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CBSE Class XII Board Exam Model Answers of 2011: Economics
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Madhya Pradesh Board HSSC RESULT 2012 District wise merit list
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NCERT Class XII Business Studies: Chapter 6 – Staffing
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NCERT Class XII Business Studies: Chapter 7 – Directing
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NCERT Class XII Business Studies: Chapter 8 – Controlling
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NCERT Class XII Business Studies: Chapter 9 – Business Finance
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NCERT Class XII Business Studies: Chapter 10 – Financial Markets
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NCERT Class XII Business Studies: Chapter 11 – Marketing
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NCERT Class XII Business Studies: Chapter 12 – Consumer Protection
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NCERT Class XII Business Studies: Chapter 13 – Entrepreneurship Development
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CBSE Class 12 Chemistry Notes: Electrochemistry – Electrolysis of H2SO4 (dilute)
Electrolysis of H2SO4 (dilute)
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NTSE Preparation – How to tackle word problems
In NTSE, about 5 questions are based on word problems at least. The main thing to keep in mind while handling such questions is to not get carried away by the statements, but to extract data efficiently. To help you better, we will narrow down on some most frequently asked types.
- Age related problems
- Distance and Speed related problems
- Unitary Method
- Ratio and Proportion
- Simple Equations
Age Problems
Eg : Four years ago Ram was four times as old as Shyam. Today he is twice as old. How old is Ram now?
Now remember, try to keep least variables. Let us take a variable x.
x = Shyam’s age 4 years ago
4*x = Ram’s age 4 years ago
x+4 = Shyam’s age now
4*x+4 = Ram’s age now
After you have decided your variables, now write the equations.
Ram’s age today =2 times Shyam’s age today
4x + 4 = 2x + 8
Subtract 2x from each side:
2x + 4 = 8
Subtract 4 from each side:
2x = 4
Divide both sides by 2:
x=2
Now note, this is only “x”. The question asked requires you to find Ram’s age now which is 4*x+4 = 12! Voila!
So in Age problems, you just need to take a variable, identify ages at different stages, then equate as per relation given.
Distance and Speed Relations
These should not be messed up. Just remember the thumb rule equations
Distance = speed x time
Speed = distance / time
Time = distance / speed
Also, take care of units. For example, if time is given in minutes, and speed is in Km/hr, convert all units to least denomination. Or as per your convenience. For example in case of minutes and Km/hr you can convert speed to m/sec and time to seconds or only convert speed to Km/minutes ( though you might get confused).
Unitary Method
Eg: The average salary of 20 workers in an office is Rs. 1900 per month. If manager’s salary is added the average salary becomes Rs. 2000 per month. What is the manager’s annual salary? (NTSE MAT 2009)
It is simply required to identify – what is information for x number of items and from that derive information for y number of items. From x, derive information for 1 item and from that, do for y.
For example the above question can be solved like this
Let manager’s salary be “x”
Total salary of workers = 20×1900=38000
Total salary of workers and manager=38000+x
New average salary=(38000+x)/21 [because new total number of people is 20+1]
New average salary=2000
So we can equate
(38000+x)/21=2000
Multiplying by 21 on both sides
38000+x=42000
Subtracting 38000 from both sides
x=4000
Thus the salary of the manager is 4000!
Ratio and Proportion
Solving these problems can be done simply by writing the ratios in terms of fractions and carrying operation of multiplication and division or simply cross multiplying.
Eg- 2:x=3:9
Write this as fraction – (2/x)= (3/9)
Cross multiplying
2*9=3*x
(2*9)/3=x
6=x
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Class 11 Chemistry Notes Stocihiometry – Glossary
Aliquot. A portion of the whole, usually a simple fraction. A portion of a sample withdraw from a volumetric flask with a pipet is called as aliquot.
Analytical concentration, The total number of moles per litre of a solute regardless of any reactions that might occur when the solute dissolves. Used synonymously with formality.
Equivalent. The amount of a substance which furnishes or reacts with 1 of H+ (acid-base), 1 mol of electrons (redox), or 1 mol of a univalent cation (precipitation and complex formation).
