Write ✍️ by Parmod Kumar Prajapati...
The arrow had not brought pain. It had brought a chilling silence, a sudden, profound detachment from the roar of Kurukshetra. Karna felt himself floating, a wisp of consciousness untethered from the weight of muscle, sinew, and scar. The last thing he saw was the vast, indifferent blue of the sky, and the sun—his father—watching with a molten, unblinking eye.
Then, a pull.
Not downwards, into the earth that drank his blood, but sideways, through a vortex of blinding gold and whispering wind. He felt a scream build in a throat he no longer possessed, a protest against this final, unwilling journey.
The light resolved.
He stood on a surface that was neither floor nor ground, but a plane of shimmering, liquid radiance. The air hummed with a power that made the might of the Brahmastra feel like a child's spark. Before him, on a throne of condensed solar flares, sat Surya. The god was not as he had appeared in rare, veiled visions. This was the source, the furnace of creation. His form was both man and conflagration, his eyes supernovae of knowledge and sorrow.
"My son," the voice was not a sound, but a vibration in the marrow of Karna's soul.
Anger, cold and sharp, crystallised within him. This was the author of his loneliness. "Father?" The word was an accusation. "Where was this paternity when I was pelted with mud and called 'suta'? Where were you when Parashurama cursed me, or when my chariot wheel sank? A spectator to my tragedy?"
Surya's light dimmed, not in weakness, but in acknowledgement. "A god's gaze is long, Vasusena. It sees the tapestry, not the single thread. Your life was a crucible. Your choices, your suffering, your loyalty—they have forged a legend that will outlast dynasties."
"I did not want a legend!" Karna's spirit flared, brighter than it ever had in life. "I wanted a mother who did not abandon me! I wanted to know my brothers without hatred! I wanted to give my sons a name that was not a weapon!"
"And you have." Surya gestured, and the luminous floor became a pool of visions. Karna saw Vrishali, not weeping, but standing straight in the ruins of Anga's palace, her arm around their youngest son, Vrishasena. She was speaking to the people, her voice steady. He saw his subjects, their grief tempered by a fierce, defiant pride. Our king was the sun's own son, they whispered. He walked among us. He was ours.
"You gave them honour by living with them, not above them," Surya said. "But your thread is not yet cut. Your loyalty to Duryodhana has been fulfilled in death. But your duty to dharma… that has a final balance."
A new figure coalesced from the light. Tall, stern, radiating an aura of ineffable justice. Yama, Lord of Death, Dharma Raj.
"Karna," Yama's voice was the closing of a great ledger. "Your life was one of magnificent contradictions. Unparalleled charity coupled with unwavering support of adharma. Peerless skill used in a cause of spite. Your virtues are colossal. Your debts are equally so."
Karna bowed his head, the anger subsiding into a weary understanding. "I am ready for judgement. Send me where I must go."
"Judgement is not a destination," Yama said. "It is an accounting. And your account is… complex. You cannot proceed to Swarga or Naraka until it is settled. There are voices that must be heard. Debts of word and deed that echo."
Before Karna could respond, the celestial scene dissolved. He felt a lurching sensation, and found himself standing on the banks of the River Vaitarani, the boundary of the afterlife. Its waters were not water, but a flowing stream of murmured regrets and unresolved pleas.
And on the other bank, he saw them.
First, a slight, hunched figure, his spirit still shimmering with the dampness of river reeds. The Brahmin whose cow Karna had accidentally killed as a youth, whose curse had doomed his chariot wheel.
"You were careless, mighty warrior!" the spirit cried, its voice a thin wail. "My life depended on that cow! Your apology was gold, but my hunger was for justice, not wealth!"
The weight of the curse, understood now not as a petty spite but as the desperation of the powerless, settled on Karna. He had thrown jewels at a wound that needed acknowledgement. "Forgive me," Karna said, and the words, for the first time, held no pride, only sorrow. "My wealth was a shield. I should have borne your anger, not bought it away."
The Brahmin's wailing softened. He nodded once, a flicker of peace touching his form, before fading into the astral mist.
Then came a woman, her form luminous and terrible, her hair flowing like a dark river. Draupadi.
Karna recoiled. Of all the judgements, this one he feared the most.
She did not shriek. She stood before him, a queen even in death, her eyes holding the smouldering ashes of the dice hall. "You called me a public woman, Karna. You poured not just insult, but the poison of legitimacy onto their violence. Your words were the banner under which they assaulted me."
Karna fell to his knees, not in the court of gods, but before this human woman he had wronged. "Draupadi," he whispered, his voice breaking. "I saw only Arjuna's wife. I saw only a way to wound my rival, to please my friend. I was blind to you. To your person, your dignity, your terror. My tongue served my bitterness, not truth. Can a dead man's apology hold meaning?"
Draupadi observed him for a long moment. "You died upholding a friend's cause, flawed as it was," she said finally. "You understood loyalty. Can you understand that my loyalty to my honour, to my husbands' honour, was my cause? That your words were the weapons that struck at its heart?"
"I understand now," Karna said, the truth of it burning clearer than Surya's light. "I fought for dignity all my life. And in that moment, I helped strip it from another. There is no balance for this."
"There is not," Draupadi agreed. But her terrible gaze softened a fraction. "But an acknowledgement… from the great Karna… it is a stone laid on a path to peace. For both of us." She turned and walked away, her form dissolving like smoke in moonlight.
