Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.49.27
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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sūnṛtā
—
pleasing and true words
Vedic compound — words that are both sweet and truthful (a Ṛgveda virtue). Akrūra's speech is sūnṛtā in the technical sense, hence the more painful that Dhṛtarāṣṭra cannot retain it.
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hṛdi na sthīyate
—
do not remain steady in my heart
Locative + passive — 'in the heart there is no standing.' The Bhāgavata's most poignant Sanskrit for the bhakta-failure mode: hearing without keeping. Pre-figures the diagnostic conversations Vidura will have with him.
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putra-anurāga-viṣame
—
prejudiced by affection for sons
Triple compound: putra + anurāga (deep attachment) + viṣama (uneven). The exact opposite of sama (18, 19, 25). His own diagnosis exactly matches Akrūra's.
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vidyut saudāmanī
—
lightning in a cloud
Vidyut (lightning) + saudāmanī (born of clouds). A doubled image — the same flash, named twice. The verse insists the brilliance is real and the impermanence is also real; both must be held together.
"These pleasing words (su nrta) do not remain fixed in my fickle heart. They are unsteady like fickle lightning in a fickle cloud." Sudama means cloud and saudamani means that which is born from the cloud, lightning.
Your true words do not remain fixed in my mind since my mind is fickle (cale) because of unequal affection for my sons. Sudāma means a cloud. My heard is fickle like lighting in a cloud. O Akrūra with peaceful nature (saumya)! You should not be angry with me since you have good nature. However, this is said with deceptive intent.
Auspicious words land on his heart the way lightning lands on a passing cloud — bright for a moment, gone the next, the cloud already moving with its own wind. Dhṛtarāṣṭra confesses the simile against himself. He sees and still cannot hold.
Mahābhārata Strī-parva and Āśrama-vāsika-parva narrate the king's final years: after Kurukṣetra he renounces the throne, retires to the forest, and dies in a wildfire while doing austerities. The repentance comes — but only after the fire he failed to prevent has consumed his hundred sons.
Gauḍīyas read this verse as the seed-moment of that late awakening: he already knows the diagnosis here in chapter 49, decades before he acts on it. The Bhāgavata is precise — sin is rarely ignorance; more often it is unsteadiness.
My note
Source: vedabase.io