Scene I

ARJUNA: Mother, Mother, why are you crying? Has anything happened to you?

KUNTI: Nothing, my son.

ARJUNA: You know that we are all right. Your children are all well. We Pandava brothers and all our wives are safe and well. Why are you crying? Mother, please tell me. Are you not feeling well?

KUNTI: No, my son, I am feeling perfectly well.

ARJUNA: Then why are you crying?

KUNTI: My son, you won’t understand me.

ARJUNA: Perhaps I won’t understand you, but you can make me understand. Tell me. Why are you crying?

KUNTI: I am crying for Krishna.

ARJUNA: You are crying for Krishna? Let me go and bring him here. He is all affection for you. He is all love for you and for all of us. Let me go and bring him. You don’t have to cry for him. He will come. I will be able to bring him immediately.

KUNTI: No, I don’t want you to go and bring him here.

ARJUNA: Then why are you crying for him? Either let me go and bring him, or stop crying, Mother. One of the two you must do.

KUNTI: Arjuna, people cry for name and fame; people cry for success and happiness. I cry only for one thing, only for one person, and that is my Krishna. I cry to him for one special thing. That is to keep me in constant suffering. When I have outer satisfaction, outer prosperity, I do not need Krishna and I forget him. And when I forget him, my life becomes unbearable. This morning I was praying to him, and I did not feel his presence inside my heart. A day I don’t feel his presence inside my heart is a day of tremendous suffering. A day I don’t feel his presence, I feel miserable; I feel that my real life has ended. That is why I am crying, Arjuna.

ARJUNA: Mother, what kind of philosophy do you have? You don’t have to suffer in order to feel Krishna’s presence. His presence we can always feel. We don’t have to be in sorrow in order to feel him. He is all joy, all love. Why do you cry for sorrow, Mother?

KUNTI: Arjuna, your philosophy is different from mine. My philosophy wants constant suffering, constant sorrow. It is through constant suffering that I feel his presence. When I can feel Krishna in my heart, then I am happy. You are dear to me, just because I feel Krishna’s presence inside your heart. All my children make me happy just because I feel Krishna’s presence inside them. My real life is only to see and feel Krishna within me and around me. And in order to do that I need constant sorrow, constant suffering. (Pauses.) O Arjuna, my son, you stay with your philosophy. You remain with joy, continuous joy. You realise the Truth in your own way. I want to see, feel and become inseparably one with my Krishna, the eternal Life of the infinite Universe, in my own way.

(Kunti sings.)

Dureo tumi kachheo tumi tabu bhabi dure
tripti je tai paina kabhu gahan hiya pure
basana mor purna hauk e nahe mor chaowa
tomar paye sanpi jena amar sakal paowa

(You are afar, You are near.
Yet I think that You are always far, far away.
Therefore I get no satisfaction in the inmost recesses of my heart.
My wish is not to let my desire be fulfilled; that is not my wish.
My wish is to offer at Your Feet all desires conceived and achieved.)