A Son Who Left at Once
The tradition tells it this way: Śuka, son of Vyāsa, was born already awake. He did not pass through the ordinary sequence of childhood, learning and renunciation. He got up and left. Vyāsa followed his boy through the forest, calling after him, and the trees are said to have answered in the son's voice, because Śuka had no separate boundary left to answer from. He would not remain long enough anywhere to be anyone's son, student or guest. One detail survives about how his father held him at all. Vyāsa, the story says, did not try to argue him back into the world. He simply sang a few verses about within his hearing — and the boy who was indifferent to everything stopped, turned, and came back to learn the rest. That is the hook the whole Bhāgavata hangs on: even complete detachment is not immune to the beauty of that story.
✦ Visual cue — A young ascetic walking away through dense forest, an older sage calling after him, the forest itself luminous, morning mist.