A Letter to God Class 10 NCERT PDF: First Flight Chapter 1

This is Chapter 1 of the NCERT Class 10 English textbook First Flight: the story A Letter to God by G.L. Fuentes. The chapter runs from page 1 to page 15 — the story occupies pages 3 to 7, and two Robert Frost poems, Dust of Snow and Fire and Ice, close it at pages 14 and 15.

The official A Letter to God Class 10 NCERT PDF is right here, and below it you will find a page-by-page map of the chapter, the story in plain words, every language exercise explained, and the questions students search for most.

Download A Letter to God Class 10 NCERT PDF

The chapter opens with a BEFORE YOU READ note, moves through a money order activity and the story itself, then ends with four language exercises and two poems.

The complete chapter — exactly as printed in the book — is in the A Letter to God Class 10 NCERT PDF on the official NCERT server, so you can open the file straight from the source and follow along as you read this page.

You can also open the official NCERT page for the full First Flight textbook, where each chapter of the book is listed with its own PDF.

Chapter at a Glance: What Is Inside These Pages

The table below shows the shape of the chapter at a glance — its sections, figures, activities and questions.

What This Chapter Covers: Story, Language Work, Skills and Two Poems

This is a location map, not a summary — it tells you where each part of the chapter sits so you can jump straight to what you need.

• BEFORE YOU READ (p. 1): poses the question the story answers — what should we put our faith in — and invites you to guess how Lencho’s letter to God turns out before you read.
• Money order activity (pp. 1–2): how to send money through the post office, with a form to fill in. It connects to the plot more than it seems.
• The story (pp. 3–7): begins with the house on the crest of a low hill and the ripe corn that promises a good harvest.
• Oral Comprehension Checks: three short question sets placed inside the reading, on pages 5, 6 and 7, to check you have followed the story so far.
• Thinking about the Text (p. 7): six questions on faith, motives, character and the irony of the ending.
• Thinking about Language (pp. 8–11): four exercises — storm words and ‘hope’ (p. 8), non-defining relative clauses (p. 9), negatives for emphasis (p. 10), and metaphors (p. 11).
• Speaking, Listening and Writing (pp. 11–12): a speaking prompt, a listening task built on a letter, and a poster-design writing task on saving water.
• For the teacher (pp. 12–13): WHAT WE HAVE DONE and WHAT YOU CAN DO explain the unit’s aims, and the listening passage is printed here.
• Poems (pp. 14–15): Dust of Snow and Fire and Ice, each with a glossary and Thinking about the Poem questions.

The Story in Plain Words: Faith, Hail and the Letter

If you have not finished the story yet, this retelling keeps the order of events clear; the page numbers let you check any block against the book.

The story places Lencho’s family in a solitary house on the crest of a low hill, with the river and a ripe cornfield below (NCERT, p. 3). Lencho has spent the whole morning watching the north-east sky: he knows his fields intimately, and the only thing the earth needs is rain.

When the first big drops fall, Lencho exclaims that these are not raindrops but ‘new coins’ — ten-cent pieces for the big drops, fives for the small ones (NCERT, p. 3). To a farmer, rain is money: it is the harvest arriving.

Then a strong wind rises and hailstones fall for a full hour over the house, the garden, the hillside and the cornfield. The boys run out to collect the ‘frozen pearls’, but the field is left white, as if covered with salt (NCERT, p. 4).

Not a leaf remains and the corn is totally destroyed. Standing in the ruined field, Lencho says a plague of locusts would have left more than this (NCERT, p. 4).

That night the family speaks of going hungry, yet there is a single hope: help from God, whose eyes see everything, even what is deep in one’s conscience (NCERT, p. 5).

Lencho — an ox of a man, working like an animal in the fields, but still able to write — composes a letter asking for a hundred pesos to sow his field again and live until the next crop (NCERT, p. 5). He addresses the envelope ‘To God’ and posts it in town.

The postman brings the letter to his boss, laughing — never in his career has he seen that address. The postmaster, a fat, amiable fellow, laughs too, then turns serious: ‘What faith!’ (NCERT, p. 5).

To avoid shaking the writer’s faith, he answers the letter himself: he asks his employees for money, gives part of his own salary, and obliges friends to give for an act of charity (NCERT, p. 5). He can collect only a little more than half the hundred pesos, and sends it with a single word as signature: God.

Lencho shows not the slightest surprise at the money — God cannot make a mistake — until he counts it and finds only seventy pesos (NCERT, p. 6).

He asks at the post office window for paper and ink and writes again: send me the rest, but not through the mail, because the post office employees are a bunch of crooks (NCERT, p. 7).

