For all his years beside Krishna, Arjuna had never once asked the question. Why would he? Krishna was his cousin, his charioteer, his dearest friend. They had eaten from the same plate, joked together, fallen asleep in the same tent. Arjuna had thought he knew exactly who Krishna was.

Now he knew nothing.

The being filling the sky in front of him was beyond all the names Arjuna had ever used. The familiar smiling face was gone, replaced by countless blazing faces and burning mouths. And so, like a child who has discovered that the world is far bigger than he imagined, Arjuna asked the most honest question of his life.

"Ākhyāhi me ko bhavān," he said, folding his hands. "Tell me — who are You?"

His voice was small. He did not ask the way a warrior demands an answer. He asked the way you ask when you have realised you are standing in front of something far greater than yourself, and you want, more than anything, to understand it.

"I bow to You," he went on, lowering his head. "O best of gods, be gracious to me. Please." He was not asking for victory or a weapon or a blessing. He was only asking for kindness — for the great fierce form not to forget the small frightened friend at its feet.

"I long to know You truly," Arjuna said, "for You are the first one, the beginning before all beginnings." And then he confessed the thing that scared him most of all. "But I do not understand Your purpose. I cannot tell what You are doing. I do not know why the worlds are pouring into Your mouths, or what it means, or where it ends."

It was the bravest thing Arjuna did that day — braver than any battle. He admitted that he did not understand. He stopped pretending he knew his friend, and asked, humbly, to be told. And in the silence after his question, the great form drew breath to answer.