The thing Sudama carried that wasn't rice
Sudama didn't go to Dwarka because he was hungry. He went because his wife asked him to, and even then he almost didn't go. He packed a small cloth bundle of poha, flattened rice, the cheapest thing in the house, and he walked toward the palace of a man who had once been his equal. That walk is the part the story skips over, but it's the part you know.The bundle was an embarrassment before he even arrived. He knew it. He held it behind his back when the guards let him through. He almost didn't give it to Krishna at all. What Sudama was carrying wasn't really rice. It was the proof of everything that had gone differently for him than it had for Krishna. The rice was evidence.
