Arjuna speaks1.23

योत्स्यमानानवेक्षेऽहं य एतेऽत्र समागताः।धार्तराष्ट्रस्य दुर्बुद्धेर्युद्धे प्रियचिकीर्षवः॥

yotsyamānān avekṣe ’haṃ ya ete ’tra samāgatāḥdhārtarāṣṭrasya durbuddher yuddhe priya-cikīrṣavaḥ

Word by word
yotsyamānān: those who have come to fightavekṣe aham: I desire to seeye: whoete: thoseatra: heresamāgatāḥ: assembleddhārtarāṣṭrasya: of Dhritarashtra’s sondurbuddheḥ: evil-mindedyuddhe: in the fightpriya-cikīrṣavaḥ: wishing to please

The verse says

Let me see those who have gathered here to fight, eager to do what pleases the wicked-minded son of Dhritarashtra.

In plain words

One flash of anger. He calls Duryodhana wicked-minded.

It is the only harsh thing Arjuna says in the whole chapter, and it comes just before he looks. After this there is no more contempt in him - only grief.

This is his last moment of having an enemy.

Where you've felt this · in family life

You rehearse the argument the whole bus ride to your sister's flat. Every line is ready. She opens the door and she looks older than you remembered, and thinner. The speech you prepared has nowhere to go.

Going deeper

Anger is doing a job here, and it is worth naming the job.

As long as Duryodhana is wicked-minded, the war is simple. There is a bad man, there are people helping him, and stopping them is honest work. Arjuna can lift his bow with a clean conscience because the field has been sorted into the ones who deserve it and the ones who do not.

Two verses later that sorting collapses, and it collapses because he looks. What he sees is not a category. It is his teacher, his grandfather, his cousins.

The Gita makes a quiet point with this sequence, and does not labour it. Anger is often what keeps a difficult thing doable. It holds people at the distance where they can be acted against. When the anger goes, the distance goes, and everything gets much harder and also much truer. Arjuna will not use a word like this again.