ENGLISH

 Lesson 1 A Wrong Man in Workers’ Paradise - Rabindranath 

Tagore Pre–Reading Activity : If you have a garden, you grow not only coconuts, vegetables and fruits, but also roses. Why? Discuss in pairs and answer. 1. The man had never believed in mere utility. 2. Having had no useful work, he indulged in mad whims. He made little pieces of sculpture - men, women and castles, quaint earthen things dotted over with sea-shells. He painted. Thus, he wasted his time on all that was useless, needless. People laughed at him. At times, he vowed to shake off his whims, but they lingered in his mind. 3. Some boys seldom ply their books and yet pass their tests. A similar thing happened to this man. He spent his Earth-life in useless work and yet after his death, the gates of Heaven opened wide for him. 4. But, the Moving Finger writes even in Heaven. So, it came to pass that the aerial messenger who took charge of the man made a mistake and found him a place in Workers' Paradise. 5. In this Paradise you find everything except leisur

6. Here men say: “God! We haven’t a moment to spare.” Women whisper: “Let’s move on, time’s a flying.” All exclaim: “Time is precious.” “We have our hands full, we make use of every single minute,” they sigh complainingly, and yet those words make them happy and exalted. 7. But this newcomer, who had passed all his life on Earth without doing a scrap of useful work, did not fit in with the scheme of things in Workers' Paradise. He lounged in the streets absently and jostled the hurrying men. He lay down in the green meadows, or close to the fast-flowing streams, and was taken to task by busy farmers. He was always in the way of others.