Thirukkural-On Virtue-On Fate-Kural 380

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There are many tales which illustrate this idea. The story of the stray arrow sticking to a tree, falling out in the breeze and killing the wayfarer, whose time had come, is relevant here. Parallel is the case of the co-pilot who was pulled out of bed to fly the ill-fated Caravelle from Bombay to Madras on the night of 11/12th October 1976, on the other hand, the irate twenty passengers, who did not get seats in the Caravelle, and the Industrialist of Madras, whose international flight did not connect this Madras flight at Bombay, escaped disaster. We may say they were lucky but the fact is apparently that their time had not come. But the poet himself is not such a fatalist as all that, considering that he has stressed quite a lot in later chapters, the efficacy of human will and effort.

Omar Khayam said very much the same in the following lines adumbrating a more fatalistic philosophy:

'The moving finger writes; and, having writ moves on:
nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash a word of it".
(Fitzgerala – Translation of Omarkhyayam).

Shakespeare too supports the idea in the passage below:

'What Fates impose that men must needs abide,
it boots not to resist both wind and tide".

With reference to tide, King Canute learnt his lesson at the cost of much prestige.

Tamil literature has the following relevant line of Pazhamozhi.

'Poriyil vakaiya karumam adhanaal
arivinai yooliyae aadum' (Pazhamozhi-203)