Yudhishthira and Kunti - A Mother's Hidden Truth

The funeral rites were complete. Karna's ashes had joined the river. And Yudhishthira sat with his mother in a silence that demanded breaking.

Yudhishthira: "You knew, All these years. You knew he was your son."

Kunti: "I knew."

Yudhishthira: "And you said nothing. While we grew up hating him. While Arjuna trained specifically to defeat him. While we fought a war that killed him."

Kunti: "I said nothing."

Yudhishthira: "Why?"

Kunti's face was carved from grief—ancient, beyond tears.

Kunti: "Because telling would have destroyed more than it saved. You would have had to acknowledge him. Make him heir, perhaps—he was eldest. Duryodhana would have lost his greatest warrior, but gained a legitimate challenge to your throne. The war might have been different. Worse."

Yudhishthira: "Or better. We could have been brothers."

Kunti: "Could you? After decades of enmity? After he'd sworn to kill Arjuna? Some wounds can't be healed by revelation. They can only be deepened."

Yudhishthira: "You don't know that. You decided for all of us without asking."

Kunti: "I decided as a mother protecting her children. Not the child I gave away—the ones I kept. Every choice I made was for you five. Even the choices that damned me."

Yudhishthira: "Damned you?"

Kunti: "You think I don't carry this? Every night, I see his face—the face I saw once as an infant, then never again until he was a man fighting against my other sons. Every night, I wonder: if I had kept him, what would he have become? If I had spoken earlier, would he be alive?"

Yudhishthira: "He might be. You might have saved him."

Kunti: "I might have killed all of you. There's no way to know. And that's the torture—the not knowing. Every choice had consequences I couldn't predict. Every silence was a gamble."

Yudhishthira stood and paced. The anger was old now, layered over grief.

Yudhishthira: "You went to him. Before the war. Krishna told me. You offered him the throne."

Kunti: "I offered him truth. He refused it."

Yudhishthira: "Because you waited too long! Because by then, his loyalty was fixed, his identity was formed. If you had told him as a child—"

Kunti: "If I had told him as a child, Dhritarashtra would have used it. The political chaos would have consumed everything. I wasn't protecting a secret—I was protecting a kingdom."

Yudhishthira: "You were protecting yourself."

Kunti flinched.

Kunti: "Yes. That too. I was protecting myself from shame. A princess who bore a child before marriage, then abandoned it? I would have been destroyed. And with me, your father's chances. All of you would never have existed."

Yudhishthira: "So we exist at Karna's expense."

Kunti: "You exist at everyone's expense. That's what existence means. Someone always pays for someone else's life. Don't pretend you wouldn't have made the same choice. Don't pretend, now that you're a king, that you don't understand impossible decisions."

Yudhishthira stopped pacing. She was right. He hated that she was right.

Yudhishthira: "I want to forgive you, But I keep seeing Karna on the battlefield. I keep thinking: that was my brother. And I killed him—not with my hands, but with my ignorance, which you created."

Kunti: "Then don't forgive. Carry it. That's what I do. That's what the unforgiven do—they carry, and carry, and eventually the weight becomes part of them."

Yudhishthira: "Is that supposed to comfort me?"

Kunti: "Nothing I say will comfort you. I'm not seeking comfort. I'm seeking understanding—or at least acknowledgment. I made terrible choices. I made them for reasons that seemed sufficient at the time. I was wrong about some things, right about others. That's all anyone can say about the impossible decisions of their life."

Yudhishthira sat again. The anger was still there, but quieter now.

Yudhishthira: "Did you love him? Karna?"

Kunti: "I never had the chance. Love requires presence. I gave him away and filled the space with obligation. But if love is wanting someone to be happy even when you can't be part of their happiness—yes. I loved him. In the only way I was capable of."

Yudhishthira: "He deserved better."

Kunti: "Everyone deserves better than they get. That's the definition of life."

They sat in silence as the sun set. Two people bound by blood and broken by truth, learning what remains when all the secrets are finally told.