Equivalent weight. The weight in grams of one equivalent of a substance.
Equivalence point. The point in a titration where the number of equivalents of titrant is the same as the number of equivalents of analytic.
End point.The point in a titration where an indicator changes color.
Formula weight. The number of formula weights of all the atoms in the chemical formula of a substance.
Formality. The number formula weights of solute per liter of solution; synonymous with analytical concentration.
Indicator. A chemical substance which exhibits different colors in the presence of excess analyte or titrant.
Normality. The number of equivalents of solute per litre of solution.
Primary standard. A substance available in a pure form or state of known purity which is used in standardizing a solution.
Standardization. The process by which the concentration of a solution is accurately acertained.
Standard solution. A solution whose concentration has been accurately determined.
Titrant. The reagent (a standard solution) which is added from a buret to react with the analyte.
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JNVST 2012 Class Result of U.P. & Winter Bound JNVs
Click here for State Code & District Code – JNVST 2012 Class VI Result of U.P. & Winter Bound JNVs
The Navodaya Vidyalaya System is a unique experiment unparalleled in the annals of school education in India and elsewhere. Its significance lies in the selection of talented rural children as the target group and the attempt to provide them with quality education comparable to the best in a residential school system. Such children are found in all sections of society, and in all areas including the most backward. But, so far, good quality education has been available only to well-to-do sections of society, and the poor have been left out. It was felt that children with special talent or aptitude should be provided opportunities to proceed at a faster pace, by making good quality education available to them, irrespective of their capacity to pay for it.These talented children otherwise would have been deprived of quality modern education traditionally available only in the urban areas. Such education would enable students from rural areas to compete with their urban counterparts on an equal footing. The National Policy on Education-1986 envisaged the setting up of residential schools, to be called Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas that would bring out the best of rural talent.
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Class 12 Chemistry Notes – Electronic Structure & Prepration of Alcohols
Electronic structure of Alcohols:-
(i) In alcohols both oxygen and the carbon attached to it are sp3 hybridized
(ii) Two of the four sp3 hybridized orbitals of oxygen overlaps separately with l0 orbital of H and an sp3 orbital of carbon of alkyl group to form OH and C – O bond
Methods of preparation of alcohols:-
From Haloalkanes:- when HaloAlkanes (alkyl halides) are heated with aqueous sodium or Potassium Hydroxide, they forms alcohols
From Alkenes:- Alcohols can be produced from Alkenes by their Hydration, by passing alkenes through concentrated H2SO4 and then hydrolysis with boiling water gives alcohols.
Mechanism: – it involves following steps
(i) Electrophilic attack by hydroxyl union on alkenes gives a carbocation intermediate :-
(ii) Nucleophilic attack by water on 20 carbocation
(iii) Deprotonation or loss of proton to form alcohol
Hydroboration – oxidation :- B2H6 (Diborane) if C- deficient molecule it acts as an electrophilic and react with alkenes to form trialkylborates which on subsequent oxidation with alkaline H2O2 gives alcohols
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CCB 2012: First Round Allotment
Seat locking in various institutes under AIEEE Counselling was over on 25th June 2012. First round of allotment started on 26th Jun 2012 and its final list will be prepared by 27th Jun 2012.
Allotment Status can be checked by clicking here. Also you can check the complete list of first round of allotment institute wise by clicking here
Candidates have to download the print their allotment letter. The candidates who are allotted the seats should report to any of the Reporting Centers between June 28 2012 to 02 July 2012
While reporting on the reporting center students should keep their originals and other relevant documents for verification. Initial fee have to be paid by the candidate in case he/she accepts the admissions and can use the benefit of upgradation option if required. You will get provisional admission letter after this process.
Second Round of seat allotment will be held on 5th July 2012.
