This is a very interesting and entertaining short story written by the Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore. Along with amusing with its paradoxical statements, it raises some important questions about work, leisure, utility and emotions etc.
The phrase “the Moving Finger” is taken from Omar Khayyam’s ‘Rubiyat’ where the moving finger means ‘time’ or ‘fate’, and man doesn’t have the freedom to change anything that time has decided for him. However, in this story, the mistake of the moving finger is corrected by the elders of Paradise.
Due to a mistake of the Moving Finger, an artist, who had wasted his time only painting all the while, lands up in Workers’ Paradise. He doesn’t know how to pass the time there because all the others are busy moving here and there doing something or the other all the time.
Once a girl looks at him, and seeing that he doesn’t have work, offers to’ give him some of her work. But the artist refuses and instead asks her pitcher to draw pictures on it. The girl doesn’t understand why he wants to draw pictures, but after some persuasion, gives her pitcher to him. After he draws some pictures, she asks him the meaning of those pictures, but the artist says that a picture may have no meaning or purpose.
The girl is puzzled by his answer and is gradually so mesmerized by his work that, instead of running to do her work, she becomes thoughtful and slow at her work. The next time when he asks for her ribbons to colour them, she gives them readily and spends more time on trying the colourful ribbons.
Many people get similarly influenced by the artist and his work. Work in the Workers’ Paradise starts suffering. The elders frown at this and order the artist out of Paradise.
When the artist is going, the girl too follows him, puzzling all the elders in Paradise. For them, till then only work had been important, and fascination with art, friendship or love had no meaning at all.