The irony builds in four steps. Lencho asks God for help and receives money. The reply is really the work of the post office employees, who gave their own money. Lencho’s faith is so complete that he sees only God’s hand. And he accuses the very people who helped him — the opposite of what their kindness deserved.

The book defines situational irony as an unexpected aspect of a situation, strange or amusing because it is the opposite of what is expected (NCERT, p. 7).

Characters: Lencho and the Postmaster

Both main characters are defined by a single quality — Lencho by his faith, the postmaster by his kindness — and the story gives you the exact sentences to prove it.

• Lencho: ‘an ox of a man, working like an animal in the fields, but still he knew how to write’ (NCERT, p. 5). He knows his fields intimately and watches the sky all morning (NCERT, p. 3). He comforts his family with ‘no one dies of hunger’ (NCERT, p. 5). He shows not the slightest surprise at the money because, for him, God can neither make a mistake nor deny a request (NCERT, p. 6).
• The postmaster: ‘a fat, amiable fellow’ who first laughs at the letter, then turns serious (NCERT, p. 5). He resolves to answer the letter rather than shake Lencho’s faith, gives part of his own salary, and collects from employees and friends (NCERT, p. 5). He watches Lencho receive the money with ‘the contentment of a man who has performed a good deed’ (NCERT, p. 6).
• The postman: a small part, but a telling one — he has never known the address ‘To God’ in his whole career and laughs heartily (NCERT, p. 5), then later hands the reply to Lencho (NCERT, p. 6). His laughter marks how extraordinary Lencho’s faith is.

Figure Walkthrough: The Story in Pictures

The first illustration, on page 6, catches the exact moment the second letter begins. Lencho has counted the money, found seventy pesos instead of one hundred, and is now asking at the post office window for paper and ink — the materials for the accusation that will land on the very employees who helped him.

This is the visual heart of the irony: the man who has just received charity is about to call his benefactors crooks.

The second illustration sits on the skills page (NCERT, p. 12), beside the listening and writing activities. Its caption points to what the page is for: exercises that strengthen a student’s grasp of the vocabulary found in the story.

This is where the chapter stops telling the story and makes you work with its words — and where the listening passage, Jaya’s letter, is read aloud.

Word Meanings from the Chapter

These are the words the book itself explains in the margins or glossaries as you read — a quick check before you attempt the exercises.

Two of these words carry the story. Peso places Lencho in a Latin American country and explains why a hundred pesos is a real, reachable sum (NCERT, p. 5). Conscience anchors the faith: Lencho trusts that God sees everything, ‘even what is deep in one’s conscience’ (NCERT, p. 5).

The Language Work: Storm Words, Relative Clauses, Negatives and Metaphors

Pages 8 to 11 hold four separate language exercises. Each one takes a point you met in the story and turns it into a rule you can reuse.

Storm words: cyclone, gale, typhoon and the rest (p. 8)

The book gives six storm names and asks you to match them to their descriptions. Table each clue against the word it fits.

Hope as a verb and as a noun (p. 8)

The story uses ‘hope’ both ways. In ‘I hope it passes quickly’ it is a verb — you wish for something to happen. In ‘there was a single hope: help from God’ it is a noun — a chance for something to happen. The exercise asks you to match each sentence to the shade of meaning it carries.

Non-defining relative clauses (p. 9)

A relative clause adds information about a person or thing and begins with a relative pronoun. It is non-defining when we already know who is meant: take ‘Lencho — who knew his fields intimately —’ out of the story and we still know which Lencho is being spoken of. The rule is simple:

• Put a comma before and a comma after the clause — or dashes, as the story itself uses.
• If the clause comes at the end of the sentence, close it with a full stop.
• Use the relative pronouns who, whom, whose and which — the book lists these four for this construction.

Joining the exercise sentences gives you the pattern to follow: ‘Mumbai, which is the commercial capital of India, is a city I often go to’; ‘My mother, who cooks very well, is going to host a TV show on cooking’; ‘These sportspersons, whose performance has been excellent, are going to meet the President’; ‘Lencho prayed to God, whose eyes see into our minds’; ‘This man, whom I trusted, cheated me.’

The hidden relative pronoun: the story’s first sentence reads ‘The house — the only one in the entire valley —’. This is really ‘The house — which was the only one in the entire valley —’; the pronoun which and the verb was are simply absent.

Using negatives for emphasis (p. 10)

Negatives normally show absence — ‘This year we will have no corn’. But the story also uses them to underline a single idea, and the book names the three structures:

• ‘nothing else but’ — Lencho had done nothing else but see the sky: he did only this.
• ‘no other reason than’ — he went out for no other reason than to feel the rain: this was his only reason.
• ‘not the slightest surprise’ — Lencho showed no surprise at all.

