165. Krishna Plays Dice With Shakuni

Shakuni tells his sister to bless Duryodhana with victory. As she has divinity in her, her blessings are sure to fructify. Gandhari, being righteous in thoughts, is only able to say "Dharma will be victorious". Duryodhana asks her in frustration, "is that invisible and unseen dharma more important to you than your own son who is standing right in front of you?" Gandhari says she believes the invisible dharma she adheres to will protect him day and night. Duryodhana leaves in despair. Shakuni is proud of his sister's moral rectitude, but she ought to think of her son's predicament as well, he requests before leaving her.

Krishna asks why the Pandavas didn't display much emotion as compared to Duryodhana over Karna's death. Yudhishtra replies that they were too stunned to react.What is upsetting to Yudhishtra is why Kunti didn't reveal it to them earlier. Krishna tells the Pandavas the story how she became an unwed mother and how she was forced to discard the baby in fear of social ostracism. But she fought for the welfare of her children by extracting two promises from Karna: that he wouldn't kill no Pandava other than Arjuna and wouldn't use the deadly Nagastra more than once. That was the reason why, despite the chance to kill each of the Pandavas, he chose to refrain from killing Yudhishtra, Bhima, Nakula and Sahadeva.

Krishna reveals the extreme condtions under which Karna fought. He was already beaten and crippled by six people. The first was the Brahmin who cursed him for his son's death; the second was his Guru Parasurama with forgetting the use of Brahmastra; the third was Indra who took away Karna's protective armour; fourth one was Kunti who forbids the second use of Nagastra; fifth was Krishna himself who made Karna forfeit all the punya and the sixth one was Shalya who demoralized him with demeaning words and deserted him at the critical hour. Yudhishtra is too shaken to fight further. But the war must be fought, declares Krishna.

Shakuni meets Bheeshma and gloats about his success in destroying the Kuru clan in retaliation of Bhishma's ill treatments of his family.

Krishna meets Shakuni and they play dice. They understand each others game perfectly well. Shakuni hands over the dice to Krishna and tells him to look at and hear the tales the dice have to say.

Krishna knows the story of how a famished Subala sacrifices his life so that Shakuni could unleash death and destruction on the Kauravas and remarks that the dice are "dangerous". Shakuni says Krishna is much more "dangerous" than the dice. Shankuni asks why he didn't play on behalf of Yudhishtra, just as he had done on behalf of Duryodhana. Krishna replies that destiny had decreed that Duryodhana should win and that's why he didn't come. They speculate what would be the outcome of the war the next day and Shakuni laughs uproariously when Duryodhana enters the scene. Duryodhana is angry and asks Krishna to leave the room

Krishna asks the Pandavas about the strategies for the war the next day. The Pandavas thinks only Duryodhana is a formidable foe and Bhima can easily deal with him. Krishna tells them that besides being endowed with the strength of thousands of elephants, Shalya has become invincible because of a special boon. When Shalya fights with any adversary, half of the adversary's strength comes to him. Krishna suggests that Yudhishtra should fight Shalya. As Yudhishtra is sattvik in nature, half of the sattvik nature that goes to Shalya will weaken his strength.