Narrative Essays (10 Samples) for ICSE / ISC

In narrative essays, students have to recount a personal experience or event with emotional depth​ using first person narrative and past tense. If you haven't already, please review the rules and structure of a narrative composition before going through this list of narrative essays.

Essay 1: A Time I Helped Someone

The Broken Cycle

The old man hadn't moved in twenty minutes, and that worried me. He sat on the pavement outside the metro station, his bicycle lying beside him, its front wheel bent at an angle that looked painful. The lunchtime crowd flowed around him like water around a stone—noticing his presence by avoiding him, but nothing more.

I was already late for coaching class. My mother's voice echoed in my head: "Don't stop for strangers. Don't get involved." But his face—wrinkled, defeated—pulled me over before logic could stop me.

"Uncle, are you hurt?" I asked in Hindi. He looked up, his eyes huge behind thick glasses repaired with tape. He wasn't hurt physically, he explained, but the bicycle was his livelihood—he delivered tiffins for a catering service. No bicycle meant no work meant no money. He spoke simply, without self-pity, which somehow made it worse.

The wheel was beyond simple repair. I googled cycle repair shops—the nearest was a kilometer away. He couldn't walk the broken cycle that far; he was seventy if he was a day. So I did something without thinking—I booked an auto-rickshaw and helped him load the bicycle.

At the repair shop, the mechanic quoted ₹800. The old man's face fell. He had two hundred. I heard myself saying, "I'll cover the rest." His protest was immediate and strong—he wasn't a beggar, he would repay me. I gave him my mother's phone number and told him to call when he could. I didn't expect to hear from him.

Four weeks later, my mother handed me ₹600 and a paper bag. Inside was a box of homemade barfi, so sweet it made my teeth hurt. The note, in shaky handwriting, read: "God bless you, beta."

I never saw him again, but that box of sweets taught me something important: help isn't about grand gestures. Sometimes it's just stopping when everyone else walks past. Sometimes it's choosing someone else's emergency over your own schedule. That day, I was late to class, but I learned something no textbook could teach—the quiet weight of doing the right thing, and how small acts of kindness spread outward in ways we'll never fully know.

Essay 2: A Misunderstanding That Taught Me Something

The Silent Treatment

Essay 3: A Day When Everything Went Wrong

Murphy's Law in Action

It began with my alarm, which didn't ring, which meant I woke at 8:07 to sunlight and panic. My exam started at 9:00, and school was forty-five minutes away. I threw on yesterday's uniform (questionable but necessary), grabbed my bag, and ran out—only to discover my bicycle had a flat tire.

My father's scooter was my backup plan until I realized he'd taken it to work. My mother agreed to drop me in her car, except the car refused to start. Battery dead. We stared at it, feeling betrayed.

Auto-rickshaw it was. The first three that passed were full. The fourth agreed, and then, two kilometers in, broke down. The driver kicked the engine repeatedly, cursing in creative ways, but the vehicle was dead. I paid him and started running.

I arrived at school at 9:23, soaked in sweat, gasping like a fish out of water. The guard informed me, with the seriousness of a doctor delivering bad news, that late entry was not allowed after 9:15. I begged. I might have cried a little. He didn't budge.

I sat on the steps outside the gate, my history textbook open on my lap, useless now. All those nights of studying—wasted. My mother would be disappointed. I'd have to take the retest.

As I sat feeling sorry for myself, the principal walked past. She stopped, asked why I looked like I'd fought a storm, and listened to my tale of disasters. Then she did something unexpected—she laughed. Not unkindly, but genuinely amused.

"Beta," she said, "do you know what Murphy's Law is? Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Today is your Murphy's Day. Tomorrow will be better." She wrote me a late entry note.

I took the exam and passed. More importantly, I learned something useful: terrible days happen to everyone. The alarm failure, flat tire, dead battery, broken auto—none were personal attacks. They were just bad luck and bad timing working together.

Murphy's Law has a lesser-known addition: This too shall pass. That day eventually ended, and life went back to normal. But now, when things go wrong in sequence, instead of panicking, I think: "Ah, Murphy's visiting." I acknowledge his presence, and then I keep moving.

Essay 4: The First Time I Traveled Alone

Solo Flight

Essay 5: An Act of Courage I Witnessed

The Girl Who Spoke

Essay 6: A Surprise That Changed My Perspective

The Gift I Didn't Want

For my fifteenth birthday, I made my wishes clear: a smartphone—not just any phone, but the specific model everyone in my class had. I dropped hints. I showed my parents advertisements. I even created a presentation explaining why this phone was educationally necessary.

So when my birthday arrived and the gift was a small, badly wrapped box containing a book—an actual physical book with yellowed pages—I couldn't hide my disappointment.

"The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank. My grandmother handed it to me with a smile that expected gratitude.

"Thanks," I muttered, setting it aside, eyes searching for other gifts. There weren't any.

That night, feeling cheated, I opened the book out of pure boredom. I expected to read a page and have proof it was boring. But something happened.

Anne's voice—honest, funny, sometimes irritating, completely human—pulled me in. Here was a girl my age, hiding from Nazis, writing because writing was her oxygen. She described fear, boredom, first love, family frustration. She was trapped in an attic, facing horrors I couldn't imagine, yet her spirit blazed through every page.

