A Letter to God: Class 10 First Flight · Chapter 1

1.1 Before you read

Imagine your family's income for the whole year is growing in one field, and one afternoon of bad weather wipes it out. Whom would you turn to? This story asks what we should place our faith in, through Lencho, a farmer who asks God for help by letter. Read it in your NCERT book; this page is your companion.

1.2 Activity: sending money by post

Lencho's story turns on a post office and an envelope of money, so NCERT begins with a practical skill: sending money through the post. For more than a century, Indian soldiers, mill workers and students far from home have sent money to their families by money order. The sender pays at a post office counter, and a postman hands the cash to the receiver at their door.

Today India Post sends money orders electronically (the eMO), so the money arrives faster. The idea has not changed: the sender pays the amount plus a small fee called commission, the receiver signs for the cash, and proof of payment returns to the sender. That proof is the acknowledgement.

1.3 Reading the story

The story has three movements: a storm that destroys, a letter that asks, and a reply that goes wrong in an unexpected way. The setting is a farming valley, most likely in rural Mexico: the writer was Mexican and the money in the story is in pesos. The crop is corn, which here means maize (मक्का), the staple food of Mexican families.

1.3.1 Part I: The rain that turned to ice

Lencho is a farmer whose whole year depends on one field of maize. The plants are ripe and flowering, and only a good rain stands between his family and a fine harvest. From his house, perched alone on a low hill above the valley, he studies the north-east sky all morning for clouds.

The rain arrives during the family meal, just as he predicted. Delighted, he steps outside only to enjoy it, and comes back calling the drops coins, the big drops worth more than the small. To a farmer, rain means a crop, and a crop means money.

Then the wind picks up and the rain turns into hail. The boys dash out to gather the shiny ice; their father hopes it will pass soon. It does not. The hail goes on for a full hour, hammering everything in the valley. When it stops, nothing green is left standing: leaves, flowers and maize are all gone. Lencho tells his sons that a locust swarm could not have done worse. The family spends a miserable night, sure that the coming year will bring hunger.

1.3.2 Part II: A letter addressed to God

The family's only comfort is the belief that God will not abandon them, and someone repeats the old saying that hunger never kills anyone. Sleepless, Lencho keeps returning to what he was taught: nothing escapes God's eyes, not even the private thoughts of a person's conscience. Surely, then, God knows what his family needs.

Though his life is hard physical work, Lencho knows how to write. At dawn the next Sunday he writes to God, explaining that without help his family will go hungry. He asks for a hundred pesos: enough to replant and to feed the family until the next harvest. He addresses the envelope to God, carries it to the town himself and posts it.

At the post office, a postman spots the strangest address he has ever handled and carries the letter, chuckling, to his boss. The postmaster, a plump and kindly man, finds it funny too, but only for a moment. The writer's trust in God moves him; he wishes his own faith were that strong. He makes up his mind to reply, so that the farmer goes on believing.

A reply, though, needs money, not just kind words. The postmaster gives part of his own salary, asks his staff to contribute and persuades some friends to give something as charity. The total still falls short: it is only a little over half of what Lencho asked for. The postmaster sends it to Lencho with a note signed with just one word: God.

1.3.3 Part III: The reply and the second letter

A week later Lencho is back at the post office, a little early, asking for his letter. The postman gives it to him. The postmaster watches quietly from his room, pleased with the good he has done.

Finding money in the envelope does not surprise Lencho in the least: he was certain God would answer. Counting it is another matter, and his face darkens. As he sees it, God does not get sums wrong and does not hold back what a believer needs. So someone must have taken the rest.

He borrows paper and ink and writes again, slowly and with great effort, at the table kept for the public. Then he buys a stamp, bangs it onto the envelope with his fist and posts the letter. The postmaster opens it at once. Lencho tells God that only seventy pesos reached him and asks for the remainder. He adds a warning: God should not use the post, since the staff there are, in his words, “a bunch of crooks”.

1.4 Thinking about the text

A good answer about this story always rests on what the characters do. Lencho and the postmaster never meet face to face, yet each one's action shapes the other's life. Compare them side by side.

The minor characters matter too. Lencho's wife shares his faith in God's will. The boys, who see the hail as a game, remind us how differently children and adults read the same event. The postman, who first laughs at the letter, works under the postmaster, so he is among the staff asked to chip in.

