Justin O'Brien, Walking with a Himalayan Master, pp 285-286
 

     "I once dropped in on a lawyer's home when I was very hungry. He was upstairs cleaning his shotgun while his wife was preparing kheer, an Indian pudding, in the kitchen. I came into the house and said I was hungry and asked for some of the pudding. The woman refused me so I raised my voice and insisted. She implored me to go away, but I felt insulted and reminded her that she must have forgotten her manners to a wandering sadhu. Then I went over to the pot to help myself to some of the food.

     "Meanwhile, the husband heard the commotion downstairs and thought his wife was being molested behind locked doors. He blasted a warning shot through the floor, rushed downstairs, blasted the kitchen door off its hinges and ran into the room. He looked at me calmly praying over my bowl of kheer, saw his wife standing on the far side of the kitchen, and could not make sense out of the situation since it didn't match his emotional expectation. At the some time, I thought that it didn't matter to me if they wanted to kill each other, I was going to eat kheer. The frozen moment between the three of us was broken suddenly by the wife screaming to me not to eat the kheer for it was poisoned. She slapped it out of my hand and began to cry. The husband calmed down, apologized to me, and turned to his wife, weeping in the corner. It turned out that she and her lover had planned to poison the husband that day. I had spoiled it by wandering in and demanding food.

     "My master scolded me for going into people's houses uninvited. He told me not to force my hunger on anyone and never to beg. That's why I rarely stay with people. Here in Nepal many influential people criticize my lifestyle, but I follow the orders of my master. Others expect me to live in a hovel, wearing worn out shawls. It shocks their portrait of a holy man that I enjoy the things of the world, but I take whatever God gives me."

     We then had chai, which on those winter nights was the best possible elixir.