And Answers | The Exercise Book By Rabindranath Tagore Questions

In Tagore’s story, why does the young narrator steal the girl’s exercise book? Is it guilt, love, or the simple tyranny of a child’s boredom?

The next day, Mr. Chakraborty collected the sheets. Most answers were safe, shallow, correct. But when he reached Ratan’s sheet, there were no answers—only a paragraph that answered all three questions at once. In Tagore’s story, why does the young narrator

That night, Ratan opened the new exercise book. He wrote at the top of the first page: "What does Mini do after the story ends?" Chakraborty collected the sheets

He wrote: "The narrator steals the book because he cannot bear the sight of someone owning something complete and untouched. His own life, like his own exercise book, is full of cancellations and erasures. Mini’s smile is not forgiveness. It is a mirror. She sees the thief more clearly than he sees himself. And the ruined book? It is the only honest thing in the tale. Ideas cannot be stolen. Only the container can be broken." That night, Ratan opened the new exercise book

One monsoon afternoon, he handed out a single, cyclostyled sheet to his class of fourteen-year-olds. On it were three questions.

In Tagore’s tale, a schoolboy steals a little girl’s exercise book out of sheer, inexplicable mischief—not hatred, not love, but a lazy afternoon’s cruelty. He never opens it. Later, overcome by a strange, wordless guilt, he returns it. The girl smiles, doesn’t scold, doesn’t cry. But the book has been ruined by rain, its pages now a blur of ink and pulp. The boy is left with an emptiness that no punishment could fill.

He read it twice. Then he folded it gently and placed it inside his copy of Tagore’s story, like a bookmark.