Fwd: 1 May 2013 (Prose and Poetry)

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From: Sonia Kohli <sonia...@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, May 1, 2013 at 1:26 PM
Subject: 1 May 2013 (Prose and Poetry)
To: Manas <manas3...@gmail.com>

Poem-1- My Mother at Sixty –Six

By Kamala Das

Main Theme

The poem, ‘My Mother at Sixty-Six’ rendered in blank verse, examines the theme of advancing age and the fear of loss and separation.

The poetess on way to the airport at Cochin is suddenly struck by the thought that her mother has grown old. This realization being sudden is alarming. Old age seems to have crept up on her and it is a reality that she finds hard to accept. Her corpse like an ashen face brings thoughts of her eventual death. Her mother sleeping beside her in the car appears pale and worn out and the green trees racing past and speeding car are a grim reminder that time has flown by. The joyous children playing outside give her the respite that she is seeking from her thoughts of old age and parting as they are representative of youth, energy and life. Perhaps they take her back to the days of her idyllic youth when her mother too was young and energetic or perhaps they bring to the fore the fear of losing her mother that haunts every young child. Once again she feels the insecurity of parting from her mother- who has lost the blush of youth and middle age and in the twilight of her life has become as pale as lusterless as the winter moon.

Beset with sorrow at this knowledge and with the insecurity and pain of parting the poetess at the airport bids her old mother goodbye, smiling all the time in a vain attempt to hide her real feelings.

Read the stanzas given below and answer the questions that follow each:

1. Driving from my parent’s home to Cochin last Friday

morning, I saw my mother, beside me,

doze, open mouthed, her face ashen like that

of a corpse and realized with pain that she was as old as she

looked but soon put that thought away, and looked out at young

trees sprinting, the merry children spilling out of their homes,

 

Questions:

A. Where was the poet driving to?

B. What did she notice while her mother sat beside her?

C. Why was her mother’s face like that of a corpse?

D. What did the poet do then?

E. Find words from the passage which mean:

i) felt ii) sleep lightly iii) dead body

 

but after the airport’s security check, standing a few yards

away, I looked again at her wan, pale as a late winter’s moon and felt that

old familiar ache, my childhood’s fear, but all said was, see you soon,

Amma, all i did was smile and smile…..

 

A) How were the young trees sprinting?

B) What did she see the children doing?

C) What is her childhood’s fear?

 

Short Answer Type Questions:

 

1. Where is the poet going and who is with her?

2. How does the poet’s mother look like? What kind of images has the poet used to signify her ageing decay?

3. Why does the poet ‘put that thought away’ and looks outside?

4. What does the poet see happening outside?

5. Describe the contrast of the scene inside the car with the activities going on outside. Describe the use of images that the poet employs to strike that contrast.

6. What does the poet do after the security check-up? What does she notice?

7. Why does the poet feel her old familiar ache and what is her childhood fear?

8. With fear and ache inside her heart and words of assurance on lips and smile on the face, the poet presents two opposite and contrasting experiences? Why does the poet put on a smile?

9. Describe the poetic devices used by Kamala Das in ‘My Mother at Sixty Six’.

Lesson 2-The Lost Spring

 

Short Questions

1. Where does the author meet Saheb every morning?

2. What reason did Saheb give for not going to school?

3. Bring out the contrast drawn between his life in reality and the meaning of his name?

4. What reason does a person give for walking barefoot? What is the author’s personal opinion regarding this reasoning?

5. Bring out the difference in the standard of living of the priests of the past and the present?

6. How does rag picking differ for an adult and for a child?

7. Why does the hole in the shoe not bother Saheb?

8. Was Saheb happy with the newfound job? If not, why?

9. Bring out the horrible condition within the glass blowing industry?

10. Describe the living condition in Firozabad?

11. Why does Mukesh`s grandmother feel it a futile exercise for Mukesh to fight taking up the job in glass blowing industry?

12. Why are they reluctant to form into cooperatives?

13. What all things comprise the vicious circle from where there is no escape?

14. Why is daring a difficult task? What cheers the narrator while talking to Mukesh?

15. Why is Mukesh content to dream only of cars and not of planes?

16. Why are promises to the poor rarely kept?

 

Essays

1. Do you think the child labour law should be enforced? If the child labour law is enforced

approximately how many rag pickers and how many bangle makers would be freed from

Seemapuri and Firozabad? Envisage the life Saheb and Mukesh would enjoy if they were freed? How would it be different from the present condition?

2. Bring out from the lesson the pathetic condition of children working in inhuman conditions?

3. Saheb has lost all the joy and freedom by working in the tea stall where he is no longer his own master. Do you think his decision was wise or could he have made a better choice? Or was it still better to leave him at rag picking where he was his own master?

4. Draw the similarities between the life of the rag pickers and the bangle makers as portrayed in Lost Spring

Poetry 1 - My Mother At Sixty Six

 

1. What did the mother look like? What made the poet feel so?

2. What did she realize with pain?

3. How did she take her mind off the thought?

4. What does ‘sprinting of trees’ and ‘spilling of children’ refer to’?

5. Bring out the contrast portrayed by the scene outside with the state of the poet’s

mother.

6. Why is the mother compared to ‘a late winter’s moon’?

7. What is the childhood fear of the poet

8. Though filled with negative thoughts in her mind, outwardly what did the poet reflect?

Substantiate your point from the words /phrases from the poem.

 

2. An Elementary School Classroom In A Slum

 

1. The poem begins on a very potent simile about the children’s faces. Explain.

2. Bring out the powerful imagery presented in the first stanza depicting despair and

disease

3. Why does the poet use ‘rat’s eye’ for the ‘paper seeming boy’?

4. Describe the powerfully telescopic image drawn by the picturisation of a sick boy.

5. Why is the class described referred to as ‘dim’?

6. Do you agree that the poet has dealt with a universal theme? How far has he succeeded

in depicting the role of every individual towards development of the underprivileged?

