"Mother, tell me why I am so confused!" The sixteen-year-old was full of anguish.
"What is it, Karna?" said Radha, the charioteer's wife, pulling her son close and stroking his hand-
some face. "Why are you so upset on your birthday?"
Karna sighed. "Father has bought me a chariot today and fine horses. But I don't want to be a sar-
athy! Why do I feel like this, mother? What is wrong with me?"
"What do you want to be, my child?"
His eyes shone. His voice full of soft excitement, he breathed, "An archer! Oh, my hands ache for
a bow and arrows; night and day, I think of nothing else. How the blood surges in my body when I see a kshatriya with his bow. Mother, am I cursed? That I am full of this unnatural desire."
Radha was silent. He saw tears fill her eyes and trickle down her cheeks. With a cry, the boy hugged her.
"Have I hurt you? I am sorry, I am so sorry! I would rather die than hurt you. Why are you crying, mother? Tell me!"
She said through her tears, "You talked in your sleep last night. You cried out, 'Ah, don't go! Don't go before you answer me. Tell me who you are and why you haunt me like this.' Who was in your dream, Karna?"
He was silent for some moments. Then he shook his head and said, "It is the same dream night after night and I can't understand it."
"Tell me what it is."
"A woman comes to me while I am asleep. I can see her clearly, but she doesn't know that. She comes as I lie dreaming and she wears a veil across her face. But she is dressed in costly silks and her manner and carriage are those of a princess. As she bends over me in the dream, her tears fall on to my face. I sit up and say, 'Who are you? Tell me who you are.' But she has vanished. Oh mother, some- one must have cursed me! The woman in my dreams, the rush of blood when I see a bow."
Radha held him close as if she was afraid she would lose him. "Karna, I think the time has come when I should tell you something. It's a story, just like the ones you love listening to. It was sixteen years ago, a morning in spring and your father Atiratha had gone to the Ganga to bathe. As he stood in the river, offering Surya-namaskara, he saw a glitter on the water as if the rising sun was pointing at something adrift on the Ganga. It seemed a treasure floated there and, borne by the tide, it came nearer.
Your father swam across and saw it was a polished wooden box. He was amazed at what he saw inside it. Swaddled in silks, his thumb in his mouth, there lay the most beautiful baby. He slept peacefully, smiling in the sacred dreams of infancy. It was as if the Ganga had sung that child to sleep, with a lullaby he could not hear from his mother. He was a lustrous baby, like a bit of the sun fallen on to the river.
Your father came running home and cried, 'Radha! Look what I have brought you.'
The child in his arms was so beautiful I could not take my eyes off him. 'Look at the kavacha and kundala he is wearing,' I breathed.
The armor and earrings were golden, but made from a purer gold than any I had ever seen. I said in alarm, 'This is no ordinary baby; you've brought home the child of some Deva.'"
Her son Karna sat breathless beside her. His mother's every word tore down his world; he was being reborn in her story.
Taking his hand, she continued, "I said to your father, 'No human child can be so beautiful. He must belong to a God.'
Atiratha still smiled at me in the joy of finding the dazzling baby. 'I found him floating on the river. Perhaps, he is indeed a child sent by the Gods to answer your prayers. My heart sings in me that he was born to be yours, Radha. I am going to call him Radheya and he will be your son!'"
Karna gave a moan and hugged his mother. She said, "We saw the baby was swaddled in silks that only a princess would have. We decided that a princess had abandoned you, for reasons only she knew. But we could never understand the golden kundala and kavacha you came with. They seemed to be part of your skin and grew with you.
For your kavacha and kundala, we named you Vasushena. But your father always called you Rad- heya and I named you Karna for your long ears. All that mattered to us was that we had a wonderful son. And for these sixteen years, we were lost in that blessing. But now you grow disturbed and your hands itch not for chariot-reins but a warrior's weapons. Karna, you must have been born in some great kshatriya's palace and here we have raised you in a humble suta's house. And all the wealth we have been able to give you is our love."
Her eyes were full again. "No, my son, it isn't any curse or perversion that makes you long to hold a bow in your hands. It is because of the blood that flows in your veins.
Go, Karna, go into the world and seek out your real mother. I am only the lucky woman who raised you. But I am grateful to God that He gave me a son like you. You might leave me now, but the memory of these sixteen years will help me survive the sorrow the future holds."
Karna flung his arms around her and cried, "What are you saying? Are you also going to abandon me as she did? I don't even want to know who she is. I already have a mother, the best mother in the world!
As for being a kshatriya, I must be one. That is why I long to be an archer and now nothing will stop me. Bless me, mother. I must go and seek a master who will make me an archer."
"Oh, my child, may you be the greatest archer on earth!"
"And when I am, I will come home to you. Meanwhile, you must explain everything to father. He may not understand if I told him, especially today when he has bought me a new chariot and horses." And so Karna, the suta's adopted son, set out on his sixteenth birthday to find a master who would
teach him archery.
