My soul responds to
your call; and the struggle for victory and fame and the rage of hatred
have suddenly become untrue to me, as the delirious dream of a night in the
serenity of the dawn. Tell me whither you mean to lead?
KUNTI
To the other bank of the river, where those lamps burn across the ghastly
pallor of the sands.
KARNA
Am I there to find my lost mother for ever?
KUNTI
O my son!
KARNA
Then why did you banish me--a castaway uprooted from my ancestral soil,
adrift in a homeless current of indignity? Why set a bottomless chasm
between Arjuna and myself, turning the natural attachment of kinship to the
dread attraction of hate? You remain speechless. Your shame permeates the
vast darkness and sends invisible shivers through my limbs. Leave my
question unanswered! Never explain to me what made you rob your son of his
mother's love! Only tell me why you have come to-day to call me back to the
ruins of a heaven wrecked by your own hands?
KUNTI
I am dogged by a curse more deadly than your reproaches: for, though
surrounded by five sons, my heart shrivels like that of a woman deprived of
her children.
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