The Riddle of the Empty Hand
Akbar-Birbal Stories · 1 min read
A traveling scholar, known for outwitting courts across many kingdoms with unsolvable riddles, arrived at Akbar's palace and challenged anyone present to bring him something that was, at the very same time, genuinely a gift and yet not a gift at all — insisting the answer was simpler than anyone would guess, but that no court had ever solved it correctly.
The court struggled for days, offering flowers with thorns, coins from an old currency no longer used, and other clever near-misses, all rejected by the scholar as not quite fitting his exact riddle.
Birbal finally stepped forward and offered the scholar a warm embrace and his sincere blessing, spoken aloud before the whole court — nothing more. "A blessing," Birbal explained, "is a true gift, freely given from the heart, costing me nothing to offer and yet worth everything to receive. But it is also not a gift in the ordinary sense, since it cannot be held, sold, or taken away once given — it exists only in the moment it's shared." The scholar, genuinely delighted at last by an answer that truly satisfied his riddle, declared Birbal the first person in all his travels to solve it, and left the court with new respect for Akbar's minister.
Moral of the story
The truest gifts are often the ones that cannot be held, sold, or taken away — only shared.