Week 6 Story: The Tale of Karna and his Curses

One day a farmer's wife was down by the Ganga River and came across a basket floating down the river. She quickly rushed to see what was inside, and to her surprise, there was a healthy baby boy sleeping soundly. She took the baby back to show her husband, and they decided that they would adopt him. They named him Karna, and he grew to help his family around the farm. However, no one knew that this child would be cursed many times throughout his life. Here are just a few curses that were placed upon Karna.

When Karna was just seven years old, he was practicing archery with his brother Krupa. Krupa shot an arrow 100 feet away. Karna was so impressed but was also jealous. He wanted to beat his brother, so he decided to sit on a hill to see if he could get the wind to carry the arrow further. He was able to get it to go 125 feet beating his brother, but in the process, he accidentally hit and killed a brahmin's cow. The brahmin was angry and cursed Karna. The brahmin swore that one day, Karna would be killed by an inescapable arrow, just like how his cow had died.

Another time when Karna was walking home from school, he saw a young girl crying because she had accidentally dropped a pot of milk that she was carrying home for her family. She was devastated since this milk was supposed to last her family for a couple of weeks. Karna, being the kind-natured person he was, stopped to her help her. He squeezed the milk out of the earth and back into the pot for her, not knowing that this had caused Bhudevi, the earth goddess, pain. She then cursed Karna by saying, "When you are in danger, I will not help you; instead, I will help your opponent." Devastated that he had another curse bestowed upon him, Karna treaded home. 

Right before Karna's 15th birthday, he and some friends were playing cricket outside his home. As they parted ways for the evening, Karna was thinking about all the fun things that he and Krupa could do on this birthday when he accidentally bumped into a guru making him drop his prasad or an offering for the gods, he had made. Because of this, the guru cursed Karna to not be able to taste sweets anymore. Karna was so upset because he never meant to be a problem to anyone. "I just hope that this is the last curse that anyone gives me," says Karna; however, this was only the beginning of a life of many more curses.

An image of Karna the Great Warrior (Source) 

Author's Note: I wanted to keep the story relatively the same. In the original version, the story is very straight to the point. I wanted to add more of a backstory to Karna's childhood and more detail and reasoning as to why Karna had so many curses bestowed upon him. I decided to add another curse of my own that was not in the original story. I hope you liked my re-interpretation of "The Story of Karna and the Two Curses."

Bibliography: Tiny Tales from the Mahabharata, Laura Gibbs