1.4.1 Themes and message

• Faith. Lencho's trust in God is complete and childlike. The postmaster admires it and works to protect it. The story asks whether faith should also include trust in people.
• Kindness of strangers. People who owe Lencho nothing give up their own money to help him, and expect nothing back.
• Irony. The helpers end up being called thieves (see Fig. 1.3).
• Conflict. Humans against nature (the hailstorm) and humans against humans (Lencho's mistrust of the post office staff).
• A farmer's dependence on weather. One storm can wipe out a year's income, a reality Indian farmers know well when unseasonal hail flattens wheat or grapes in March.

Irony (विडंबना) is the gap between what we expect and what actually happens. In this story the gap is wide. The postmaster set out to keep Lencho's faith in God alive, and he succeeded: Lencho never doubts God for a moment. But the same act makes Lencho lose faith in human beings, including the very people who helped him.

Look also at the two kinds of conflict (संघर्ष). The first is plain to see: a farmer against a storm that he cannot fight. The second is hidden inside Lencho's mind: he sets himself against the post office staff, who have done him nothing but good. The first conflict is about bad luck; the second is about misunderstanding.

1.5 Thinking about language

NCERT's language work grows out of the story: storm words from the hail, the word hope, relative clauses, negatives used for emphasis, and metaphors. Each part below gives the rule in plain words, fresh examples and practice.

1.5.1 Words for storms

Hail forms when strong air currents inside a thundercloud carry raindrops up into freezing air again and again, building layer upon layer of ice. The lumps that finally drop out are hailstones, and the storm is a hailstorm. English has several other storm words, and the right one depends on how the wind moves and where the storm forms.

1.5.2 The many uses of 'hope'

Used as a verb, hope is something you do: We hope the train is on time. Used as a noun, it is something you have, give or lose: There is still hope. Around these two uses, English has built several fixed expressions.

1.5.3 Relative clauses

A relative clause adds information about a noun. It begins with a relative pronoun: who (people, as the subject), whom (people, as the object), whose (belonging to) or which (things and animals).

Here is a quick test. Remove the clause: do you still know exactly who or what is meant? If yes, the clause is a non-defining relative clause, bonus information about someone already identified. Punctuate it like a removable insert, with a comma before and after it or a pair of dashes. When it ends the sentence, the full stop takes the place of the second comma.

• My grandmother, who grew up in Darjeeling, still drinks her tea without sugar.
• The Taj Mahal, which stands on the bank of the Yamuna, draws visitors from all over the world.
• Our class teacher, whom everyone admires, retires this year.
• Mr Rao, whose shop sells old books, knows every customer by name.

Sometimes the relative pronoun and its verb are left out, and only a short describing phrase remains between commas or dashes. Kavya — the youngest player in the team — scored the winning goal means Kavya, who is the youngest player in the team, scored the winning goal. The pronoun is hidden, but the meaning is the same.

1.5.4 Using negatives for emphasis

Most of the time a negative word denies: There is no milk. Some fixed patterns, though, use a negative word to turn up the volume on a positive idea. Read them as strong positives.

The story uses these patterns too. Look again at Lencho's joke about coins: why might he first deny that the drops are rain at all? The denial sharpens his point, because to him this water is money.

1.5.5 Metaphors

A metaphor (रूपक) carries a quality from one thing over to another by saying one thing is the other. Its Greek root, metaphora, means carrying something over. When we speak of the foot of the hill, we borrow the idea of feet, the lowest part of a body. A sea of faces borrows the sea's vastness for a crowd. If the comparison uses like or as, it is a simile (उपमा) instead: the crowd was like a sea.

A plague is a deadly disease that spreads fast and kills many people. Calling a locust swarm a plague carries over that idea of rapid, total destruction.

1.6 Speaking, listening and writing

1.6.1 Speaking: help when you least expected it

1.6.2 Listening: details in a letter

When you listen for details, read the questions first so you know what to catch: names, places, dates and reasons. Note key words, not full sentences, and check the spelling of names afterwards.

1.6.3 Writing: a poster

Lencho's year was ruined by the weather. Many parts of India swing between water shortage in summer and too much water in the monsoon. A poster is a quick, eye-catching way to tell a whole neighbourhood what to do about it.

