The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

traveling down an ostrich‟s neck.
A traveling kiss whose journey was cut short by dismay
when Karna realized that his mother had revealed herself to him
only to secure the safety of her five other, more beloved sons–the
Pandavas–poised on the brink of their epic battle with their one
hundred cousins. It, is them that Kunti sought to protect by
announcing to Karna that she was his mother. She had a promise to
extract.
She invoked the Love Laws.
They are your brothers. Your own flesh and blood. Promise
me that you will not go to war against them. Promise me that.
Karna the Warrior could not make that promise, for if he did,
he would have to revoke another one. Tomorrow he would go to
war, and his enemies would be the Pandavas. They were the ones,
Arjuna in particular, who had publicly reviled him for being a
lowly charioteer‟s son. And it was Duryodhana, the eldest of the
one hundred Kaurava brothers, that came to his rescue by gifting
him a kingdom of his own. Karna, in return, had pledged
Duryodhana eternal fealty.
But Karna the Generous could not refuse his mother what
she asked of him. So he modified the promise. Equivocated. Made
a small adjustment, took a somewhat altered oath.
I promise you this, Karna said to Kunti. You will always
have five sons. Yudhishtra I will not harm. Bhima will not die by
my band. The twins–Nakula and Sahadeva–will go untouched by
me. But Arjuna–him I will make no promises about. I will kill him,
or he will kill me. One of us will die.
Something altered in the air. And Rahel knew that Estha had
come.
She didn‟t turn her head, but a glow spread inside her. He‟s
come, she thought. He‟s here. With me.
Estha settled against a distant pillar and they sat through the
performance like this, separated by the breadth of the
kuthambalam, but joined by a story. And the memory of another