Why it works: a negative contradicts what you would expect, and the contradiction makes the idea stand out.

The exercise’s three search sentences point back to the story: ‘Not a leaf remained on the trees’ (NCERT, p. 4); ‘It was nothing less than a letter to God’ (NCERT, p. 5); ‘Never in his career as a postman had he known that address’ (NCERT, p. 5).

Metaphors: transferring a quality (p. 11)

The word metaphor comes from a Greek word meaning ‘transfer’: a quality of one thing is moved onto another. ‘The leg of the table’ transfers the body’s supporting leg to furniture; ‘the heart of the city’ transfers the body’s centre to a city’s core.

The book’s table asks you to find the metaphors in the story and name the quality each transfers.

The Money Order Activity: Why the Chapter Opens with a Form

The chapter does not open with the story. It first walks you through sending money by post, in five steps (NCERT, p. 1):

1. Go to the counter marked ‘Money Order’.
2. Buy a Money Order form by paying 50 paise.
3. Fill in the appropriate boxes, preferably in block letters.
4. Pay the counter clerk the amount to be sent plus the charges.
5. Keep the acknowledgement counterfoil for your record.

The form itself has three parts — the money order, the part for official use, and the acknowledgement (NCERT, p. 2). The exercise then asks you to decide what the ‘Space for Communication’ is for, who else must sign the form besides the sender, and which of the six sections the sender and the receiver each fill.

These are class discussion points rather than fixed one-word answers.

The activity quietly sets up the ending: the mail is the only channel between Lencho and God. He sends his request by post, the answer comes back by post, and the post office employees — the people who run that channel — are exactly the people he ends up accusing.

Common Mistakes Students Make in This Chapter

Most errors in this chapter are reading errors, not language errors — readers decide too quickly who is good and who is greedy. The table corrects each one with the story’s own evidence.

The Two Poems: Dust of Snow and Fire and Ice

Both poems are by Robert Frost, and both are short — nine lines each. The chapter treats them as a single closing unit, and each is followed by its own glossary and Thinking about the Poem questions.

Dust of Snow (p. 14)

A crow shakes ‘dust of snow’ from a hemlock tree onto the poet. The moment gives his heart a change of mood and saves some part of a day he had rued — held in regret.

The book’s framing note says the moment seems simple but has a larger significance, and it quotes Frost himself: ‘Always, always a larger significance… A little thing touches a larger thing.’

The deliberate choices are the point. A crow and a hemlock tree are images of ill omen, not the ‘beautiful’ maple, oak or pine a poet might have chosen. The darker the image, the more striking the change of mood: if a crow can save a day, then the day itself can be turned around.

• A ‘dust of snow’ is the fine snow the crow’s movement shakes off the hemlock branch onto the poet below.
• Frost presents nature not as a pretty postcard but through a small, grim, everyday detail that carries an outsized effect.
• The personal question the poem invites: has a small, unexpected moment ever lifted your own mood from depression or hopelessness?

Fire and Ice (p. 15)

The poem weighs two ways the world could end — fire or ice. Frost says he has tasted enough of desire to side with fire, but he adds that ice, for destruction, is also great and would suffice.

Fire stands for desire; ice stands for hate. The book’s word box suggests the extensions: greed, avarice, fury and lust sit with fire; coldness, cruelty, intolerance, indifference, rigidity and hatred sit with ice.

The rhyme scheme, counting the line endings of the printed poem, is A B A A B C B C B. The A rhymes (fire, desire) carry the fire argument and open the poem; the B rhymes (ice, twice, suffice) run through the middle and close it — so ice literally has the last word.

The short lines keep the poem fast, and the interlaced pattern holds the two forces in balance rather than letting either side win.

Exam Notes: What the Chapter’s Questions Ask You to Do

The chapter’s own exercises teach a set of skills, and questions built on the chapter test the same skills. Note that textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical — check the current official CBSE syllabus.

• Literal comprehension: the three Oral Comprehension Checks (pp. 5–7) test that you have followed who did what, and when. Answer directly from the sentence you have just read.
• Evidence: Question 1 of Thinking about the Text (p. 7) explicitly asks which sentences show Lencho’s complete faith — quote the sentences, such as the line that God could not have made a mistake (p. 6).
• Motive and character: Q2 (why the postmaster sends the money), Q3 (does Lencho investigate?) and Q5 (what kind of person is he?). The book’s word box — naive, unquestioning, comical, greedy — are options to judge, not ready-made labels.
• Irony: Q4 asks for the irony in the situation. State it as the opposite of expectation: the employees who helped Lencho are the ones he calls crooks.
• Conflict: Q6 wants both conflicts named — human against nature (the hail) and human against human (Lencho against the post office staff).
• Language bank: pages 8–11 — storm words, hope, relative clauses, negatives, metaphors — are the chapter’s grammar core.
• Skills tasks: the listening task uses Jaya’s letter (p. 12); the writing task is a poster on saving water during summer and when water is available in excess (p. 12).
• Poems: the Thinking about the Poem questions (pp. 14–15) expect you to read the image choices (crow, hemlock) and the rhyme scheme, not just the surface meaning.