AIEEE 2012 Counselling Allotment
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AIEEE 2012 Counselling 2012 Quick Links
- TENTATIVE ADMISSION SCHEDULE
- Important Information
- Pre-allotment steps
- Seat Allotment and reporting to Reporting Center
- Reporting at Reporting Center/Allotted Institute
- The Fourth Round
- Internal Sliding
- Spot Round
- Important notes for the candidates
- ADMISSION PROCEDURE
- Reporting to the Reporting Center for Change of Options
- Reporting Option I Candidates again after Third Round
- Reporting to the Allotted Institute
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- Payment of Fees
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- ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENT
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- REPORTING CENTERS and HELP CENTERS
- LIST OF PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS
- Proformas for OBC and other certificates
Important Links
- AIEEE 2011 College Wise Cutoffs
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- AIEEE 2012 Counselling: Branches Offered
For any doubts and queries regarding AIEEE Admissions 2012 please post at : http://forum.aglasem.com/forumdisplay.php/14-AIEEE-Admissions
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NCERT Class XII English: Prose 1 – The Last Lesson
About the author
Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) was a French novelist and short-story writer. The Last Lesson is set in the days of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) in which France was defeated by Prussia led by Bismarck. Prussia then consisted of what now are the nations of Germany, Poland and parts of Austria. In this story the French districts of Alsace and Lorraine have passed into Prussian hands. Read the story to find out what effect this had on life at school.
Notice these expressions in the text. Infer their meaning from the context
- in great dread of
- counted on
- thumbed at the edges
- in unison
- a great bustle
- reproach ourselves with
I started for school very late that morning and was in great dread of a scolding, especially because M. Hamel had said that he would question us on participles, and I did not know the first word about them. For a moment I thought of running away and spending the day out of doors. It was so warm, so bright! The birds were chirping at the edge of the woods; and in the open field back of the sawmill the Prussian soldiers were drilling. It was all much more tempting than the rule for participles, but I had the strength to resist, and hurried off to school.
When I passed the town hall there was a crowd in front of the bulletin-board. For the last two years all our bad news had come from there — the lost battles, the draft, the orders of the commanding officer — and I thought to myself, without stopping, “What can be the matter now?”
Then, as I hurried by as fast as I could go, the blacksmith, Wachter, who was there, with his apprentice, reading the bulletin, called after me, “Don’t go so fast, bub; you’ll get to your school in plenty of time!”
I thought he was making fun of me, and reached
M. Hamel’s little garden all out of breath.
Usually, when school began, there was a great bustle, which could be heard out in the street, the opening and closing of desks, lessons repeated in unison, very loud, with our hands over our ears to understand better, and the teacher’s great ruler rapping on the table. But now it was all so still! I had counted on the commotion to get to my desk without being seen; but, of course, that day everything had to be as quiet as Sunday morning. Through the window I saw my classmates, already in their places, and M. Hamel walking up and down with his terrible iron ruler under his arm. I had to open the door and go in before everybody. You can imagine how I blushed and how frightened I was.
But nothing happened. M. Hamel saw me and said very kindly, “Go to your place quickly, little Franz. We were beginning without you.”
I jumped over the bench and sat down at my desk. Not till then, when I had got a little over my fright, did I see that our teacher had on his beautiful green coat, his frilled
shirt, and the little black silk cap, all embroidered, that he never wore except on inspection and prize days. Besides, the whole school seemed so strange and solemn. But the thing that surprised me most was to see, on the back benches that were always empty, the village people sitting quietly like ourselves; old Hauser, with his three-cornered hat, the for mer mayor, the for mer postmaster, and several others besides. Everybody looked sad; and Hauser had brought an old primer, thumbed at the edges, and he held it open on his knees with his great spectacles lying across the pages.
While I was wondering about it all, M. Hamel mounted his chair, and, in the same grave and gentle tone which he had used to me, said, “My children, this is the last lesson I shall give you. The order has come from Berlin to teach only German in the schools of Alsace and Lorraine. The new master comes tomorrow. This is your last French lesson. I want you to be very attentive.”
What a thunderclap these words were to me!
Oh, the wretches; that was what they had put up at the town-hall!
