The Story of Karna and the Magic That Is English Cricket

Our lives are a sum total of the choices we make or refuse to make. Today’s SD for Work article focuses on the life of Karna and how his choices determined the outcome of his glorious life.

King Kuntibhoja adopted his brother’s daughter Pritha because he had no progeny. She became the light of his life, and he called her Kunti because he wanted the world to know she was his child. Kunti was a wonderful child. She was wise beyond her years and gentle like a wisp of the summer breeze. Since this was the Dwapara Yuga, when the world had not been entirely disconnected from Devloka, gods and sages openly walked amongst men. Hence, King Kuntibhoja was not altogether surprised when the great Sage Durvasa graced his city. King Kuntiboja asked his daughter to ensure the sage was well looked after during his stay. Kunti excelled at this challenging task, and Durvasa was impressed by her dedication. When it was time to go, he felt fate nudge him to bless her with a potent mantra. He told her that she could use this mantra to summon any deva. He omitted the part where, after the Deva was summoned, he would mate with her and give her divine offspring. He hurried away, wondering why he gave such a potent mantra to a young child. Fate had cast the dice for the birth of Karna.

A month passed, and Kunti had almost forgotten about the mantra. One day, she saw the morning sun creep over the horizon and felt incredibly attracted to it. She felt the sun’s rays caress her and was unaware of the exact moment when she folded her hands and used sage Durvasa’s mantra to summon the sun god. Nature took its course, and the sage’s blessing came to bear fruit. Time on earth came to a standstill, and Kunti suddenly had a glorious infant in her hand. He wore golden armor and earrings. The luster on his face lit up the entire area. The sun god looked at him and sighed as he made a prophecy and disappeared.

“He will be the greatest archer on earth. He will be kind and generous to a fault but proud and sensitive because he has a twisted destiny. Yet his fame will live as long as the sun shines in the sky.”

Kunti did her best to feel some semblance of motherly love, but it evaded her. All she could see was a perfect child that would ruin her reputation and life. Her father would be heartbroken. Who would marry her if they came to know this truth? She put him down in a sandalwood box and released him into the river with a blessing. Thus, she sealed Karna’s destiny.

A warrior by birth who would never get his due because no one knew his geneology. Karna had no choice in Kunti’s decision, but the burning embers of abandonment would guide almost all his choices in life.

The next we hear of Karna in Mahabharata is when he is sixteen and lamenting about his fate. The royal charioteer of the Kauravas raised him and never told him about how they found him floating on the river. However, when his mother saw his struggle to accept his place as a servant, she told him about how his “father” found him floating on the river. Karna moaned with pain and hugged his mother. He then took her permission to learn archery. He first went to Guru Dronacharya, who was teaching the Pandavas and Kauravas. Guru Drona refused to teach him since he only taught Kshatriyas, and Karna’s parentage was unknown. Karna then went to the great Parashurama and lied that he was a brahmin seeking to learn the art of war. Parashurama gladly accepted Karna and taught him everything he knew, including how to summon the celestial weapons of gods.
By the end of his tutelage, Parashurama knew that Karna was the greatest archer in the world. One day when Parshurama slept with his head on Karna’s lap, an insect bored into Karna’s leg and started eating his flesh. He bore the pain silently and did not move his leg. He did not want to wake up his guru. Finally, the blood from Karna’s leg dripped on Parashurama’s face, who woke up with a start. He took one look at the situation and knew Karna could not be a brahmin as he had claimed because they could bear the pain for so long. Karna confessed to lying, and his guru Parshuram cursed him that he would forget all the celestial mantras when he had the greatest need for them. When he saw Karna’s ashen face, he consoled him by saying that his name would be remembered forever, but the curse would still have its effect.

After learning from his guru, Karna was returning home when he felt unbearable pangs of hunger. He saw a shadow of an animal at a distance, mistook it for a deer, and shot an arrow to kill it. When he reached the spot, he realized that he had killed a sacred cow belonging to a brahmin. The brahmin wept because the cow was part of his family. Karna fervently apologized, but the brahmin cursed him that one day when he fought for his life, his chariot’s wheels would be stuck in the mud, and he would be unable to free them. Thus, Karna returned from his quest as the greatest warrior in the world but was also haunted by two curses that would eventually cost him his life.

