The Butter-Blinded Brahman

A Brahman named Theodore grew suspicious when he noticed his wife constantly preparing rich, expensive butter-cakes and carrying them off somewhere daily, so he confronted her directly and asked where they went.

She claimed, without missing a beat, that she had undertaken a fasting ritual at a nearby shrine and was carrying the cakes as an offering to the goddess -- a story convincing enough that he let her go, imagining that the delicious dishes she made every day were destined for divine worship rather than a secret purpose of her own.

Unbeknownst to her, the Brahman followed by a different route and hid behind the very statue of the goddess she claimed to be worshipping. There, he overheard his wife praying aloud to the goddess to somehow make him blind -- and, disguising his voice to sound like the deity herself, he answered from his hiding place that feeding him butter and butter-cakes every day would eventually cause exactly that.

Believing she had received real divine instruction, the wife happily continued feeding her husband rich food daily, thrilled when he later mentioned his eyesight seemed to be failing -- while her secret lover, hearing the Brahman was now blind, grew bold enough to visit the house openly without fear of discovery.

The Brahman, having engineered the whole situation and understood exactly what was happening, waited until the moment was right, then caught the lover as he entered and dealt with the betrayal decisively, ending both the deception and the affair in one stroke -- proof that patient, careful observation can outlast even a well-constructed lie.