एतच्छ्रुत्वा वचनं केशवस्य कृताञ्जलिर्वेपमानः किरीटी।नमस्कृत्वा भूय एवाह कृष्णं सगद्गदं भीतभीतः प्रणम्य॥
etac chrutvā vacanaṃ keśavasyakṛtāñjalir vepamānaḥ kirīṭīnamaskṛtvā bhūya evāha kṛṣṇaṃsa-gadgadaṃ bhīta-bhītaḥ praṇamya
Word by word
The verse says
Sañjaya said: Hearing these words of Krishna, the crowned one, trembling, put his palms together and bowed. He spoke to Krishna again, in a choked voice, bowing low, terrified.
In plain words
Sa-gadgadam — with a voice breaking up. The word is used for somebody who cannot get the words out properly.
And bhīta-bhītaḥ — frightened, frightened. The word is repeated.
This is the great archer of the epic, and he cannot speak straight.
Where you've felt this · in relationships
Your cousin stands up to give a reading at a wedding, gets through the first line, and has to stop. He is not upset, exactly. Everybody in the room waits. It takes about eight seconds, and he finishes it.
Going deeper
A voice breaking is a small physical detail in the middle of an enormous event, and Sañjaya chooses to report it.
He could have described more of the vision. Instead he reports what happened to one man's throat. That is a narrator who understands that scale is conveyed by what it does to something small, not by more adjectives about the large thing.
It also keeps Arjuna recognisably human at the moment he is furthest from ordinary experience.
And it makes what follows possible. The next eleven verses are the most tender in the book — an apology, a request, an appeal to friendship. None of it would land coming from somebody composed. It lands because the man saying it has just been described as unable to get the words out.