Far from the battlefield, in a quiet palace chamber, the blind King Dhritarashtra sat very still. Beside him sat Sanjaya, his charioteer and counsellor, who had been given a gift: divine sight, so that he could watch everything happening on the distant field of Kurukshetra and tell the king word for word.

"Sanjaya," the old king said, his voice low. "You have gone quiet. What is happening now?"

Sanjaya's hands were trembling. For a long moment he could not speak. He had been describing two armies, two friends in a chariot, a long and patient conversation. But what stood before his inner eye now was nothing he had words for.

"O King," he finally said, "Krishna has finished speaking. And then — then he did a thing I never thought to witness. The one we have called a cowherd, a charioteer, a friend of the Pandavas... he is the great Lord of yoga himself. And to Arjuna, to Partha alone, he has begun to show his supreme form."

Dhritarashtra leaned forward. "His form? He has a form already. I do not understand."

"Nor did I, my king," Sanjaya whispered. "But there are forms beneath forms. The shape we see with our eyes is like the cover of a book. Krishna has opened the book. He has set aside the gentle blue figure holding the reins and let his true, boundless, blazing Self come forward — the form that holds all things. He gave Arjuna a divine eye first, for no ordinary eye could bear it. And now Arjuna is seeing it."

The king was silent. Then he asked the question that had gnawed at him for so long. "And my sons? Does this great Lord favour my sons, or theirs?"

Sanjaya did not answer at once. He only said, "My king, when you have seen what I am about to see, you will stop asking whose side God is on. You will only fall silent, as I have fallen silent. Let me watch. Let me tell you everything. The vision is beginning."