The Exercise Book By Rabindranath Tagore Questions And Answers -

After class, he called Ratan back. He didn’t praise him or give him a grade. Instead, he handed Ratan a brand new, thick, unlined exercise book—the kind with creamy pages and a stiff cover.

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.

The story ends with the narrator returning the book, but the ink has bled and the pages are ruined. What does the ruined exercise book finally represent?

When the girl, Mini, says nothing and merely smiles after losing the book, who holds the true power—the thief or the victim?

"This is for you," Mr. Chakraborty said. "Not for homework. For your own questions."