On the edge of an old kingdom there lived a man named Kuvalaya who wanted everyone to think he was holy.

One festival morning he announced that he would hold a great yajna, a fire ceremony, in his courtyard. Word spread, and a crowd gathered at his gate, expecting the things a yajna always brings: the warm smell of cooked rice offered into the flames, the long sweet hum of the priests' chants, and bowls of food shared with every guest before they went home.

But Kuvalaya had not really wanted to do any of that. He only wanted the crowd.

He lit a fire in a heap, the wrong way, with no proper arrangement at all. He had cooked no offering, so nothing went into the flames but smoke. He had learned no chants and had paid no priest, so the courtyard stayed strangely silent, with only the crackle of burning wood. When an old grandmother at the back asked, hopefully, whether there would be a little food to share, Kuvalaya waved her away. "This is a sacred fire," he snapped, "not a kitchen."

A wandering sage happened to be passing and stopped to watch. He saw the heaped, ragged fire. He saw the empty hands. He heard the silence where the chanting should have been. Most of all, he saw Kuvalaya glancing at the crowd again and again, checking whether they were impressed.

The fire sputtered and died before midday. The crowd drifted off, puzzled and a little hungry. Nothing had been given, nothing had been sung, nothing had been truly offered.

The sage gathered the disappointed children and the tired grandmother and led them to a banyan tree. There, from his own small bag, he shared roasted grain with every single one of them, and he chanted a short verse of thanks over the food.

"Watch closely," he told the children gently, "for you have seen two fires today. One was big and went out. One was small and still warms you. The first had no rule, no food, no song, and, under it all, no faith. A worship with nothing in the heart, however grand it looks, gives nothing and warms no one."