Ch.1 V.2

sañjaya uvāca
dṛṣṭvā tu pāṇḍavānīkam
vyūḍham duryodhanas tadā
ācāryam upasańgamya
rājā vacanam abravīt

Ch.1 V.3

paśyaitām pāṇḍu-putrāṇām
ācārya mahatīm camūm
vyūḍhām drupada-putreṇa
tava śiṣyeṇa dhīmatā

Before I continue, this chapter in Bhagavad Gita is called as Arjuna Vishada Yoga – translated as the Distress of Arjuna.

Doesn’t it sound pretty relative term – distress. The greatest song has a psychological tendency to it, perhaps. Every one of us go through the same set of emotions and distress therefore is a default.

Now to the translation of the shloka 2:

“Sanjaya said: O King, after looking over the army arranged in military formation by the sons of Pandu, King Duryodhana went to his teacher and spoke the following words.”

The best part of any negotiation is to let the opponent lower the guard. We should also know when to do it and the strategy should be to have a winning mind game. Towards that goal, its imperative that we are confident of ourselves and be sure there are chinks in our armour.

The reason we are talking this is because, we see Duryodhana, the King seeing his cousins arraigned against him, went to his guru and spoke the following words thats the next sholka:

“O my teacher, behold the great army of the sons of Pandu, so expertly arranged by your intelligent disciple the son of Drupada.”

Look at the words, you dont give in easily, do you? Expertly arranged against him actually. And its by the intelligent disciple, and then great army of the sons of Pandu.

Unless you are not confident you dont give out so much to your opponents. Nevertheless in another stance its always good to respect your opponent or competition in the sense that it will help you understand them better in a way but not to the extent that it starts a fear in you.

The internal dynamics of a management will be at full display in the next set of shlokas as Duryodhana goes on a full fledged war on his own men.

Simple reason that you should not demoralize the unit, when you need them the most. The worst of all this leads to as you will see, Bhishma blowing his conch, thereby making the call for the war or the war cry in simple terms and that would change the course of the battle in history. The fact is Pandavas are supposed to start the war but Duryodhana manages to do the impossible.

See how the words can affect and effect undesired responses, esp coming from a not so learned manager.

Only goes to show that lineage is not a qualification.

Lets see in the coming days what he says which led to Bhishma doing the clarion war cry inviting Pandavas to the war!

Pic Courtesy: Wikipedia