7. Where does the sweet and young boys’ mind wander? What does it show?

8. What are the things that adorn the walls of the classroom? Why does it have no

significance to the children?

9. Why is the ‘window’ depicted as the world of the children?

10. Why is their world far from river capes and star of words?

11. Why is Shakespeare wicked and maps a bad example?

12. What picture comes to your mind with the phrases ‘slag heap’ and ‘skin peeped

through by bones’?

13. Why is the mended glass referred to as ‘bottle bits of stones’?

14. Explain: “so blot their map with slums”

15. Why is the slum referred to as ‘catacombs’?

16. What is the significance of the white and green leaves?

17. What can create history?

18. Bring out the various poetic devices used by the poet to drive home the point

19. How far does he succeed in presenting an allegorical representation of haves and have-nots?

 

3. Keeping Quiet

 

1. What does the poet mean by keeping still?

2. In order to achieve stillness what are we to do?

3. The period of stillness would provide a peaceful world. Explain with reference to the

text?

4. Why does the poet not want any ‘truck with death’? How is inactivity and death

different from stillness he is advocating?

5. Why do we threaten ourselves with death and what is the solution for this threat?

6. Nature is a great teacher. Discuss.

 

LOST SPRING
1.Seemapuri a place on the periphery of Delhi yet miles away from it metaphorically. Justify this statement.
A. Seemapuri the rag pickers shanty is just in the outskirt of Delhi but it is far away from Delhi so far as Delhi’s glitter and amenities are concerned. Here the squatters of Bangladesh who came after 1971 war live in structures of mud with roof of tin or tarpaulin. There is no sewerage, drainage or pipe water that Delites enjoy.
2.Through the years rag picking has acquired the ‘proportion of a fine art’ in Seemapuri. Justify the statement.
A. The means of survival of migrants of Bangladesh in Seemapuri is rag picking. Garbage to them is gold. Like a fine art that has no end in appealing the sense of beauty the rag picker’s scrounging the garbage is a never ending process which provide them their daily bread day after day.
3.Does the rag picking mean the same thing for parents and children? Give reasons for your answer.
A. No, rag picking is not the same for parents and children. For children it is wrapped in wonders where as for parents it is the means of survival.
4.Why was not Saheb happy on getting a job?
A. Saheb was not happy on getting a job in tea stall for a salary of Rs.800/- per month as he lost his freedom. He had to carry the stall owner’s steel canister in place of his bag. He lost his carefree look He was now no longer his own master.
5.Why don’t the bangle makers of Firozabad organise themselves?
A. The bangle makers are trapped in the vicious circle of middlemen and police. If they organise a co operative they will be hauled up, beaten and dragged to jail by police for doing something illegal. There is no leader to help them out from their misery. They are the victims of greed and injustice.

My Mother at Sixty-Six

1. What did the poet realise looking at her mother in the car?
A. When the poet saw her mother’s face ashen like that of a corpse in the car she realised with pain that her mother has grown old and would die soon.
2.How was the scene outside the moving car different from the inside one?
A. Inside the car the scene was inert and lifeless. The poet’s old mother has dozed off. With her mouth slightly opened she was looking like a corpse. In contrast the scene outside was full of life and energy with trees sprinting and children spilling out of their homes.
3.How does the poet describe her mother?
A. The poet compares her sixty-six years old mother with late winter’s moon. In her old age she has become pale, wan and dim like the late winter’s moon whose journey of life will be over soon.
4. What is the old familiar ache the poet felt?
A. The childhood fear and pain about the aging and inevitability of death gripped the poet seeing her mother’s failing health. She realised soon her mother would die and she would be separated from her forever

An Elementary Classroom In a Slum
1.How do the children of the elementary school in a slum look?
A. They look grim. Their faces are pale and lifeless. The torn hair around their pale faces look like rootless weeds. They look ill, weak, exhausted and depressed due to malnutrition. Their eyes shine like the rat’s eyes in their diseased body.
2.How has the poet expressed his despair and hope?
A. The poet has expressed his despair through the paper-thin boy who has inherited his father’s gnarling disease and his hope through the unnoted boy who sits on the last seat and dreams of squirrel’s game out side the class room in the tree- trunk.
3. Why don’t the maps and pictures have any relevance to the children of the slum?
A. The maps and pictures that decorate the classroom walls belong to the world of rich. There is a big gap between the world in which the slum children live and the world of the rich. The beautiful wall hangings cannot cheer them as they are diseased and suffer from malnutrition and their future full of uncertainties.
4.What does the poet want for the children of the slum?
A. The poet does not want the children to be cramped in classrooms with pictures donated by the rich that have no relevance to their living; rather they should be allowed to explore the world, get strength from the Sun and fight the social injustice.

Keeping Quiet
1.Why does the poet want us to keep quiet?
A. The poet wants us to keep quiet to feel the strangeness of being quiet. When we all will keep quiet it will be an exotic moment which will allow us to establish communion with our fellow beings and all other living beings at spiritual level.
2. Does the poet advocate total inactivity and death by suggesting being quiet?
A. No, the poet does not advocate it. He wants no truck with death. In fact he wants to live life full bloodedly. But by advocating quietness he wants mixing of physical and spiritual aspect of life.
3.Why does not the poet want us to speak in any language?
A. The poet wants us not to speak in any language to introspect and know what we are about- know the meaning of our existence. He wants every body to know his spirit and have spiritual contact with others for sometime for which no language is required.