For children: Pajapati is inconsolable when her sister Maya dies after giving birth to Siddhartha

There was a special kind of astrologer who predicted where the dead would be reborn. They were called death astrologers, and they tended to be strange and solitary men. Often, they were drunks. The royal death astrologer was no exception.

One afternoon, I stumbled upon him sitting cross-legged behind the granary, tossing rice into a fire. His hair was long and matted and his bloodshot eyes stared into the flames.

“Where has Maya been reborn?” I asked him.

“Tushita heaven,” he replied.

“She is waiting.”

“For what?”

His eyes fluttered, his chin dropped to his chest and he began to snore.

Early the following morning, I returned, hoping to find him sober, but he wasn’t there.

Sita said that he had returned to his village to take care of his ailing mother.

I thought of packing a bag and setting out to find him, but it was just one of the many crazy fantasies that came into my mind in those days. In and out, they drifted, circling round and round. I drifted, too, wandering around the palace, arriving in some room or alleyway with no memory of how I’d gotten there.

One morning, I found myself in front of the banyan tree where Maya and I had lain, dreaming of the future that had died with...

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