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Skandha 10, adhyayas 80-81 · Saptah day 7
A starving schoolfriend visits the king of Dvaraka with a cloth of flattened rice, too ashamed to ask for anything.
Late in the tenth book Shuka tells of a man who had nothing. The text never gives him a name. He is a brahmana, Krishna's friend, learned in the Veda, calm and free of craving. Later tradition calls him Sudama in the north and Kuchela in the south, but in the Bhagavatam he is simply the friend. He lived as a householder on whatever came to him unasked, which was very little. He and his wife wore rags and were thin with hunger.
It was his wife who raised the subject. She came to him trembling, her face dry with hunger, and spoke carefully. Your friend, she said, is Krishna himself, the husband of Lakshmi and the protector of brahmanas, and he lives in Dvaraka. Go to him. When he sees a brahmana householder in such hardship, he will give you wealth. He gives even himself to those who remember his feet; what is money to him?
She asked more than once. He agreed at last, and the text gives his reason plainly: seeing Krishna would be the greatest gain of all. He asked whether there was anything in the house he could take as a gift. She went to the neighbouring brahmanas, begged four handfuls of flattened rice, and tied them in a piece of cloth. That was his offering.
On the road he wondered how he would ever be let in. At Dvaraka he passed three guard posts and three courtyards and came to the palace of one of Krishna's queens. Krishna, seated with his queen, saw him from a distance, rose at once, came to him and embraced him with both arms, overjoyed. He sat his friend on his own couch, washed his feet with his own hands and sprinkled the water on his own head. He anointed him, worshipped him with lamps and incense, and offered him betel and a cow. Rukmini herself fanned him. The palace women watched in astonishment as the Lord embraced this ragged brahmana like an elder brother.
Holding hands, the two friends talked of their schooldays with their teacher Sandipani. Krishna asked whether he remembered the night their teacher's wife had sent them into the forest for firewood. A storm had broken out of season, with rain and a fierce wind; the sun set, and in the darkness they could not tell high ground from low. They wandered all night holding hands, and at dawn Sandipani came looking for them. He told them they had suffered for his sake, and blessed them: may your wishes come true, and may the Veda you have learned never lose its power for you.
Then Krishna, smiling, looked at his friend and asked what he had brought from home. Even a little, offered with love by those who love me, is great to me, he said. A leaf, a flower, a fruit or water offered with devotion, I accept. The Bhagavatam puts here, in Krishna's mouth, the same verse he speaks in the Gita.
The friend was too ashamed to hand over his cloth of flattened rice. He sat with his head bowed. Krishna, who knows every heart, understood why he had come: this man had never once worshipped him for wealth, and had come only to please a wife who was devoted to him. So Krishna decided to give him what even the gods find hard to obtain. He took the cloth from his friend with his own hands. What is this, he said, you have brought me exactly what I love; these grains will satisfy me and the whole universe. He ate a handful. As he took a second, Rukmini, whom the text here calls Shri, caught his hand. That is enough, she said, to give a man every prosperity in this world and the next.
He stayed the night, feeling he was in heaven, and next morning set out for home carrying nothing. On the road he reasoned that Krishna had kindly held back wealth so that a poor man would not grow drunk on it and forget him.
When he reached home, his hut was gone. In its place stood a palace like those of the gods, with gardens, lotus ponds, and servants who came out to greet him with music. His wife came out as radiant as a goddess. He understood at once whose doing this was. My friend gives like a rain cloud, he thought, without a word, making much of the little a friend brings him and little of the much he gives. He asked only to be Krishna's friend, his servant and his devotee in every birth. He lived on in that house with his wife, untouched by its luxury, and in time reached the Lord's own abode.
Placed near the close of the tenth book, after every splendour of Dvaraka has been displayed, this story gives the book's last great portrait of friendship to a man who brings a handful of rice and asks for nothing. It is in his hands, not a king's, that Krishna's grace is shown most fully.
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