Krishna Tells Kunti Why Devotees Suffer

As Krishna prepared to leave for Dwaraka after the great war, Queen Kunti approached him. She had spent her life in suffering — widowed young, exiled with five sons, watching them gamble away their kingdom, seeing her daughter-in-law humiliated, and finally witnessing the deaths of millions including her own grandsons.

Kunti: "Keshava, before you leave, I must ask you something that has burned in my heart for years."

Krishna: "Ask, Mata."

Kunti: "I have worshipped you all my life. My sons are devoted to you. You call us your family. Yet look at our lives — exile, humiliation, war, death. The Kauravas who ignored you lived in palaces while we wandered in forests. Why? Why do those who love you suffer more?"

Krishna: "What would you have me give you, Mata? Ask, and it is yours."

Kunti: "I am asking a question, not a boon."

Kunti: "And I am giving you a choice. I can give you what I give to those who do not know me — wealth, comfort, a peaceful life, an easy death. Do you want that?"

Krishna: "If you had given us that... would we have become who we are?"

Kunti: "Now you are answering your own question."

Krishna: "The forest taught my sons humility. The exile taught them endurance. The humiliations taught them the price of adharma. Without suffering..."

Kunti: "Without suffering, Yudhishthira would have been a comfortable king, not Dharmaraja. Without suffering, Arjuna would have been a skilled archer, not the one who received the Gita. Without suffering, Bhima would have been strong, not unstoppable. Suffering did not break you — it forged you."

Kunti: "Then give me more suffering, Govinda."

Krishna: "Mata?"

Kunti: "Give me difficulties. Because in difficulty, I remember you. In comfort, I might forget. In pain, I cry out your name. In pleasure, I might call other names. Let calamities come again and again so that I may see you again and again. For seeing you means no more rebirth."

Krishna: "This is why I call you mother. Others ask for my blessings to remove obstacles. You ask for obstacles so that you never stop seeking me."

Kunti: "What else can I ask? Kingdoms burn. Youth fades. Children die. Only you remain. Only you were there when I was young, when I was exiled, when I wept, when I celebrated. Let me never be so comfortable that I forget the only one who was always there."