Prose 1: A Letter to God (NCERT Solutions)
Question 1:
What did Lencho hope for?
Answer 1:
Lencho hoped for water in the form of rain.
Question 2:
Why did Lencho say the raindrops were like “new coins”
Answer 2:
He said this because his crop really needed rain for being a good harvest. So when it rained, he saw it in the form of ‘new coins’.
Question 3:
How did the rain change? What happened to Lencho fields?
Answer 3:
The rain changed into a hailstorm. Hails fell on the house, the garden, the hillside and the cornfield. They utterly destroyed Lencho’s fields .
Question 4:
What were Lencho’s feelings when the hail stopped?
Answer 4:
Lencho felt completely broken. The hail had left nothing. He felt that they would have no corn that year.
Question 5:
Who or what did Lencho have faith in? What did he do?
Answer 5:
Lencho had faith in God. He felt that God’s eyes saw everything. He wrote a letter to God.
Question 6:
Who read the letter?
Answer 6:
The postman and the postmaster read Lencho’s letter (to God).
Question 7:
What did the postmaster do then?
Answer 7:
The postmaster laughed when he read Lencho’s letter but soon he became serious and was moved by the writer’s faith in God. He didn’t want to shake Lencho’s faith. So, he decided to collect money and send it to Lencho on behalf of God.
Question 8:
Was Lencho surprised to find a letter for him with money in it?
Answer 8:
No, Lencho was not surprised to find a letter for him with money. It was because he had full faith in God. He knew that God saw everything even in one’s conscience.
Question 9:
What made him angry ?
Answer 9:
Lencho had requested God to send him 100 pesos. But God sent him only 70 pesos. It was not good on God’s part. This made him angry.
# Thinking about the text:
Question 10:
Who does Lencho have complete faith in? Which sentences in the story tell you this?
Answer 10:
Lencho had faith in God. The sentences in the story that show this are as follows.
- “All through the night, Lencho thought only of his one hope : the help of God, whose eyes, as he had been instructed, see everything, even what is deep in one’s conscience.”
- “God”, he wrote, “if you don’t help me, my family and I will go hungry this year.” I need a hundred pesos in order to sow my field again and to live until the crop comes, because the hailstorm ……………”
- “God could not have made a mistake, nor could he have denied Lencho what he had requested.”
- “God : of the money that I asked for, only seventy pesos reached me. Send me the rest, since I need it very much. But don’t send it to me through the mail because the post office employees are a bunch of crooks.”
Question 11:
Why does the postmaster send money to Lencho? Why does he sign the letter ‘God’?
Answer 11:
The Postmaster didn’t want to shake Lencho’s faith in God. He was impressed by the faith Lencho had in God and wanted to have the same faith in himself. So, he collected the money and send it to Lencho. He signed the letter ‘God’ so that Lencho’s faith in God does not shake and he can believe that the money had been sent to him by God.
Question 12:
Did Lencho try to find out who had sent money to him? Why/why not?
Answer 12:
Lencho did not try to find out who had sent money to him as he was very sure that the money has been sent by God because he had complete faith in God.
Question 13;
Who does Lencho think has taken the rest of the money ? What is the irony in the situation? (Remember that the irony of the situation is an unexpected aspect of it. An ironic situation is strange or amusing because it is the opposite of what is expected.)
Answer 13:
Lencho thinks that the rest of the money has been taken by the employees of the post office. The irony in the situation is that though the postmaster and his employees had helped him in his ill condition and tried to keep his faith alive in God. It is Lencho’s misconcestion that he assumed the post office people, to be crooks. Therefore, he did not want receive the money by mail any more.
Question 14:
Are there people like Lencho in the real world? What kind of a person would you say he is ? You may select appropriate words from the box to answer the question. greedy,naive,stupid,ungrateful, selfish,consical, unquestioning.
Answer14:
Yes, there are people like Lencho in the real world. Lencho is a hard working farmer who had complete faith in God. He was not greedy and demanded only hundred pesos from God to sow fields again. He was also, “naive, stupid and comical” in the sense that he thought that the money was sent by God and the money that is short has been taken away by post office employees.’
Question 15
There are two kinds of conflict in the story : between humans and nature, and between humans themselves. How are these conflicts illustrated ?
Answer 15:
The conflict between humans and nature has been illustrated by the hailstorm destroying the crop completely. The human, Lencho who had worked hard in the fields was expecting a good harvest. He only needed a downpour or a little shower but the nature destroyed the crop by way of hailstorm. The other conflict is illustrated between human themselves. The postmaster wanted to keep Lencho’s faith in God, therefore, he collected money from his employees and friends and gave it to Lencho as it was sent by God. Lencho instead of being grateful to them thought that the money that is short is taken away by post office employees and he therefore call them crooks.