I read it in one sitting. When I closed the book at 2 AM, my eyes were wet. Anne Frank was my age when she died in a concentration camp. She never got to experience the life she wrote about wanting—freedom, normal life, becoming a writer.

I had freedom. I had safety. My grandmother had given me a book because she thought I needed perspective.

The next morning, I found her in the kitchen. "Dadi, thank you for the book."

She looked surprised by my sincerity. "Did you read it?"

"All of it."

She smiled. "That book is fifty years old. I read it when I was your age. It taught me that our problems, though real, are often small compared to what others face. And that gratitude is a choice."

I did eventually get a smartphone—six months later, earned through better grades. But that book sits on my shelf, reread annually. That birthday, I learned that the best gifts aren't the ones we ask for. Sometimes they're the ones we resist, wrapped in exactly what we need. Anne Frank taught me that life's quality isn't measured by possessions but by resilience and hope. That's a lesson worth more than any smartphone.

Essay 7: When I Lost Something Valuable

The Bracelet

Essay 8: An Incident That Conquered a Fear

Deep End

I was twelve before I admitted, out loud, that I was terrified of water. Not drinking water, but water you can drown in—pools, lakes, the ocean. While other kids jumped in happily, I clung to the pool edge, heart pounding.

My parents enrolled me in a summer swimming program. Coach Raghav was ex-navy—stern, weathered, with eyes that missed nothing. On day one, when my turn came, I admitted in a whisper, "I'm scared."

He didn't laugh or give false comfort. He just nodded. "Fear of water is smart. Water deserves respect. But let's teach your body it can handle this."

The first week, we didn't swim. We floated. He taught me to trust that water wants to hold you up. "Your body is a boat," he'd say. "Relax. Let it float." Relaxing while underwater seemed impossible, but gradually, in the shallow end, I managed it—lying on my back, his hand supporting my head, feeling the water cradle me.

Week two: breathing. He taught me to blow bubbles underwater, to turn my head and breathe while floating. It was unnatural, terrifying, but slowly became mechanical.

Week three was when it happened. Coach Raghav, without warning, asked me to swim from the shallow end to the deep end. My stomach dropped. "I can't. The deep end is—"

"Eight feet. If you panic, you stand up. If you can't stand, you float. You know how to float. You know how to breathe. You have the skills. Now you need trust."

"In you?"

"In yourself."

I stood at the shallow end, staring at the distance—twelve meters that looked like miles. I could back out. But I'd judge myself.

I pushed off.

The first strokes were pure panic—flailing, gasping, swallowing water. But Coach's voice carried: "Breathe. Turn your head. Kick. Breathe."

I focused on mechanics, not fear. Head turns. Inhale. Face down. Exhale. Kick. The deep end approached. The water below was too deep to stand, but I wasn't sinking.

My hand touched the deep end wall.

I'd done it. Coach gave me a rare smile and a thumbs-up.

That day, I learned that courage isn't the absence of fear. It's fear plus action. Conquering fear doesn't mean it disappears; it means you stop letting it make decisions for you. Water still demands respect, and I'm still cautious, but I swim now. Not fearlessly, but capably. And sometimes, that's enough.

Essay 9: A Decision I Regret

The Test I Didn't Take

Essay 10: The Day I Made Someone Smile

The Unexpected Audience

The old age home wasn't on my weekend plan, but community service hours were mandatory, and I'd waited until the deadline. So there I was, Saturday morning, armed with a nervous smile and oranges, feeling like an intruder.

The coordinator greeted me tiredly. "You can help with lunch or just sit and talk. They like company."

Company. I was sixteen, fluent in memes and awkward in real conversations. But I'd committed, so I entered the common room.

Twelve pairs of eyes turned toward me—some curious, some indifferent, some hopeful in a way that tightened my chest. An elderly man in a wheelchair gestured to the empty chair beside him.

"Name?" he asked, voice gravelly but strong.

"Aditya."

"I'm Mr. Kapoor. Retired mathematics teacher. Here for school service hours, I assume?" I nodded, embarrassed by how obvious it was.

He laughed. "Honesty is good. Do you have any talents?"

I thought of my average skills. "Not really."

"Everyone has something. What do you do for fun?"

"I do impressions sometimes. Bollywood actors, teachers..." I hadn't thought about this in years.

Mr. Kapoor's eyes lit up. "Show me."

Before self-consciousness could stop me, I slipped into my Amitabh Bachchan impression. Mr. Kapoor laughed—a sound like rusty machinery coming back to life. His laughter was contagious. Others listened.

"Do Shah Rukh!" someone called.

For twenty minutes, I performed—Shah Rukh, Rajinikanth, my principal. The room transformed. Laughter echoed, faces brightened, loneliness retreated.

When I stopped, Mr. Kapoor wiped tears from his eyes. "Thank you. You have no idea how long it's been since I laughed like that."

An elderly woman approached. "Can you come next week?"

I hadn't planned to. But looking at faces that had, briefly, forgotten their circumstances, I said, "Yes."

I returned the next Saturday, and the one after. Mr. Kapoor passed away three months later. At his memorial, his daughter thanked me. "You made his last months brighter."

I didn't feel like I'd done much. But for him, it had mattered.

That experience changed something in me. Making someone smile isn't small—it's connection in a disconnected world, reminding someone they're seen, valued, not forgotten. Mr. Kapoor taught me that my silly skill could be valuable when shared. Talent isn't what you do. It's what you do for others.