कथं भीष्ममहं संख्ये द्रोणं च मधुसूदन।इषुभिः प्रतियोत्स्यामि पूजार्हावरिसूदन॥
kathaṃ bhīṣmam ahaṃ sankhye droṇaṃ ca madhusūdanaiṣubhiḥ pratiyotsyāmi pūjārhāvari-sūdana
Word by word
The verse says
Arjuna said: Krishna, how am I to fire arrows at Bhishma and Drona in battle? They are men I owe reverence to.
In plain words
Arjuna answers with the one objection that has real weight.
Not I am afraid. Not we will lose. He names two people: the grandfather who raised him and the teacher who taught him to hold a bow. He asks how the arrows are supposed to work.
The verb is precise and physical. Not fight — fire arrows at. He is imagining the act.
Where you've felt this · at work
You can rehearse a hard conversation in general terms all week. Then you picture the actual face on the other side of the table, hearing the actual sentence, and the whole thing becomes a different task.
Going deeper
This is the strongest thing Arjuna says in the entire dialogue, and it is not a philosophical objection at all.
He uses pūjārhau — worthy of worship. In his world you do not merely respect a teacher; there is a formal obligation of reverence, with rituals attached. Drona taught him archery. Bhishma held the family together. Firing on them is not just painful, it inverts an order he was built inside.
And Krishna never answers this. Not here, not later. He does not argue that Bhishma and Drona have forfeited reverence by choosing the wrong side, though that argument was available.
What he does instead is change what a person is. If what is truly Bhishma cannot be killed — the claim from verse 20 onward — then the question of firing arrows at him is not answered so much as relocated.
Whether that satisfies you is a fair thing to keep asking while you read. The Gita does not pretend the objection was small.