The Storyteller's Lens

I grew up knowing exactly why Shakuni did what he did. Then I read the Mahabharata more closely and realised I didn’t.

The Shakuni my grandmother gave me had a reason. A terrible one, but a reason. He carried an old hatred into Hastinapura and spent years waiting for the Kuru family to destroy itself.

Vyasa’s Shakuni is harder to pin down.

We know what he does. Understanding why he does it is another matter entirely.

The Uncle Beside Duryodhana

Shakuni enters Hastinapura as Gandhari’s brother, the son of Subala, king of Gandhara. He accompanies his sister when she marries Dhritarashtra.

There is no elaborate revenge story attached to his arrival. No starving family. No dying father entrusting him with vengeance. No dice made from his father’s bones.

Those belong to another Shakuni. I will come to him later.

The Shakuni in the epic becomes one of Duryodhana’s closest allies. And perhaps the easiest way to understand him is not to begin with what he feels about the Pandavas, but with what he feels about his nephew.

After Duryodhana returns from Indraprastha, consumed by envy at the wealth and power of the Pandavas, Shakuni does not create that envy.

Duryodhana already has it. Shakuni gives it a direction. Defeating the Pandavas in battle would not be easy. But Yudhishthira loves dice, has a weakness for it and is not particularly good at the game. Shakuni is. And he is confident that he can win for Duryodhana what Duryodhana cannot take by force.

Perhaps Shakuni’s role was not always to put dark thoughts into Duryodhana’s head. Perhaps it was to tell him that those thoughts were possible. 

You want what they have? There is a way.

It is a different kind of influence. And perhaps a more dangerous one.

What Did Shakuni Want?

What exactly was his motive? Did he hate the Pandavas? Did he simply love Duryodhana? Did he want Gandhari’s sons and therefore his own bloodline to hold power in Hastinapura? Or did he enjoy the conflict itself?

Years later, Gandhari would remember warning Duryodhana about her own brother. She described Shakuni as wicked and exceedingly fond of quarrel and told her son to make peace with the Pandavas.

Those words…that description comes straight from Gandhari, Shakuni’s own sister. And they made me think that maybe Shakuni did not need an enormous hidden hatred of the Pandavas.

Maybe the explanation was simpler.

He adored his nephew. He wanted to see him prevail. He continually enabled the parts of Duryodhana that others tried to restrain. 

He wanted his own bloodline to rule Hastinapura.

And perhaps he simply liked a good quarrel far more than was healthy for anyone around him.

Put those three things together and a version of Shakuni begins to emerge. Not the puppet master controlling Duryodhana from somewhere above the board. The uncle standing beside him.

Except Once

There is one moment that refuses that theory. 

During the Pandavas’ exile, Duryodhana goes to the forest partly to flaunt his prosperity before them. The plan backfires spectacularly. Duryodhana is captured by Gandharvas. And the Pandavas rescue him.

For a man whose envy of his cousins has already consumed so much of him, the humiliation is unbearable. Duryodhana decides he would rather die.

Karna tries to restore his pride.

Then Shakuni says something I did not expect from Shakuni.

He tells Duryodhana to remember the good the Pandavas have done for him. To return their kingdom. To establish brotherly relations with them.

For once, Shakuni appears to be asking for reconciliation. Why?

Perhaps the disaster genuinely rattled him. 

Or…perhaps he knew his nephew very well. Because Karna had just tried to soothe Duryodhana’s humiliation. Shakuni’s solution required Duryodhana to confront it.

They saved you. You owe them. Give them back what you took.

If Shakuni knew how Duryodhana’s pride worked, was that really a path towards reconciliation? Or was he scratching the wound Karna had just tried to heal?

I don’t know.

But later, when reconciliation was genuinely on the table, Shakuni’s position was much less ambiguous.

When Peace Came to Hastinapura

By the time Krishna comes to Hastinapura seeking peace, Shakuni is firmly among the men associated with Duryodhana’s refusal to compromise.

Dhritarashtra sees his influence. Yudhishthira sees it. Krishna sees it. Gandhari sees it. 

Yet even here, I don’t see Shakuni as a man controlling Duryodhana like a puppet. Duryodhana does not need anyone to manufacture his hatred or ambition for him. He makes his own choices. Shakuni simply continues to stand beside him while he makes them.

And when Duryodhana storms away from those urging him towards peace, he joins the small circle that has consistently reinforced him. Karna, Dushasana and Shakuni. Or what Chinnamaya (of Mayabazar) had called them – Dushta chatushtayam.  

Together, they even participate in the disastrous plan to seize Krishna.

Whatever Shakuni meant when he once told Duryodhana to reconcile with the Pandavas, when a real opportunity for peace arrives, he is not standing with those trying to save it.

Perhaps that is the Shakuni I find most plausible in Vyasa. 

A man who loves his nephew. A man invested in his victory. A man who feeds his pride rather than restraining it. A man, if Gandhari’s assessment is right, who enjoys quarrel. And perhaps a man who does not realise or does not care how far the next quarrel will eventually travel.

But Then There Are the Dice

None of this explains the one thing about Shakuni that continues to bother me. His certainty.

Dice is, essentially, a game of chance. Skill can tilt the odds. Deceit can tilt them further. But certainty?

Shakuni does not approach Duryodhana merely confident that he is the superior player. He assures him that he can win.

How?

Maybe his dice did possess some kind of magic.

Or maybe, as my grandmother narrated to me when I was a child, the dice themselves carried a history of hatred and revenge all their own.

Because her Shakuni had a very different story.

The Shakuni My Grandmother Gave Me

According to the story I grew up hearing, Gandhari’s horoscope foretold that her first husband would die. To circumvent the prophecy, she was first married to a goat, which was then killed, making her technically a widow before her marriage to Dhritarashtra.

When the truth was eventually discovered, Subala and his sons were imprisoned. They were given so little food that they could not all survive. And so the family made a choice. One of them would live. The others gave their portions to Shakuni.

He watched his brothers die. Finally, he watched his father die. And the survivor was given a purpose.

Remember. Avenge them. Destroy the dynasty that had destroyed his family.

In the version my grandmother told me, Shakuni’s dice were made from Subala’s bones. And they obeyed him. 

Suddenly, everything has an answer.

Why would Shakuni spend years feeding conflict inside the Kuru family? Revenge.

Why would he help create a road that would eventually kill Gandhari’s sons too? Because the destruction of the dynasty was the destination.

And how could he promise Duryodhana victory in a game governed by chance? Because those dice did not depend upon chance. They carried his father with them.

The Story That Gives Us a Key

I don’t know when that story entered the many traditions surrounding the Mahabharata. And I don’t know whether the people who first told it were trying to answer the same questions that bother me now.

But I understand why it stayed.

Perhaps that is why the Shakuni of folklore became so compelling. Where Vyasa leaves motive in shadow, later stories give him one. Where the dice game leaves us wondering how a game of chance could be approached with such certainty, folklore gives him dice that do not depend on chance.

None of this tells us what Shakuni was thinking.

But it tells us something about our need to understand why he did what he did.

Because the Shakuni my grandmother gave me comes with a key. Every action leads back to something. Every hatred has an origin. Every move belongs to a larger game.

Vyasa’s Shakuni doesn’t give me that comfort. Perhaps he loved Duryodhana and wanted his nephew to win. Perhaps he wanted Gandhari’s bloodline to prevail. Perhaps he enjoyed conflict and continually fed one that grew beyond anyone’s ability to control it.

Or perhaps my grandmother was right and the answer was sitting in his hand all along. A pair of dice carrying an old man’s bones. And an even older hatred.