I went back to the bazaar and sat down in the shelter of the clock tower. The clock showed midnight. I felt for the notes. They were damp from the rain.
Anil's Money. In the morning he would probably have given me two or three rupees to go to the cinema, but now I had it all.
I couldn't cook his meals, run to the bazaar, or learn to write whole sentences any more.
I had forgotten about them in the excitement of the theft. Whole sentences, I knew, could one day bring me more than a few hundred rupees. It was a simple matter to steal- and sometimes just as simple to be caught.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · 2026-06-15 07:16 · grounding stimulus+chapter
Model Answer
(i) (D) He had no money to take admission in school.
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(ii) Hari Singh realises that by stealing and leaving, he has lost the chance to cook for Anil, run errands, and most importantly, learn to write whole sentences. He feels remorse because he valued these opportunities and now understands he has thrown them away for a few hundred rupees.
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(iii) Hari Singh is aware that education has far greater long-term value than theft. He understands that literacy could open doors to a better, more respectable future, showing he is not just a petty thief but a boy with ambition and the ability to think ahead.
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(iv) False. According to the extract, Hari Singh's guilt stemmed from the realisation that he had lost the chance to learn — "I couldn't … learn to write whole sentences any more." The extract does not directly state that Anil's trust was the cause of his guilt.
Source: The Thief's Story, The Theft and Its Aftermath
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Explanation
- (i) The extract mentions no school or school fees; all other options are implied by "I couldn't cook his meals, run to the bazaar, or learn to write whole sentences any more."
- (ii) The 2-mark answer needs two clear points: what he loses + why it hurts him. Avoid repeating the quote without analysis.
- (iii) 1-mark inference: focus on his foresight about education's value — examiners want character insight, not plot summary.
- (iv) Be careful: the question says "because Anil trusted him," but the extract specifically links his guilt to losing the opportunity to learn, not to trust. State False and support it with the extract. (Note: broader story context does mention trust, but the extract-based answer must be grounded in the given passage only.)