A complete answer to a text question does three things: names the character, quotes or cites the story sentence, then states the idea in your own words — assertion, evidence, explanation.

Revision Summary: The Whole Chapter in One Read

First Flight closes this chapter without a printed summary block, so this timeline is built from the story itself — eight beats that recall the entire arc.

1. The ripe corn promises a good harvest; Lencho watches the north-east sky for rain (p. 3).
2. The rain arrives as ‘new coins’ — ten-cent drops and five-cent drops (p. 3).
3. Hail destroys everything; the field lies white as if covered with salt (p. 4).
4. A night of despair, and a single hope: help from God, who sees into one’s conscience (p. 5).
5. The letter — a hundred pesos — is addressed ‘To God’ and mailed (p. 5).
6. The postmaster’s ‘What faith!’ and the collection of a little more than half, signed ‘God’ (pp. 5–6).
7. No surprise, then anger: the count is seventy pesos (p. 6).
8. The second letter: send the rest, but not through the mail — ‘the post office employees are a bunch of crooks’ (p. 7).

Your learning checklist comes from the unit’s own list of what it does (pp. 12–13): the glossary words, the storm vocabulary, hope as verb and noun, non-defining relative clauses, negatives for emphasis, the metaphors, and the two poems.

Related Resources

This listing is maintained for the 2026-27 academic session using the NCERT textbook information available to us. NCERT remains the authority for confirming the latest edition.

If you are working through the book in order, the next chapter, Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, continues the theme of extraordinary human faith and courage. Both chapters sit in the Class 10 English notes hub, where you will find every chapter of the book as it is added.

For the wider picture, the Class 10 hub gathers every subject’s notes, and the CBSE notes library indexes notes across all classes. All chapter PDFs come from the official NCERT server for First Flight.

Reference: NCERT Class 10 English textbook, chapter 1, official edition on ncert.nic.in.

Sources and Data Verification

The chapter contents, questions and figures on this page come from the NCERT Class 10 English textbook First Flight, official edition as published on ncert.nic.in.

This page covers Chapter 1 of that book — the story A Letter to God together with the poems Dust of Snow and Fire and Ice — and not the other chapters of First Flight.

The listing is maintained for the current session using the NCERT information available to us.

NCERT settles textbook editions and official PDFs; CBSE settles the curriculum and syllabus. The two are not the same, so a chapter appearing in the book does not by itself prove that every part of it is examinable this session.

No review process beyond this page’s own checking is claimed.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the irony in A Letter to God?

The irony is that the post office employees who secretly collected money to help Lencho are the very people he calls ‘a bunch of crooks’. Lencho’s faith in God is so complete that he cannot see the human hands behind the reply: God could not have made a mistake, so someone must have stolen the rest (NCERT, pp. 6–7).

Why does Lencho write a letter to God and what does he ask for?

The hailstorm destroys his entire corn crop, so Lencho writes to God asking for a hundred pesos — enough to sow his field again and to live until the next crop comes (NCERT, p. 5).

Why does the postmaster sign the letter ‘God’ instead of his own name?

To protect Lencho’s faith. He is moved by the man’s belief — ‘What faith!’ — and fears that a reply signed by a human would shake it, so he answers the letter as God (NCERT, p. 5).

How much money does Lencho receive and why is he angry?

He receives seventy pesos — a little more than half of the hundred he asked for. He is angry because God could not have made a mistake, so he assumes the post office employees have kept the rest (NCERT, pp. 6–7).

What are the two conflicts in the story A Letter to God?

The conflict between humans and nature — the hailstorm destroys the harvest Lencho’s family depends on — and the conflict between humans themselves — Lencho against the post office employees he accuses (NCERT, p. 7).

What is the rhyme scheme of Fire and Ice and what do fire and ice stand for?

Counting the line endings of the printed poem gives A B A A B C B C B. Fire stands for desire — linked with greed, avarice, fury and lust — and ice stands for hate — linked with coldness, cruelty, intolerance, indifference, rigidity and hatred (NCERT, p. 15).