..Dropping Ashes...on the rice?

Sometimes on my way home from work in the city, I stop at the various streetside stalls for food: fruit shop, bread shop, house supply shop and, most recently, the rice shop. There one sees a beautiful array of different kinds of rice, flowing up and out of bags, with little signs stuck in then denoting their names. I pulled up on my motorbike, and simply pointed to the prettiest rice there was, since I didn't know what any of the names meant. The somewhat grumpy shop owner proceeded to remove the cigarette from his mouth, and stick it butt down into another bag of rice, and leave it there, still burning, as he scooped rice out of another bag for me. As he did, I could not take my eyes off the ashes at the tip of the cigarette as they grew longer, and was waiting for them to fall into the pile of rice there - his ersatz ashtray - when he plucked it out and stuck it back in his mouth, and handed me my rice. "Not correct," as a noted zen master might say. This morning, I discovered I had actually bought sticky rice, though luckily, it did not seem to have any ashes in it.