Sudāmā and Kṛṣṇa had been students together long before one of them lived in a palace.
By the time this story begins, Sudāmā and his wife are living in real poverty. The Bhāgavata describes him as peaceful and detached, maintaining himself on whatever came without special effort. Sometimes there was not enough food.
His wife asked him to visit Kṛṣṇa. She hoped his old friend might help them.
Sudāmā did not want to go to a friend simply to ask for wealth. But he did want to see Kṛṣṇa. At last he agreed, then asked his wife whether there was anything in the house he could carry as a gift.
There was almost nothing.
So she went to neighbouring brāhmaṇa households and begged four handfuls of flattened rice. She tied the rice in a torn piece of cloth and gave the small bundle to her husband.
Sudāmā set out carrying it.
When he arrived, the difference between the two friends' circumstances could hardly have been greater. Sudāmā arrived thin and poorly dressed, with four borrowed handfuls of rice hidden in cloth.
Kṛṣṇa saw him from a distance and stood up immediately. The palace scene is deliberately excessive in the opposite direction from Sudāmā's poverty: the Lord of the house does not merely allow the old friend inside.
He went forward and embraced his old friend. Then he seated Sudāmā on the bed, personally washed his feet, placed the water on his own head, and honoured him as a guest. Rukmiṇī herself stood there fanning the shabby visitor while the people of the palace watched in astonishment.
Then the two friends held hands and remembered the years when they had lived together at their teacher's house. They remember those years before Kṛṣṇa asks about the gift Sudāmā has brought.
Nothing in that reunion becomes Sudāmā making his request.
Eventually Kṛṣṇa asks whether he has brought anything from home.
Sudāmā has, of course.
But now the four handfuls of flattened rice seem even smaller than they did when his wife tied them up. The text says he lowers his head in embarrassment and does not offer them.
Kṛṣṇa does not make him force the words out.
He takes the hidden bundle himself, sees the flattened rice, and eats a handful with pleasure. He reaches for another, and Rukmiṇī takes hold of his hand and stops him.
Sudāmā stays the night. The next morning he leaves for home.
He has not asked for wealth. He has not been handed a purse. The verse is unusually clear: he did not ask Kṛṣṇa for money, and he went home satisfied simply by having seen him.
On the road Sudāmā keeps thinking about how Kṛṣṇa received him. He even reasons that perhaps Kṛṣṇa gave him nothing because sudden wealth might make him forget what mattered. At that point he still believes he is returning to the same poor house.
He remembers: the embrace, the seat of honour, the service given to someone whose clothes announced poverty before he spoke.
Then he reaches the place where his house had stood.
The broken dwelling is gone. In its place are splendid buildings, gardens and attendants. His wife comes to meet him surrounded by the same abundance.
Sudāmā understands the change as Kṛṣṇa's gift.
The wealth comes later. Before it appears, Sudāmā has already been received as a friend rather than measured by what he can bring.
Sudāmā cannot ask.
He can barely give.
The gift itself had been borrowed because his house had nothing suitable to send. And Kṛṣṇa has to take it from the place where Sudāmā is hiding it.
This is not a rule that people should remain silent when they need help. It is one particular friendship noticing a need that shame has made difficult to name.
By the time the wealth arrives, the welcome has already answered a need Sudāmā never managed to name.
Sudāmā carried four borrowed handfuls of rice into a palace; Kṛṣṇa made sure the smallest thing in the room was not his friend's dignity.