Krishna and Sudama

The rice was almost gone.

Sudama's wife had been stretching it for three days. Each evening she thinned the gruel with more water, so none of the children would notice it was less.

They noticed, of course. Children always notice. They simply learn early not to say so.

Sudama sat outside their falling-down hut that night, staring at nothing.

He was a Brahmin scholar who had never once, in all his years of learning, found a way to turn his knowledge of the scriptures into a meal.

What his wife knew

Sudama's wife had heard the story he seldom told.

As a boy, at their teacher Sandipani's forest school, his closest friend had been a cowherd boy who could hold a room silent just by walking into it.