Another Karna

In another rendering, Kunti wonders
What if she didn’t set her lovechild in the river.

She did not write her thoughts down.
We know this from whispers travelling, one ear to another.

Karna’s twin fathers – charioteer & sun
Both let him down.

A wheel stuck in mire.
Armour given away, when an eclipse would do.

No one came.
Had she kept her child – would he have lived long enough?

The loom of time casts its long shadow.
Would destiny have unraveled beyond argument?

Or would he have met his fate anyway?
In a different telling, his half-brothers in a common camp.

And he, like the forest child Eklavya
Left to fend the arrows of fate with missing thumb.

Karna, with a heart large as the world, left to the elements,
Wherever tree branch and twig leaf took him.

Could she change the will of the gods?
The iron-clad rules of the game?

Yet, tempting to think – Karna as king,
Eklavya as crown prince – empire of bird and bee.

Elsewhere, Gandhari wonders too –
What if she said no?

To marriage, a blind prince, when a commoner would do.
What if she walked out – crying deceit?

And Ganga, river eternal, has a moment midcourse
Somewhere on the way to Haridwar, just before the evening Aarti.

What if she doesn’t turn up today?
If only she didn’t fall – for all that mortal charm – so early.

But that takes us away from Karna.
Karna still asks his mother, that same question, every day.

Would I have been Karna, had you kept me?
Had you not set me among the rushes?

Had my father embraced me, in open sunlight?
His mother thinks hard, comes up with the same reply, every time.

Give me one more day to think about it.
One more day, she knows, will not make a difference.