Chapter 2: The Four Sights

The gates opened at dawn.

Siddhartha stood in the chariot. The driver held the reins. Four guards rode horses beside them. His father stood on the palace steps, watching.

They left without words.

The road beyond the gates was dirt. Not stone. Not marble. Just dirt, packed down by wheels and feet. Siddhartha had never stood on dirt before.

The city was half an hour away. The chariot rolled through fields. Rice paddies stretched on both sides. Men and women bent over the water, planting. Their backs were curved. Their clothes were brown with mud.

Siddhartha watched them.

One woman straightened and pressed her hand to her back. She was maybe thirty. Her face was tired. She saw the chariot and bowed quickly, then returned to planting.

"Stop the chariot," Siddhartha said.

The driver pulled the reins. The horses stopped.

"Why does she do that?" Siddhartha asked, pointing at the woman.

The driver looked confused. "Plant rice, my lord?"

"Press her back like that."

"It hurts. The bending."

Siddhartha stared. "Does it stop hurting?"

"Eventually. When the day ends."

"And the next day?"

The driver hesitated. "It starts again."

Siddhartha did not ask more questions. The chariot moved forward.

The city gates were tall. Not as tall as the palace walls, but tall enough. People moved through them in both directions. Merchants with carts. Women with baskets. Children running between legs.

The chariot entered.

The streets were narrow. Houses crowded close. Smoke rose from cooking fires. The air smelled like sweat and spices and animals. A cow stood in the middle of the road. The driver steered around it.

People stared at the chariot. Some bowed. Most just watched.

Then Siddhartha saw the first one.

An old man sat against a wall. His hair was white. His skin hung loose on his bones. His hands shook when he lifted them to accept a coin from a passing woman.

Siddhartha had never seen white hair before.

"Stop," he said.

The chariot stopped.

"That man," Siddhartha said. "What's wrong with him?"

The guards looked at each other. One of them cleared his throat.

"He's old, my lord."

"Old?"

"Yes."

"What does that mean?"

The guard shifted in his saddle. "It means… he has lived many years. His body is… wearing out."

Siddhartha stared at the old man. The old man did not look back. He was looking at his hands. They would not stop shaking.

"Does everyone become like that?" Siddhartha asked.

The guard hesitated. Then nodded. "Yes."

"Even me?"

"Yes, my lord."

Siddhartha felt the stone in his chest grow heavier.

The chariot moved on.

Three streets later, he saw the second one.

A woman lay on a mat outside a house. Her face was gray. Sweat covered her skin. Someone had placed a cloth on her forehead. A child sat beside her, crying.

"Stop," Siddhartha said again.

The driver stopped.

"What's wrong with her?" Siddhartha asked.

"She's sick," a guard said quietly.

"Sick?"

"Yes. An illness. In the stomach, maybe. Or the lungs."

Siddhartha watched the woman. She did not move. Only her chest rose and fell, slowly.

"Will she get better?"

The guard looked away. "Maybe. Or maybe not."

"And if not?"

The guard said nothing.

Siddhartha understood without being told.

The chariot moved on. The stone in his chest was growing. It pressed against his ribs.

The market square was crowded. Merchants shouted. Cloth flapped in the breeze. A man sold mangoes from a cart. The mangoes were small and bruised, not like the ones in the palace.

Then the crowd parted.

Four men carried a platform. On the platform lay a body, covered in white cloth. The face was visible. The eyes were closed. The skin was pale.

Behind the platform, a woman walked. She was crying. Not quietly. Loudly, like the sound was being pulled out of her.

The crowd moved aside. The procession passed.

Siddhartha watched it go.

"Stop," he said, but his voice was quiet. The driver stopped anyway.

"That person," Siddhartha said. "On the platform."

"Dead, my lord."

"Dead?"

"Yes."

"What does that mean?"

The guard who had spoken earlier took a breath. "It means the body has stopped. The breath is gone. The person is… no longer here."

"Where did they go?"

"We don't know, my lord."

Siddhartha stared at the procession. It turned a corner and disappeared.

"Does everyone die?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Even me?"

"Yes, my lord."

The stone in his chest was not a stone anymore. It was something sharper.

The chariot moved on, but Siddhartha did not see the streets. He saw the old man's shaking hands. The sick woman's gray face. The body on the platform. The woman crying.

Then, near the edge of the city, he saw the fourth one.

A man sat beneath a tree. He wore simple robes. Orange, faded by sun. His head was shaved. His face was calm. He was not begging. He was not selling anything. He was just sitting.

Siddhartha told the driver to stop.

He stepped down from the chariot. The guards tensed, but he waved them back.

He walked to the man under the tree.

The man opened his eyes. They were clear. He looked at Siddhartha without bowing.

"Who are you?" Siddhartha asked.

"A monk."

"What do you do?"

"I search."

"For what?"

"The end of suffering."

Siddhartha stared at him. The man's face was not young. There were lines around his eyes. But the lines were not like the old man's lines. These were different. Peaceful.

"Have you found it?" Siddhartha asked.

"Not yet."

"But you think it exists?"

"I know it exists."

Siddhartha wanted to ask how he knew. He wanted to ask where the end was. He wanted to ask if he could come.

But his guards were watching. The driver was waiting. The sun was past noon.

"Thank you," Siddhartha said instead.

The monk nodded. He closed his eyes. He went back to sitting.

Siddhartha walked to the chariot. He climbed in.

"Take me home," he said.

The driver turned the horses.

The ride back was silent. Siddhartha did not look at the fields. He did not look at the palace walls. He looked at his hands.

They were smooth. Young. Steady.

For now.

The gates opened. The chariot entered. The gates closed behind them.

His father was waiting in the courtyard.

"Did you see the city?" his father asked.

"Yes."

"And?"

Siddhartha looked at him. His father's hair was black. No gray. His father's face was smooth. No lines.

But his father was older than the old man against the wall.

Which meant the gray was coming.

"It was interesting," Siddhartha said.

His father studied him. Then nodded. "Good. Now you have seen it. You do not need to go again."

Siddhartha did not argue.

That night, he lay in bed. Yasodhara was asleep. Rahula was asleep. The palace was quiet.

He stared at the painted stars.

Old age. Sickness. Death.

Three bugs in the system his father had built. Three cracks in the perfect walls.

His father had tried to hide them.

But hiding a thing does not make it stop existing.

Siddhartha thought about the monk. The calm face. The clear eyes.

The search.

The stone in his chest was not a stone anymore.

It was a question.

And the palace, with all its silk and saffron and softness, had no answer.

Siddhartha closed his eyes.

Tomorrow, he thought, I will ask more questions.

But even as he thought it, he knew.

Questions would not be enough.