There is a scene on the ninth night of the Mahabharata war that ought to be impossible, and the epic writes it down without apology. Five brothers, having lost nine consecutive days to one man, take off their armour, set down their weapons, walk across a dark battlefield into that man's tent, and ask him how he can be killed. He tells them. And the story says everyone slept peacefully afterwards, on both sides of the field.
Why it occurred to them at all
The idea did not come from a strategist. It came from the eldest brother, remembering something from the first morning of the war — before a single arrow had been fired, when he had walked unarmed into the enemy ranks to touch the old man's feet and ask his blessing. The grandfather had given it, and had said something else besides. He was bound to fight for the throne he served; that was not negotiable. But he was free to give counsel. Ask, he said, and I will advise you.
For nine days nobody asked. They fought instead — with the finest archers of the age, every morning, and lost every morning. It was only when the council had run entirely out of plans that the eldest remembered an old man's standing offer.
What the tent was actually like
Read the scene slowly, because it is built to be impossible and it happens anyway. The commander of the army that has spent nine days killing them looks up and sees them come in unarmed, and the epic says his face opened with joy. He welcomes them, each by name. He asks what he can do for them — and says that even if the thing is exceedingly difficult, he will do it with all his soul.
The eldest asks it plainly, in the way only the calm can: grandfather, how do we defeat you? Tell us the means of your own death.
The answer, given gladly
He does not evade it. As long as I am alive, he says, victory cannot be yours — that is simply true. Then, if you want victory, strike me down. He gives them permission in as many words, and says that he counts their asking a fortunate circumstance. Then he walks them through his own code — the classifications he fights by — and points, himself, at the one gap in it: the warrior he will not raise a bow against, and where to place that warrior so that the greatest archer among them can shoot from behind.
He also tells them, gently, that apart from two men in their camp there is nobody in the three worlds who could bring him down anyway. Then they bow, and the epic says they walked back to their tents rejoicing, and that the old man turned quietly to preparing for what came next.
The detail worth keeping
Nothing about this scene is a trick. He is not deceived into the answer, and he is not weakened into it. He is the same man who will take the field at dawn and fight properly. The one thing that changed between the ninth morning and the ninth night is that somebody walked in without a weapon and asked him a question.
They had known him their whole lives. He had raised them. It took nine days of losing to think of asking.
Written by Anurag Joshi — Author, Killing Bhishma. Notes kept while the book was being written.