothers."
Karna remembered. His biological mother's tear-streaked face, her desperate plea. His own heart, a battleground of yearning and bitterness. He had promised her he would not kill any of his brothers but Arjuna. In return, he had demanded—and received—her blessing for his own death. A grotesque bargain between mother and son.
He looked at Krishna, a bitter smile touching his lips. "So, the great dharma of the Pandavas rests on my shoulders? If I join you, you win righteously. If I refuse, I am the stubborn, arrogant sutaputra who chose friendship over family, and you defeat me righteously. A clever trap, Vasudeva."
"It is no trap," Krishna said. "It is a choice. Between the honour given by a man who loves you for your use, and the honour inherent in your blood. Between the gratitude of a friend and the duty to a mother who wronged you."
Karna rose, pacing the confined space of the tent. His life unfolded before him: the taunts, the isolation, Duryodhana's hand, the kingship of Anga, the loyalty of his subjects, the love of Vrishali and his sons. The unshakeable bond with the friend who had seen a king in an outcast.
He stopped and faced Krishna. "Tell Kunti," he said, each word measured, "that she made her choice on the riverbank. She chose her honour over her son. A mother's love should not be a negotiable currency, offered only when her other investments are threatened. I have lived as a suta. I have been loved as a suta. Duryodhana gave me that identity when the world, and my own mother, stripped it from me. He may be flawed, his cause may be unjust, but his friendship is the one truth of my life that has never wavered."
He drew himself up, the King of Anga, the Disciple of Parashurama, the Son of the Sun. "I will fight for him. I will die for him. And I will fight Arjuna. Not as a jealous rival, but as a Kshatriya fulfilling his vow to his friend. Tell my… tell the Pandavas, that Karna knows who he is. And he chooses who he will be."
Krishna watched him, his expression inscrutable. There was no anger, only a deep, sad acceptance. He nodded once. "Then your destiny is your own, Surya Putra. And it is magnificent."
---
The eighteen-day war was a symphony of carnage. Karna fought like a god of war unleashed. He defended Duryodhana's flaws, upheld his promises, and carved a path of destruction through the Pandava army. He fought fairly, chivalrously, even sparing enemies when he could, bound by his own rigid code.
Then came the seventeenth day. The day of his fateful duel with Arjuna. The heavens themselves seemed to hold their breath. As Karna mounted his chariot, driven by the loyal Shalya, the King of Madra, a sense of finality settled upon him. He had given away his divine armour and earrings, his birth-gifts, to Indra disguised as a Brahmin, in an act of charity so profound it had defined him. In return, Indra had given him the irresistible Vasavi Shakti, a spear of sure kill—which he had used to kill the monstrous Ghatotkacha, saving the Kaurava army but leaving himself vulnerable.
Now, he faced Arjuna in Krishna's chariot. The battle was epic, a clash of titans. The air screamed with arrows. Karna was magnificent, matching Arjuna shot for shot. But fate, in the form of his own past curses, conspired against him.
Parashurama's curse struck first. As Karna prepared the Brahmastra to end the conflict, the sacred mantra vanished from his mind, leaving him empty and exposed. Then, the curse of the Brahmin whose cow he had accidentally killed long ago: his chariot wheel sank deep into the soft, blood-soaked earth of Kurukshetra, immobilising him.
He leapt down, abandoning his chariot to free the wheel. As he strained, vulnerable, he remembered the kshatriya dharma. "Arjuna!" he called, his voice ringing across the field. "The codes of war forbid an attack on a warrior who is without his chariot, who is distracted! Remember your honour!"
On Arjuna's chariot, Krishna smiled a gentle, terrible smile. "And did you remember honour, Karna, when Draupadi was insulted? When the codes of war were broken in the dice hall? This is not just a war of codes, but of consequences."
He urged Arjuna. Arjuna, his face a mask of conflicted duty and long-nursed rivalry, hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then, he lifted his bow, Gandiva.
Karna, still tugging at the wheel, looked up. He saw not just Arjuna, but the cosmic play. He saw Krishna, the divine charioteer. He saw the sun, his father, high in the sky. In that moment, the hollowness vanished. The anger, the resentment, the longing—it all melted away, burned up in the clarity of his final dawn.
He was not a suta. He was not a wronged Pandava. He was Karna. The loyal friend. The generous king. The peerless warrior who had lived by his own choices, flawed and glorious. He stopped tugging at the wheel. He stood upright, facing his brother, his arms open, a beatific smile on his face.
"Fire, Arjuna," he said, not as a plea, but as a benediction. "Fulfill your destiny. And I shall fulfil mine."
The arrow, the Anjalika, flew. It struck Karna's chest, piercing his heart. The force lifted him off the ground before laying him gently on the earth.
A great cry went up from the Kaurava host. Duryodhana's wail of despair rent the air. But on the battlefield, a strange peace descended around the fallen hero.
As his life bled into the soil of Kurukshetra, Karna felt a warmth suffuse him, a warmth he had known since birth. The sun, Surya, seemed to bend its rays around him, a final, golden embrace. He saw not the face of a distant god, but the face of Radha, his mother, her eyes filled with a love that asked for nothing. He saw Vrishali. He saw the people of Anga.
He had died as he lived: on his own terms. Not as a pawn of fate, but as the author of his own tragic, magnificent story. The charioteer's son, the sun's son, the king, the friend, the brother. He was all of it. And in the end, that was enough.
The sun dipped towards the horizon, staining the battlefield the colour of blood and gold. The greatest of all charitable souls, the man who gave everything away, even his life, with unwavering grace, was finally at peace. Surya Putra had returned home.