BSEB • Class 6 • English • Ch 8
Estimated Time: 45 Mins
Study Progress: In Progress
A Game of Chance & Vocation
Unit 8 of the Class 6 English curriculum (Honeysuckle / BSEB Bihar Board) presents a powerful dual exploration of childhood desires, economic realities, and emotional maturation. The unit couples a classic moral narrative on financial prudence, A Game of Chance, with Rabindranath Tagore's poignant free-verse poem on childhood innocence and labor, Vocation.
The prose narrative, A Game of Chance, opens during the joyous festival of Eid. In Rasheed's village, the Eid fair was an enormous annual event that lasted for many days. Tradesmen and artisans from distant districts gathered with diverse merchandise, selling everything from tiny pins to large buffaloes and cows. Rasheed visits the vibrant fair accompanied by his loving Uncle and their loyal domestic help, Bhaiya. Before stepping away to greet personal friends, Uncle gives Rasheed a strict and affectionate warning: he must not wander through the crowded lanes alone, nor should he purchase any goods until Uncle returns. Rasheed promises to obey.
While strolling with Bhaiya from stall to stall, Rasheed arrives at the Lucky Shop. The shopkeeper is a middle-aged man with an impassive, neutral expression—neither overly cheerful nor visibly stern. His game seems deceptively simple and egalitarian: a table displays ten round wooden discs, numbered from 1 to 10, placed face down. A player pays 50 paise, picks up any six discs, adds the numbers printed on them, and wins whatever article on the shelves bears that matching total. The shelves are packed with dazzling prizes, including shining wrist watches, fountain pens, wall clocks, and electric table lamps.
To entice the passing crowd, the shopkeeper employs a calculated psychological trap using collusive shills—fake customers planted to stage miraculous wins. First, an elderly man pays 50 paise, turns over six discs, totals 15, and wins a beautiful wall clock. The old man pretends he has no need for a clock, and the obliging shopkeeper buys it back on the spot for fifteen crisp rupees, sending the old man away grinning with cash. Moments later, a young boy slightly older than Rasheed plays multiple rounds. In rapid succession, the boy wins a comb, an expensive fountain pen, a wrist watch, and finally a gleaming table lamp. Each time, the shopkeeper buys the prize back for handsome sums of money, leaving the boy pocketing over twenty-five rupees.
Dazzled by these effortless triumphs, young Rasheed falls into the trap of greed. Convinced that fortune will favor him as well, he looks at Bhaiya, who encourages him to test his luck. Rasheed pays his first 50 paise. To his dismay, his numbers total a cheap plastic comb worth only 25 paise. Smiling politely, the shopkeeper offers to buy the comb back for 25 paise, encouraging Rasheed to try again. Entrapped by the classic sunk-cost fallacy, Rasheed continues playing round after round, desperately hoping his big breakthrough is just one turn away. Instead, he wins only trifling items—an ink bottle, a few cheap pencils—each bought back by the dealer for a fraction of a rupee. Rasheed continues playing until his very last fifty-paise coin is completely gone. Surrounding villagers gather around, staring and laughing at his misfortune, while not a single person offers sympathy. Disgraced, broke, and humiliated, Rasheed and Bhaiya retreat to the designated meeting spot to await Uncle.
When Uncle returns and notices Rasheed's long face, Bhaiya explains the entire fiasco. Far from exploding in anger or scolding the boy, Uncle displays remarkable empathy, wisdom, and gentleness. He pats Rasheed on the back, buys him a beautiful umbrella, delicious sweets, ribbons, and small festive gifts, and escorts him home in high spirits. Once home, Uncle sits down with Rasheed to demystify the entire concept of luck. Uncle reveals that the game was neither good luck nor bad luck; it was a carefully orchestrated fraud. The old man and the lucky boy were secret accomplices of the shopkeeper, deliberately staging extravagant wins to excite the greed of gullible children. Uncle imparts a lifelong lesson in self-respect and emotional maturity: Forget about it, and do not tell anybody of your bad luck or your foolishness.
Following this narrative on economic discernment, the unit transitions into the poetic realm with Rabindranath Tagore's celebrated poem, Vocation. Written from the first-person perspective of a young schoolboy, the poem explores the romantic contrast between the strict regimentation of childhood schooling and the perceived freedom of manual workers.
The poem is structured around three distinct times of day. At ten o'clock in the morning, while walking to school along the village lane, the boy encounters a street hawker crying out: Bangles, crystal bangles! Seeing the vendor stroll at his own relaxed pace, the child envies the hawker's absolute autonomy: the vendor has no ringing bells to hurry him, no fixed road he must take, and no mandatory hour to return home. The child innocently sighs: I wish I were a hawker, spending my day in the road, crying, Bangles, crystal bangles!
At four o'clock in the afternoon, returning from school, the boy looks through the gate of a compound and observes a gardener vigorously digging the earth with his spade. The gardener does whatever he pleases with his spade: he soils his clothes with dust, and nobody scolds him if he gets baked under the blistering sun or drenched in a sudden downpour. Bound by domestic cleanliness and parental discipline, the boy yearns for this dirty physical liberty, wishing he could become a gardener digging away in the soil with no one to stop him.
Finally, as dusk falls and his mother sends him to bed, the child gazes through the open window of his room into the dark, lonely street outside. The street-lamp stands like a giant with a red eye in its head, and the night watchman walks up and down swinging his glowing lantern, his shadow marching beside him. Mesmerized by the solitary night, the child wishes he could become a watchman, walking the silent streets all night and playfully chasing shadows with his lantern.
Tagore's poem captures the universal longing of childhood to escape adult-imposed schedules and routines. Yet beneath its innocent fantasy lies a profound social commentary: the child's heart instinctively recognizes the beauty and dignity in manual vocations that adult society often dismisses as humble or wearying. Together, the prose and poem form an indispensable moral handbook on critical thinking, consumer vigilance, and the timeless dignity of honest human labor.