My last French lesson! Why, I hardly knew how to write! I should never learn any more! I must stop there, then! Oh, how sorry I was for not learning my lessons, for seeking birds’ eggs, or going sliding on the Saar! My books, that had seemed such a nuisance a while ago, so heavy to carry, my grammar, and my history of the saints, were old friends now that I couldn’t give up. And M. Hamel, too; the idea that he was going away, that I should never see him again, made me forget all about his ruler and how cranky he was.
Poor man! It was in honour of this last lesson that he had put on his fine Sunday clothes, and now I understood why the old men of the village were sitting there in the back of the room. It was because they were sorry, too, that they had not gone to school more. It was their way of thanking our master for his forty years of faithful service and of showing their respect for the country that was theirs no more.
While I was thinking of all this, I heard my name called. It was my turn to recite. What would I not have given to be able to say that dreadful rule for the participle all through, very loud and clear, and without one mistake? But I got mixed up on the first words and stood there, holding on to my desk, my heart beating, and not daring to look up.
I heard M. Hamel say to me, “I won’t scold you, little Franz; you must feel bad enough. See how it is! Every day we have said to ourselves, ‘Bah! I’ve plenty of time. I’ll learn it tomorrow.’ And now you see where we’ve come out. Ah, that’s the great trouble with Alsace; she puts off learning till tomorrow. Now those fellows out there will have the right to say to you, ‘How is it; you pretend to be Frenchmen, and yet you can neither speak nor write your own language?’ But you are not the worst, poor little Franz. We’ve all a great deal to reproach ourselves with.”
“Your parents were not anxious enough to have you learn. They preferred to put you to work on a farm or at the mills, so as to have a little more money. And I? I’ve been to blame also. Have I not often sent you to water my flowers instead of learning your lessons? And when I wanted to go fishing, did I not just give you a holiday?”
Then, from one thing to another, M. Hamel went on to talk of the French language, saying that it was the most beautiful
language in the world — the clearest, the most logical; that we must guard it among us and
never forget it, because when a people are enslaved, as long as they hold fast to their language
it is as if they had the key to their prison. Then he opened a grammar and read us our lesson.
I was amazed to see how well I understood it. All he said seemed so easy, so easy! I think, too, that
I had never listened so carefully, and that he had never explained everything with so much patience.
It seemed almost as if the poor man wanted to give us all he knew before going away, and to put it
all into our heads at one stroke.
After the grammar, we had a lesson in writing. That day M.
Hamel had new copies for us, written in a beautiful round hand
— France, Alsace, France, Alsace. They looked like little
flags floating everywhere in the school-room, hung from the rod at the top of our desks. You ought to have seen how every one set to work, and how quiet it was! The only sound was the scratching of the pens over the paper. Once some beetles flew in; but nobody paid any attention to them, not even the littlest ones, who worked right on tracing their fish-hooks, as if that was French, too. On the roof the pigeons cooed very low, and I thought to myself, “Will they make them sing in German, even the pigeons?”
Whenever I looked up from my writing I saw M. Hamel sitting motionless in his chair and gazing first at one thing, then at another, as if he wanted to fix in his mind just how everything looked in that little school-room. Fancy! For forty years he had been there in the same place, with his garden outside the window and his class in front of him, just like that. Only the desks and benches had been worn smooth; the walnut-trees in the garden were taller, and the hopvine that he had planted himself twined about the windows to the roof. How it must have broken his heart to leave it all, poor man; to hear his sister moving about in the room above, packing their trunks! For they must leave the country next day.
But he had the courage to hear every lesson to the very last. After the writing, we had a lesson in history, and then the babies chanted their ba, be bi, bo, bu. Down there at the back of the room old Hauser had put on his spectacles and, holding his primer in both hands, spelled the letters with them. You could see that he, too, was crying; his voice trembled with emotion, and it was so funny to hear him that we all wanted to laugh and cry. Ah, how well I remember it, that last lesson!
All at once the church-clock struck twelve. Then the Angelus. At the same moment the trumpets of the Prussians, returning from drill, sounded under our windows. M. Hamel stood up, very pale, in his chair. I never saw him look so tall.
“My friends,” said he, “I—I—” But something choked him. He could not go on.