Karna is next seen when he challenges Arjuna to a battle of skills when the Pandavas and Kauravas are showcasing their talents. The crowd is at the edge of their seats, marveling at Arjuna’s magic with the bow, when Karna appears on the scene. Much to Duryodhana’s delight, he puts on a display that completely overshadows Arjuna’s performance and challenges Arjuna. The Pandavas laugh and tell him that this competition is only for those with royal blood. Karna is smoldering with embarrassment when Duryodhana spots an opportunity. He consults with his father and gifts Karna the throne of Anga, a small kingdom aligned with the Kauravas. Karna now owes Duryodhana his eternal loyalty and promises never to leave his side through life. Karna had given his word and would stick to it irrespective of Duryodhana’s actions.

The next major episode where we encounter Karna is during the svyamwara of Draupadi. King Drupada had set up an impossible archery test hoping to marry his daughter to the best archer in Aryavrata. One prince after another failed before Karna walked up to the dais. He picked up the bow and marked the target with ease. Just as he was about to loosen the arrow, Draupadi shouted that she would never marry the son of a charioteer. His hand shook, and it missed the target by the tiniest of margins. Karna’s whole body shook as if someone had physically assaulted him, and he gave her a venomous look before walking away. The ember for revenge burnt in his heart, making him speak the words that forever tarnished his legacy a few years later.

Meanwhile, Karna quickly developed the reputation of being the most charitable king in Bharatvarsha. None left his court empty-handed. Once a brahmin walked up to his court asking for dry wood. Torrential rains had ensured that no scrap of dry wood was available. Karna took an axe, chopped off a sandalwood throne, and gifted the wood to the brahmin. His name shone brighter than the sun, and he got the name “Daanveer Karna.”

The next major episode we encounter with Karna is when the Pandavas have lost everything in their game of dice with Kauravas. Karna knows that Shakuni is playing with loaded dice, yet he cheers on when Dushasana drags Draupadi to the Kaurava palace. When she protests and Duryodhana’s brother Vikarana supports her, Karna shoots down his arguments by calling Drupadi a characterless woman who already shares five husbands. This is entirely not in character with the student of Parshurama and the persona of Danveer Karna. He carries the embers of hatred due to the humiliation he encountered during her svayamvara, and he completely loses sight of his Dharma. This act of Karna and the silence of everyone in that royal hall meant that the entire Kuru dynasty was annihilated in the war of Mahabharata.

The next major episode we hear about Karna defines his character like no other story. The Kauravas have rejected all offers of peace, and Krishna is riding back to the Pandavas. He sees Karna and stops him. Krishna tells Karna that Kunti is his mother and the Pandavas are his brothers. He pleads with him to return to the Pandavas, so he can rule the throne and claim his rightful place. Finally, Krishna also tells Karna that he is not the son of a charioteer and instead is the son of the Sun god. Karna almost breaks down and stays silent for a while. Then he tells Krishna that while the world laughed at him, Duryodhana loved him like his brother. He categorically states that, along with his mother, Duryodhana is the only person to love him unconditionally. Karna goes on to say that he knows he will lose this war and die, and he is indeed tired of this earth and wants to attain heaven, but he will never forsake Duryodhana. Finally, he extracts a promise from Krishna that he would never share this fact with the Pandavas because Yudhishtara would refuse to fight the war. The debate between Krishna and Karna is beautifully captured by the poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar in his immortal poem Rashmirathi.

Karna’s choice again makes him immortal in Indian epics because he stands for friendship and love against all odds. His sacrifice does not end here. Kunti meets him on the banks of Yamuna and asks him to return with her. He weeps in her lap and tries to take in all the love he has missed his entire life. Finally, Karna promises her that during the war, he will not kill any of her sons except Arjuna so that she is still left with five sons after the war. He sticks to his promise and spares the lives of his brothers multiple times in the battle of Kurukshetra.

Karna’s final sacrifice costs him his life and makes his name immortal in history. His father, Surya Dev, visits him one day and warns him that Arjuna’s father, Indra, will visit Karna and ask him to donate his armor and earrings, which make Karna invincible on the battlefield. Karna does not heed this warning because his Dharma demands he cannot refuse anyone seeking alms from him. Indira disguises himself as a brahmin, and upon his request, Karna cuts away his armor and earrings and hands them over to Indra.

How do you define someone like Karna? Is he a hero, a villain, or an anti-hero? Can you genuinely blame a child whose destiny was decided before birth? I have stopped analyzing Karna. All you can learn from his life is that it was finally a sum of all his choices. The anger and bitterness mixed with the spirit of Dharma and daan make him the most complex character in Mahabharata.

