Today is Akshaya Tritiya - and, due to this lockdown, instead of being inundated with full page advertisements, I look a bit more closely at this festival and the significance of this day...

This is a day of "endless/boundless wealth/prosperity", actually the THIRD day of endless endless prosperity..

Akshayya, meaning eternal, never ending, etc is a word many of us familiar with the story of the akshaya patra from the Mahabharat would know.

It is believed Lord Krishna gave this vessel to Draupadi on this day. Or, was it given to Yudhishtra by Lord Surya, my memory is a bit off..

Today is also the day when the (Hindu) world's first "stenographer" began to take down the dictation, from Ved Vyasa, as the latter started narrating the Mahabharat.

So, why and how does this festival get so closely linked to GOLD? It is on this day that a certain gentleman, whose name is Kubera, was appointed as the Lord of Wealth. Richer than anybody else in all the three worlds, Kubera is still collecting interest on a loan he gave to the presiding diety of Tirumala in Tirupati, Lord Balaji - and that, mind you, was a marriage loan. Speak of a big, fat, Indian wedding 😃

And oh, by the way, Kubera had a brother - shall I say more notorious? A Shiva bhakt second to none, master of arts, receiver of many boons..  and better known to our world as Ravana

Happy Akshaya Tritiya to all of you. May you have never ending joy, success and just enough wealth always.