“Our Little Richie is sweet, but so strange,” Radhanath Swami’s parents would often say when he was small. “Why is he like this?” Radhanath Swami had odd habits. No one had any idea where they came from.
Until Radhanath Swami was eight or nine years old, he refused to sit in chairs while eating and preferred to sit on the floor, which his parents forbade. As a compromise, Radhanath Swami was allowed to stand at the dinner table, even in restaurants. It was a common occurrence for waitresses to ask if they could bring him a chair. “He doesn’t believe in chairs,” Radhanath Swami’s mother would reply with a shrug of her shoulders.
