Ten thousand pairs of eyes were turned toward the centre of the battlefield,
and not one of them saw who was really there.
It was the great hour before the war. Across the plain of Kurukshetra, two
enormous armies faced each other — rows of elephants painted with red ochre,
horses stamping in the cold morning, archers checking their bowstrings one
last time. Banners snapped in the wind. Somewhere a conch was being lifted
to a soldier's lips.
In the middle of it all stood a single chariot, drawn by four white horses.
On its bench sat a man holding the reins. He wore no crown. He carried no
weapon. His clothes were plain, his manner easy, and a peacock feather
nodded in his dark hair. To the thousands of warriors watching, he was just
Arjuna's driver — a charioteer, a helper, a man who held horses.
A young soldier near the front squinted at him. "Who is that, holding the
reins for the Pandava prince?" he asked the veteran beside him.
"Only the charioteer," the old soldier shrugged. "Some cousin of theirs, I
think. Hardly matters. Keep your eyes on the bowmen."
And so the whole army turned its attention to spears and shields and the
warriors they feared — and looked straight past the one being who held the
entire universe inside him. For that quiet charioteer was Krishna himself,
the unborn and undying, the source of all the worlds. He had folded his
blazing greatness away the way a person folds a vast silk cloth into a small
bundle, and he stood among them looking perfectly ordinary.
Only one man on that field saw the truth. Arjuna, sitting beside him, had
once glimpsed the cosmic form — suns and moons spilling from that body,
every creature that ever lived held in those hands. Now he looked at the
plain man holding the reins and felt his heart go quiet with wonder. The
most enormous being in all of creation was sitting an arm's length away,
and the entire army had decided he was nobody at all.
Krishna caught Arjuna's gaze and smiled, as if sharing a secret.
"I am wrapped in My own power," he would say. "I do not shine out for
everyone. The world looks at Me and sees a driver of horses. Only the heart
that truly looks ever finds Me hidden in plain sight."
