Inspired by @sharangapani's post on the IMQ server:
1.
The babe has tiny feet, and when Kunti tickles them, they gleam gold.
“What a lovely child,” the maid says, despite her disapproval, just as Kunti hides his legs in his swaddle.
Like this, here is nothing special about the child. No great god will ever be traced back from him, no angry demon will seek from him his father’s retribution. Her maid will help her send him away – she is only guarding herself from a girlish folly, not doing something that might anger the gods. So little luck, Kunti thinks, but still, there are some things to be grateful about.
She thinks differently when the child kicks the basket and the divine boot sends the woven lid flying; when he moves the way babes do, joyful and squirmy, and the sun reflects the shine of his gifts, blinding with wealth, attractive to all manner of unsavoury men.
“Lord,” she prays, bent over. “Lord, look after him, for he is yours, and now he has no one. Send him to someone who loves.” And Surya, cruel and wise and mourning, does.
2.
Radha finds a babe laden in gold. His armour, so tight it is as if it is fused to skin, gleams; his kicking feet hit with the might of hard metal.
“Divine,” she declares, “and god-given.”
Adhiratha does not speak. His brow is furrowed, troubled, but he picks the child up anyway, cradles him against his chest.
Radha holds his hands, and counts ten little fingers, kisses each. They curl against her mouth, tiny nails pricking her like old needles. She moves to his little legs, holds each one as Adhiratha sways, makes faces at him. The babe giggles.
Radha tugs at a shoe. It does not budge. She tugs again.
“Huh.”
“You hold him,” her husband says, in the proud and slightly mocking way men do when their wives need help in some task of physical strength. “Let me try once.”
Adhiratha tries once. Adhiratha tries twice. Adhiratha tries thrice. He tries four times, five times and then six, notices his wife’s tilted smirk.
Adhiratha straightens, head held high. “Shoe’s not coming off,” he says with dignity, and stalks away. Radha runs after, half-laughing and half asking about doctors and soaps and other instruments of relief, child in her arms and joy in her heart.
3.
“Oooh, look at him, suited and booted, come to fight!” Prince Bheema glowers at him, hooting lost to a shout of rage. “Good boots does not a king make! Go back to your horses and your whip.”
Vasusena shakes a little, down to his toes. It makes his boots rattle a little against the earth, a dull clunk-thud, barely audible amidst the people’s cheers, but embarrassing nonetheless.
Duryodhana blusters some answers. Bheema blusters back. Arjuna picks his bow in challenge, but the fight is left unfinished.
Duryodhana takes him home.
In the splendour of the royal palace, Empress Gandhari runs her hands over his face, his shoulders, and his armour, in the manner of one who cannot see seeking the shape of what they wish to know.
“What is this?” she asks of him, at the carvings.
“An armour, divine in origin, and most beautiful,” Duryodhana boasts, as if it is his own. It is. Vasusena is his, has been since that moment when the angry prince Duryodhana came to defend him, will be till the bitter, bitter end.
“And shoes as well, I hear,” Dhritarashtra says.
“Bheema is too much!” Duryodhana shouts.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” he says, and when he rises, Gandhari is smiling.
The Emperor shakes his head. “No, not that. I hear him when he walks, even though he is rather quiet. Well, child, if you be my son’s friend, I hope I shall hear your steps in my halls many times more.”
Vasusena bows. The blind Emperor does not know it, but the Empress, with her hands on his shoulders, does.
+1.
Afterwards, when the satisfaction of having the king of gods shamed and holding his boots is gone, when his skin has healed to a smooth baby pink; afterwards, when he goes home, and his son runs to greet him at the door – to touch his feet – and stops; afterwards, there is no creature as wretchedly startled as Vasusena.
He stands in the grass for a long while, feeling it tickling his toes. It is a sensation violently gentle, one he cannot help but long for, half-nauseous with the feeling like a starving, hungering thing.
Vrishasena takes him by the arm and leads him inside. The floor is cool under his feet, the marble slightly damp from recent wiping. His bed is soft against the length of his body, and so is Padmavati when she hugs him, but differently, half familiar and half not. He holds her close as she laments and weeps, and her tears burn.
They sit together a long time, till day sinks into dusk and then night, and lamplit houses twinkle in the horizon. Vrishasena returns the hour before dinner, a lumpy thing in each hand.
“Father,” he says, placing them by his feet. At Vasusena’s uncomprehending look, he lifts them meaningfully in the air.
“Shoes,” he says.
Shoes.
For him.
For Vasusena.
For a moment, Vasusena cannot breathe with the well of love within him, can only shove his feet into them and stand, wobbly with the foreign feel of wood on skin, and the familiarity of something important, however briefly, gone missing. Then he reaches out to his son, brighter than any sun, dearer than the kingdoms of gods and men, and thinks he understands Indra a little more. He, too, would beg someone’s shoes for Vrishasena.
She is the wife of Adhiratha, a person hailing from the Suta community who is known to be quite close to Dhritarashtra (and a former charioteer of this family), the then in-practice-king of the Kurus. It is sad that we do not know her family situation. Given, Karna has been addressed as suta and suta-putra both on-and-off throughout the epic, we cannot say with certainty whether she was a brahmin or hers/Adhiratha's mother was.
She spots, at the triveni-sangama at Prayaga, and instructs her attendants to pick up, a 'suspicious' package. She and her husband open this wax-sealed box to find a baby lying inside, purring happily beside the golden kavacha [armour] and kundalas [earrings].
Since the couple had not yet had a biological child, she pleads with her husband, convincing him to keep and adopt this baby, instead of looking for his parents. Adhiratha agrees and noting the wealth of jewels that filled up most of the box, names the baby Vasushena [lit. laden in gold, note the spelling].
Vasushena grows up in Champa, a city close to the border of Anga and Magadh, before moving to Hastinapura (without his parents), for further education. It is around this time, that Vasushena is given a new name, on account his preference for his 'divine' earrings- Karna.
She has no active role in the rest of story, but her name reverberates in Karna's proud procalamations: 'Radheyohaham Aadhirathih...' [I am Radha's son, and Adhiratha's].
However, I do feel bad for her, since for Karna, her upbringing clearly wasn't enough. Not enough for Karna to fight against the discrimination against the entire Suta community, and not enough to restrain his tongue when he finds Draupadi in a relatively powerless situation.
Karna often laments the discrimination he faces because of his family's position within the society, which is justified of course in isolation, but given his actions throughout the epic, did Radha feel just a little bad every time Karna openly insinuated (and did not stop others from insinuating) that he deserves better, not because Sutas are a community just as human as the Kshatriyas or Brahmins, but rather, because he was found with so much gold and was so handsome that he just couldn't be biologically a part of this 'lowly' community.
If Arjun was the personification of Karna's humiliation and life long struggle, Adhiratha was Karna's personification of his honour, compassion, generosity and loyalty. Karna was fortunate to have a father to always be his role model and if not guide him on the right path, became his conscious. His adoptive father gave him the freedom to chose his own destiny, which parents to this day have trouble doing. Even the Pandavas didn't have that.
