620. Vengeance is rope with Bigotry, Hatred & Anger as its strands.......

http://www.speakingtree.in/public/spiritual-blogs/seekers/self-improvement/vengeance-is-rope-with-bigotry-hatred-anger-as-strands

The bigotry, hatred, anger when interweaved together forms a very hard rope called vengeance. A person will stoop to any level to get his vengeance vented. While some do it open so that one can understand and know that they are acting against them, a few take the back route and being friendly will back stab them. While both the kind has to be condemned the second one is most dreadful. Since the victim will never have dreamt that the one who is very close could commit such a crime against him. Vengeance is the rope that strangles the holder.

Duryodhana in Mahabharata made Karna the King of Anga just to counter Arjuna. But even after knowing that he was the eldest among Pandavas he remained loyal to Duryodhana. That was not the case of Duryodhana’s mama Shakuni. Duryodhana did never anticipate that Shakuni giving advice to him and instigating him to hate Pandavas was in fact a poisonous influence on him.

Duryodhana was so mesmerized by the play of Shakuni that the cautious words of the Grand Old man of Kuruvamasa Bhishma or his Kulaguru Drona or his other Guru Kripacharya or his wise minister Vidhura never could go into his mind. Now there are two characters here on the either side of Duryodhana one is Karna and the other Shakuni. Though Duryodhana or Karna never knew that they both were blood related the loyalty survived and their friendship is even today appreciated. But Shakuni who happened to be his maternal uncle was determine to see the end of the sons of Dhritharastra.

What made Shakuni to behave so? What made him bite the same hand that was feeding him? 

Subala the king of Gandhara the present day Kandahar had 100 sons and a daughter Gandhari. Off the 100 sons Shakuni was the youngest and the wittiest. King Subala came to know by astrologers that his daughter was cursed and her first husband was ought to die and her second husband would lead a long life. So the king got her married to a goat and then killed the goat. This was a secret known to the Gandhara family. Then she was married to Dhritharastra the blind King of the Kuru Dynasty.

After a few days of marriage the blind king came to know about the marriage to the goat and he imprisoned the entire Gandhara family. That was 100 +1 of them and Dhritharastra gave them one grain of rice per person. The sons of Subala decided to take revenge on Dhritharastra and the responsibility was shouldered to Shakuni. The 101 of them contribute each grain of rice to feed a morsel to Shakuni every day. Eventually all of them died of starvation except Shakuni. It is said that Shakuni made a set of dice from the bones of his father and hence they could fall on the side he wished for.

By that time Duryodhana was the crown prince and he released Shakuni from prison. But was not a person to forget the treatment meted out to him and his family and secretly plotted his vengeance. Thus all the time Shakuni was pitching Duryodhana against the Pandavas and plotting the downfall of the Kuru dynasty. Our Lord Krishna knew all this and kept mum as he was observing Shakuni fill the pot of woes to Duryodhana.