1.6.4 Board link: writing a formal letter

Lencho's letter has no address, no date and no subject; it simply speaks to God. A formal letter for your board exam follows a fixed layout. Here is one about the same kind of disaster.

1.7 Dust of Snow

Have you ever had a dull, irritating day rescued by something tiny: a friend's joke, the smell of the first rain, a puppy chasing its tail? This eight-line poem by Robert Frost is about exactly such a moment.

The poem at a glance. Two stanzas of four short lines each, all forming one single sentence. The first stanza describes an event; the second gives its effect. Read the poem in your NCERT book, then use these notes.

• Stanza 1 (the event). The speaker is beneath a hemlock tree on a winter day. A crow perched above stirs, and the movement shakes a fine powder of snow down onto him. Nothing else happens: no words, no drama, just a light, cold sprinkle.
• Stanza 2 (the effect). That tiny shower lifts his spirits. He had been having a day he regretted, which is what rued means, but now part of it is rescued. Notice the honesty: the poem does not claim the whole day is saved, only a part.

Grammatically, the whole first stanza is the subject of the sentence, and the main verb arrives only in line 5. The poem makes us wait for the effect, just as the speaker did not expect one.

1.7.1 Symbols, tone and devices

The poem's surprise lies in its symbols (प्रतीक). Poets usually choose a cuckoo, a nightingale or a skylark to bring joy. Frost chooses a crow, a black bird with a harsh cry that many cultures link with bad luck or death. The hemlock tree adds more gloom, because its name recalls a famous poison. Even snow belongs to winter, the cold, dead season. Yet these dark things produce the moment of joy.

The tone is quiet, reflective and grateful. The mood moves from regret to relief, and the message is that small moments can carry a larger meaning. Nature can heal a low mood, and joy may arrive from the most unlikely place.

• Symbolism: crow, hemlock and snow stand for gloom, yet bring cheer.
• Metaphor: a dust of snow pictures snow as fine and light as powder.
• Rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD, simple and regular, like the moment itself.
• Enjambment: the single sentence runs on across line ends without a pause.
• Alliteration: the soft h sounds that open line 5.
• Imagery and contrast: a black crow, white snow and a dark tree in one picture.
• Heart for feelings: the heart stands for the speaker's emotions.

1.8 Fire and Ice

How will the world end? Scientists expect the Sun to swell into a red giant in about five billion years, scorching or swallowing the inner planets; others picture a universe that slowly cools and freezes. Myths across cultures imagine endings by flood, fire or endless winter. In nine short lines, Robert Frost uses these two old ideas, fire and ice, to talk about something closer to home: human feelings.

• Part 1 (the first four lines): the debate. The poem opens with an argument people have had for centuries: will the world burn or freeze? The speaker joins in with a personal reason. He has felt desire and knows how it consumes, so he votes for fire. Desire here means every hungry wanting, for money, power or possessions, that grows the more it is fed.
• Part 2 (the last five lines): a second ending. Then he imagines the world being destroyed a second time. Having seen how much hatred there is among people, he concludes that ice would be just as capable. Hate works slowly, like frost: it makes people cold, indifferent and hard until nothing warm survives.

The poem is not really about the planet. It warns that uncontrolled desire and deep hatred can destroy people, families and nations. Wars of greed and conflicts born of hatred are both familiar from history.

1.8.1 Tone, devices and rhyme

The tone is calm, conversational and quietly ironic. The speaker discusses the end of the world as if he were giving an opinion over tea. His final verdict, that ice “would suffice”, is a striking understatement: a mild word for total destruction. The calmness makes the warning more chilling.

The rhyme scheme (तुकांत योजना) is ABAABCBCB, built on only three sounds. The fire sound rules the first part and the ice sound the second, but they are woven together. The pattern itself shows two opposite forces locked in one small world, each strong enough to end it. The last two lines are only three words each, so the poem ends with a quiet thud.

• Symbolism: fire for desire, ice for hate.
• Contrast (antithesis): hot against cold, fast against slow.
• Repetition: Some say opens both of the first two lines.
• Understatement and irony: the end of the world called merely enough.
• Enjambment: lines 5–9 run on as one long thought.

1.9 Board exam practice

CBSE papers test this unit with extract-based questions, short answers of about 40–50 words and long answers of about 100–120 words. Each model answer below ends with the key points an examiner looks for. Keep your book open to find each passage from its cue.