OS - Being Shakuni (pg 142) Duryodhana's killing (pg 139) - Page 67

All of you have been seeing several episodes where Karna's sole role has been to read out messages to Duryodhan, Dhritarashtra & the Kuru court, and been puzzled. In reality, this, rather than warfare, was Karna's greatest but secret talent. A few weeks of investigative reporting by Adhirath 007 revealed these facts about his scholarly tendencies.

As a student, Karna excelled in reading. Even in Drona's tutelage, he excelled Arjun. Whereas Arjun would struggle just to identify scripts in which Sanskrit was written, Karna could read everything - Brahmi, Devanagiri, and all derivative scripts. Whereas Yudisthir was a very slow reader, Karna excelled in speed reading. Whereas Bhima could read words but had to struggle stringing them together to make sentences, Karna would rattle off whole paragraphs. Whereas Duryodhan would struggle w/ grammar, Karna always got not just the spellings, but even the context right. Whereas Dushashan was monotonous and could barely read, Karna could get even the tone right. Even Ashwatthama had problems w/ grammar, but not Karna.

As a result, when Drona would give his classes reading exercises, he'd have all the Kauravas & Pandavas read maybe a word, at most a sentence, b4 handing it over to Karna & relaxing. End result was that anytime Duryodhan wanted something read, he'd turn to Karna. If the Pandavas wanted something read, they had to approach him after his evening prayers to get their stuff read, since that was the only time Karna couldn't refuse 😆

Even after Karna became king of Anga, he'd be very impatient w/ every messenger, who'd take a kalpa to read out to him a simple message. He'd normally get off his throne, grab the scroll from the messenger, and read it out loud himself. His entire court became great fans of his reading, and soon enough, guards would just take the scrolls from the messengers and hand them over directly to Karna.

In fact, news of Karna's reading greatness became so reknowned that once, Ganesh decided to see for himself. He visited Karna in the guise of a Brahmin, and challenged him to read as fast as he wrote. Karna accepted the challenge. Ganesh started writing a manuscript, and Karna kept reading it out live, very competently keeping pace w/ Bappa. Ganesh even tried a few tricks, like switching from Sanskrit to Tamil, but Karna remained unfazed. While he didn't understand much of Tamil, since the challenge was just to read, he read it out fluently anyway. Seeing this, Ganesh revealed himself, was pleased, and blessed him that he'd excel in future writing methods, such as typing.

Following this, Karna was introduced by Ganesh to future typing terminals - typewriters, teletypewriters, vt100 terminals, x-terminals and so on. He excelled in typing and would average 300 words/minute. He even excelled in editing programs like ed, vi & emacs, and rarely had to use 'delete' or 'backspace'.

However, that was followed by a world of touchscreen and GUI based communications, and w/ this, the edge that Karna had over the Kurus suddenly narrowed. Soon enough, GUIs unusable to long time computer users, but ostensibly usable to computer illiterates, such as GNOME3, Unity, Metro all surfaced, and Karna's edge seemed all but gone.

By this time, Krishna taught the Pandavas how to increase the potency of their weapons by tying scrolls around them. However, this required that they'd have to write out the mantras associated w/ their weapons, tie it around them and then fire them, and here, both the Pandavas & the Kauravas were abysmal. However, Draupadi was reasonably good, as was Shikhandini, Subhadra, Uttara & Sudeshna. So it was agreed that they'd be busy wrapping scrolls around weapons @ night so that the Pandavas could use them during battle during the day.

The first such test of this came after Krishna joined Arjun. Draupadi wrote a message in her blood on a scroll, and Yudisthir fired it. This was a world record javelin throw - starting @ Upaplavya, in modern Mewar, and landing @ Karna's balcony in Hastinapur, in modern Meerut.

Despite the fact that it was written by the great Draupadi, despite the fact that it was written in her blood, despite the fact that it was a declaration of war, Karna came to the court, where an argument was going on about whether to appease the Pandavas or not, and read it out to the rest of the court, fluently.

Even the great Bheeshma & Vidura were impressed!

@Vrish Fantastic!

Karna is THE reader.. he surpasses Drona too, I believe?

Woohoo! He even races Arjuna and Yudi in this!👏👏

Ya, he does read Tamil! But I wish he could understand also!

Regarding weapons..

Look at it this way.

Karna can read so perfectly, that when he reads the mantra itself the weapon will appear and obey his orders.

So, when the weapons fly in the air, the scroll opens and Karna reads out the mantras... Boom!

Even though he is obessed with reading scrolls ,i am sure he would distinguish between the one send by those cunning pandavas from those having relevant message to,him...😛

Great imagination. All parts are funny, too good. 👏👏