निमित्तानि च पश्यामि विपरीतानि केशव।न च श्रेयोऽनुपश्यामि हत्वा स्वजनमाहवे॥
nimittāni ca paśyāmi viparītāni keśavana ca śreyo ’nupaśyāmi hatvā sva-janam āhave
Word by word
The verse says
And I see omens against us, Krishna. I see no good in killing my own people in battle.
In plain words
Now he starts reasoning, and the reasoning is thin.
Omens. He is a professional soldier who has fought many battles, and he suddenly has a feeling about signs. Then the real sentence arrives behind it: no good can come of killing my own people.
The second half is what he means. The first half is decoration he has put in front of it.
Where you've felt this · in study
Someone who has already decided not to go starts mentioning the weather, and the traffic, and that they slept badly. Each reason is true. None of them is the reason.
Going deeper
Watch what happens to Arjuna's arguments over the next fifteen verses, because there is a pattern and it is the key to reading the chapter.
He begins here with omens. He will move to the pointlessness of a kingdom bought this way, then to the sin of killing kinsmen, then — by verse 40 — to an elaborate account of social collapse he has plainly heard from someone else. His case gets more detailed and less honest as it goes.
This is what a mind does when the true reason is unbearable. The true reason was already given, in the body, in verses 29 and 30. He cannot do it. Everything after is scaffolding built around that fact.
Krishna's first move in Chapter 2 is to go straight past all of it. He does not engage with the omens or the social theory. He addresses the state Arjuna is in. It reads as harsh, and it is the only useful response — arguing with the scaffolding would have left the building untouched.