King Kamsa had everything a man could want.

He sat on the throne of Mathura with a crown of gold and a hundred soldiers at his door. He was clever — quick to plan, quick to scheme. He was strong enough to crush an enemy with his bare hands. And he had been warned, in a voice from the sky itself, that something divine had come into the world.

Any of those gifts could have led him to the truth. His cleverness could have asked, "Who is this child, and why has heaven sent him?" His strength could have bowed. His power could have protected the little one instead of hunting him.

But Kamsa had fed one thing his whole life, and starved everything else: his fear. He feared losing the throne. He feared the prophecy. He feared a baby. And fear, when it is fed long enough, turns into cruelty — and cruelty pulls a thick grey curtain across the mind.

So when nurses brought reports of a wonderful child in Gokul, Kamsa did not feel wonder. He felt only the cold itch of danger. He sent a poisoned demon to kill the infant — and the infant only smiled and drank the poison away. He sent a whirlwind demon, a cart-crushing demon, a cruel serpent. Each one came back broken, or did not come back at all.

A wiser man would have stopped and thought, "No ordinary child does this. I am fighting something far greater than I am. Perhaps I am on the wrong side."

But Kamsa could not think that thought. His knowledge had been carried clean away by his own dark nature. He looked at every sign of the divine and saw only an enemy to destroy. The very God who had been born to set the world right grew up just across the river — laughing, dancing, playing his flute — and Kamsa, with all his cleverness, never once recognised him.

Years later, when the two finally met, Kamsa still did not see the truth. He saw only a young man he meant to kill. He had been given every gift to know God, and had spent them all running the other way.