The king was beside himself with joy. “Channa, this is a day I will never forget!” he told me as we went on our evening ride. “Here, take this gold and buy your wife a wonderful gift!” The entire city rejoiced, and for weeks no one talked of anything but Queen Maya’s dream and what it meant.

The queen decided to have her baby in Devadaha, where her family lived. As she travelled there in a golden palanquin, accompanied by her retinue, she passed Lumbini where the most beautiful sal grove stood. The branches were heavy with fruit, and flowers of every colour imaginable filled the grove with perfume. Birds warbled as she passed. Suddenly the queen was filled with the desire to sit for a while in the grove. Her attendants carried her in, and placed her under the stateliest tree of them all. The green canopy above her was spangled with light. She reached out to hold one of its beautiful branches, and just then her baby was born.

The very next day, an ascetic arrived at King Suddhodhana’s court and said, “Let me see your newborn son, O King.” The boy was brought before him. The ascetic took a good look at him and burst into tears. Everyone was alarmed. Did some dreadful misfortune await the king’s heir?

“Oh no,” the ascetic said. “I do not weep for the child, but for myself. My joy at seeing him is boundless. But my greatest sorrow is that I will not live to see this child save the world from ignorance and suffering.”

Now, the king, who was euphoric at his son’s birth, could not help but get a little worried by all the prophecies that were being made. Surely his son would not renounce the world? Or would he? To put an end to all his doubts, he called one hundred and eight Brahmins and asked them to tell him once and for all what the child would grow up to be. Eight of the Brahmins were skilled at recognising signs.

“If he remains a householder, he will become a Universal Monarch, O King,” they said. “But if he forsakes the world, then he will become an Enlightened One, a Buddha.”

The king was deeply troubled. “What will make him forsake the world?” he asked.

“The four omens,” they replied.

“Which four omens?” the king asked.

“An old man, a sick man, a dead man and a monk.”

“Then I will never let him see any of those things!” the king declared.

It was only natural. “After all these years, a son is born to me, Channa!” he said to me as we drove to his pleasure gardens that evening. “What a waste if he gives up everything and becomes a holy man! No, I want to see him ruling the four seas, the four continents and all the islands in between. I want to see him commanding millions, walking on earth as if in heaven, surrounded by countless courtiers and wise men!”

I nodded in agreement, for which king would not want his son to outdo him in his glory!

And so King Suddhodhana had high walls built around the palace and placed guards two miles apart in all four directions to prevent his son from seeing any of the four signs that would tear him away from worldly ambition.

Our prince was named Siddhartha. It was a good name, it meant ‘one whose goal is fulfilled’. Sometimes I wondered — whose goal would Siddhartha fulfil in the end — the one destined for him by the gods, or the one chosen by his father? No one could tell.

To be continued

Extracted from The Greatest Stories Ever Told;
By Sampurna Chattarji;
Publisher: Puffin