A young seeker named Sudhama came down from the hills one festival day, and the whole town was a riot of delights. Drummers pounded, sweet-sellers called out, garlands of marigold swung over the lanes, and the smell of hot jalebis drifted everywhere. Sudhama walked through it all slowly, a quiet smile on his face, and he wanted none of it.

An old friend spotted him and ran up, astonished. "Sudhama! You've come down at last! Here — try this kheer, it's the best in the district. And there's a wrestling match, and music until dawn! Why do you keep disappearing into the hills when all of this is down here?"

Sudhama took the bowl politely, tasted a spoonful, and set it down. "It is very good," he said kindly. "But let me tell you something. Up in the hills, after many quiet years, I tasted a different kind of sweetness."

"A sweeter kheer?" his friend asked.

"No," Sudhama laughed. "Not a thing you eat at all. One morning my mind went completely still, and a joy rose up inside me — quiet, vast, with no end to it. It did not come through my tongue or my ears or my eyes. It came from somewhere deeper than all of those, and it asked nothing of the world. I just sat in it, full to the brim."

His friend frowned, not understanding. "And then it faded, and you came down for the real festival?"

"That is the strange part," said Sudhama softly. "It does not fade. Once you have truly tasted it, you cannot un-taste it, and nothing else tastes quite as big again. The jalebis are lovely. The music is lovely. But they are like little sparks beside a sunrise. I do not chase them anymore — not because I am stern, but because I have already found the larger sweetness, and it never leaves."

He pressed the bowl of kheer warmly back into his friend's hands. "Eat, enjoy, dance," he said. "And one day, when you are ready, come up to the hills, and I will show you how to find the sweetness that no festival can sell."