Applying Wisdom At Work

Jeff Bezos gave a fascinating interview where he talked about the role of a leader at Amazon. He said they pay leaders to make very few critical decisions in a year but have to get those decisions right. He believed that if leaders get caught up in too many transactional activities, they will never have the bandwidth or the headspace to make the tough decisions for the business. Every business leader makes multiple critical choices every year. Satya Nadella often talked about how Steve Balmer trusted him with running the Microsoft Azure Cloud Business, knowing fully well that they would incur losses or minimal profits during the first few years. That single decision helped Microsoft become a significant player in the cloud market space.

However, today I want to focus on the impact of a single decision in my favorite sport, Cricket. England is the inventor of Cricket, and they consider Test Cricket as the sport’s holy grail. However, their team had been taking tremendous losses in this format for the past few years. They lost 16 out of the 17 games played during a couple of years, and their playing style was so dull that you could choose to watch a cow chewing the cud instead of the English test team.

The state of affairs was so bad that the English Cricket Board (ECB) decided to do something radical. They chose Rob Key, the former captain of Kent and a commentator at Sky Sports, to become the new Managing Director of English Cricket. Rob was a left-field choice. He was not a board insider but an absolute cricket nut with grassroots knowledge of the game. He believed in playing aggressively, which went against the traditional English conservatism that accompanied English cricket. Rob’s media interview was enlightening and refreshing. He said his job is to get a few critical choices right. He had to choose two new coaches for the test and the white ball team. He also needed new captains for both teams. Since Rob believed in all-out aggression, he chose the ultra-aggressive Kiwi Brendon Mc Cullum as the coach and Ben Stokes as the test team captain.

The last year has been refreshing and breathtaking for the English team. They have played with an aggression that has surprised and often defeated opponents even before they start a match. The same players who were trundling around scoring two runs an over are now often scoring at three times that rate. The bowling is much more aggressive, and the team loves playing under this new leadership. This did not happen because they made a choice. It happened because once they made that choice, they stuck to it and followed it even when people called them fools. Ben Stokes often played so aggressively that commentators and pundits called him irrational and ultra-aggressive. They did not realize that he was setting an example for the rest of the team to stop worrying about personal milestones and commit to the cause.

Last week this English team made more than five hundred runs in seventy overs in a test match in Pakistan. It was the single most entertaining piece of cricket I have seen in my life.

The one-day team also took some time to settle down but recently won Australia’s T 20 World Cup and played tremendously entertaining cricket.

It took one good decision to appoint Rob Key to set forward a tsunami of events that elevated the profile of English cricket. They are leagues ahead of the Indian team, which seems to have regressed to the 1990s culture of superstars and miracle wins.

Spiritual Lesson from the Story

My guru Om Swami has done a stupendous podcast on the Srimad Bhagwat Gita. Please note we call it Srimad Bhagwat Gita, not Gita or Bhagwat Gita, in reverence to Sri Krishna, who condenses the entire wisdom of Sanatana Dharma into this text. 

He keeps giving Arjuna different reasons to make the right choice. Arjuna, the entire world calls you a coward; go ahead and fight. Arjuna, it’s your duty, so fight. Arjuna, this body is just a shell. We are never born and can never die. Everyone merges into me; stop worrying and fight. Arjuna keeps giving different excuses and asking questions till he finally gets convinced to fight.

I remember driving on a flyover while listening to Swamiji’s commentary when it struck me. The battle of Mahabharata is happening within me. My inner voice guides me in one direction. “Stay disciplined. Do Sadhana. Be regular in your practice.” The mind gives a million reasons, like Arjuna, why it’s not possible. My guru is my Krishna guiding me towards the light, and my own tendencies behave like Arjuna resisting at every moment.

That, in a nutshell, is the summary of every spiritual journey. Your tendencies fight a gigantic battle against your inner voice because they know they must die for you to progress. This beautiful video by Om Swami helps you learn more about your inner voice.

Credits

Karna’s story is covered in The Mahabharata by Ramesh Menon. It’s a beautiful book, and he chose to use KM Ganguli’s work as a reference. KM Ganguli was the first person to translate Mahabharata into English.

The Samurai Prahalad Rajkumar for his article on Karna in OS.me. He is aptly named. Like Prahalad, he is razor focused on his craft and its yielding amazing results. 

My dear guru Om Swami for his invaluable gift of Srimad Bhagwat Gita.