The air grew heavy. A majestic figure appeared, his spirit radiating a profound, disciplined energy. Bhishma Pitamah.
"Grandsire," Karna said, bowing deeply.
"Karna," Bhishma's voice was weary. "I honoured your skill. I pitied your plight. But I failed you, and the Kurus. I saw the poison in Duryodhana's heart, fed by Shakuni. I saw your noble heart bound to that poison by gratitude. I spoke of dharma from a bed of arrows, but did I act with enough force to prevent this war? Did I, who knew your lineage, ever try to truly bridge the chasm between you and your brothers?"
This was a judgement Karna had not anticipated. "You were bound by your vow to the throne, Pitamah. I was bound by my vow to Duryodhana. We were both captives of our own codes."
"And codes without compassion are empty scriptures," Bhishma sighed. "I judge you not, son of Surya. I only add my failure to the ledger. We are both answerable."
One by one, they came. The spirits of warriors he had slain fairly and unfairly. The common soldier of the Pandava army whose name he never knew, cut down by a sweeping arc of his sword. "I was a farmer from Shalva," the spirit murmured. "My wife waits with a lamp by the door." Karna could only bow, absorbing the sheer, human cost of his magnificent prowess.
Finally, the light shifted, and two figures approached together. A handsome, serene man in bark cloth, and a dazzling, ornate god. Parashurama and Indra.
"My fatal student," Parashurama said, and there was no anger left, only a deep, guru's grief. "My curse was born of betrayal. But my teaching was given to a heart that was truly brave, truly devoted. You were the greatest of my students, Karna. Remember that, too. The weapon may have failed, but the warrior's heart I helped forge did not."
Indra, king of gods, looked uncharacteristically solemn. "I tricked you of your armour, Karna. I, who am supposed to uphold virtue, resorted to deceit against a mortal because I feared for my son's life. I gave you a weapon of sure kill, but I tipped the scales of fate with dishonesty. Your charity shamed the heavens. Your father," he glanced at the distant, watching light of Surya, "argued for you in the councils of the gods. Even I owe a debt to your integrity."
Karna listened, the storm of accusations, apologies, and acknowledgements washing over him. The colossal ledger of his life was being tallied, not by a stern judge, but by the echoes of his own actions.
He turned to Yama, who had observed all in silence. "What is the sum, Dharma Raj? Where does a man belong who was both more and less than a king, both brother and enemy, both charitable and cruel?"
Yama's stern face did not change, but his eyes held a glimmer of something akin to respect. "The sum is not a number, Karna. It is a resonance. Your virtues are thunderous. Your flaws are deep chasms. Neither Swarga, which is for the uniformly righteous, nor Naraka, for the uniformly wicked, can contain you. Your destiny is… unique."
Surya's light intensified. "My son," the solar deity said, "your mortal coil is ashes. But the essence of Karna—the loyalty, the generosity, the fierce, flawed honour—that cannot be dissolved. The earth sings your saga. But the balance is incomplete. One thread remains loose."
A final vision appeared in the pool of light. Not a spirit, but a living scene. The battlefield of Kurukshetra, the day after his death. Arjuna stands victorious, but his face is hollow, his triumph ashen. Krishna is beside him, speaking quietly. And on the ground, amid the carrion birds, lies Karna's own mortal body, stripped of armour, royal garments gone, lying in the mud like any common soldier.
A cry of anguish tears from Arjuna's throat. "What have I done? He was… he was unarmed! He was my…!" He cannot say the word 'brother'.
Krishna places a hand on his shoulder. "Go to him, Arjuna. Honour him now, as you could not then."
And Arjuna, the victor, stumbles forward. He removes his own divine cloak, the Uttariya, and with trembling hands, lays it over his brother's body. He then kneels, and with his own hands, begins to dig the earth for the funeral pyre, refusing all help. Tears cut tracks through the grime on his face.
Karna watched, a profound shudder moving through his spirit. This acknowledgement, this belated, desperate act of fraternal duty, was the final weight on the scale.
Yama nodded. "The debt of blood is paid by blood. The debt of dishonour is now paid by honour, given freely by the one who took your life. The balance shifts."
Surya rose from his throne. The radiance was no longer terrifying, but warm, paternal, inviting. "Come, my son. Your place is not among the departed spirits. Nor is it among the gods who watched and interfered. Your place is with me. Not as a subordinate deity, but as an immortal essence. You will be Shashthi, the radiant one, a planetary power in your own right. You will be the light that acknowledges struggle, the star that favours the underdog, the celestial body that reminds humanity of the terrible, beautiful cost of loyalty and the eternal possibility of redemption. You will be the divine witness to every act of unsung charity, every silent struggle for dignity."
The pull was irresistible now, but it was a pull towards a purpose, not a punishment. Karna looked back one last time at the fading visions of the world—of Anga, of Vrishali, of a weeping Arjuna, of a grateful, cursed Brahmin.
He had lived as a king among men. He would now exist as a legend among the stars. He was no longer the tragic hero, the wronged prince, the loyal friend. He was Karna. Complete.
He turned and walked into the embrace of his father's light, not as a lost child returning home, but as a sovereign taking his throne. The sun had set on the King of Anga. But the star of the Surya Putra had just begun to rise.