Then he turned to the blackboard, took a piece of chalk, and, bearing on with all his
might, he wrote as large as he could —
“Vive La France!”
Then he stopped and leaned his head against the wall, and, without a word, he made a
gesture to us with his hand — “School is dismissed — you may go.”
Understanding the text
1. The people in this story suddenly realise how precious their language is to them. What shows you this? Why does this happen?
2. Franz thinks, “Will they make them sing in German, even the pigeons?” What could this mean? (There could be more than one answer.)
Talking about the text
1. “When a people are enslaved, as long as they hold fast to their language it is as if they had the key to their prison.”
Can you think of examples in history where a conquered people had their language taken away from them or had a language imposed on them?
2. What happens to a linguistic minority in a state? How do you think they can keep their language alive? For example:
Punjabis in Bangalore
Tamilians in Mumbai
Kannadigas in Delhi
Gujaratis in Kolkata
3. Is it possible to carry pride in one’s language too far?
Do you know what ‘linguistic chauvinism’ means?
Working with words
1. English is a language that contains words from many other languages. This inclusiveness is one of the reasons it is now a world language, For example:
petite – French
kindergarten – German
capital – Latin
democracy – Greek
bazaar – Hindi
Find out the origins of the following words.
tycoon, barbecue, zero, tulip, veranda, ski, logo, robot, trek, bandicoot
2. Notice the underlined words in these sentences and tick the option that best explains their meaning.
(a) “What a thunderclap these words were to me!”
The words were
(i) loud and clear.
(ii) startling and unexpected.
(iii) pleasant and welcome.
(b) “When a people are enslaved, as long as they hold fast to their language it is as if they had the key to their prison” It is as if they have the key to the prison as long as they
(i) do not lose their language.
(ii) are attached to their language.
(iii) quickly learn the conqueror’s language.
(c) Don’t go so fast, you will get to your school in plenty of time. You will get to your school
(i) very late.
(ii) too early.
(iii) early enough.
(d) I never saw him look so tall.
M. Hamel (a) had grown physically taller
(b) seemed very confident
(c) stood on the chair
Noticing form
Read this sentence
M. Hamel had said that he would question us on participles. In the sentence above, the verb form “had said” in the first part is used to indicate an “earlier past”. The whole story is narrated in the past. M. Hamel’s “saying” happened earlier than the events in this story. This form of the verb is called the past perfect.
Pick out five sentences from the story with this form of the verb and say why this form has been used.
Writing
1. Write a notice for your school bulletin board. Your notice could be an announcement of a forthcoming event, or a requirement to be fulfilled, or a rule to be followed.
2. Write a paragraph of about 100 words arguing for or against having to study three languages at school.
3. Have you ever changed your opinion about someone or something that you had earlier liked or disliked? Narrate what led you to change your mind.
Things to do
1. Find out about the following (You may go to the internet, interview people, consult reference books or visit a library.)
(a) Linguistic human rights
(b) Constitutional guarantees for linguistic minorities in India.
2. Given below is a survey form. Talk to at least five of your classmates and fill in the information you get in the form.
ABOUT THE UNIT
THEME
The pain that is inflicted on the people of a territory by its conquerors by taking away the right to study or speak their own language.
SUB-THEME
Student and teacher attitudes to learning and teaching.
READING COMPREHENSION
The comprehension check at the end of each section in the unit helps pupils make sure that they have understood the facts before they move on to the next section. One session of forty minutes is likely to be enough for one section of the unit.
Pupils can read each section silently and discuss the answers in pairs.
The questions at the end of the unit are inferential. These help pupils make sense of the writer’s intention in focussing on a local episode and to comment on an issue of universal significance. There could be a follow-up discussion on parts for which students need explanation.
TALKING ABOUT THE TEXT
Topics to be discussed in small groups or pairs. This shall help pupils think of issues that relate to the realities of the society they live in. Gives scope for developing speaking skills in the English language on varied issues. Fluency development.
WORKING WITH WORDS
To make pupils aware of
- the enrichment of the English language through borrowings from the other languages.
- idiomatic expressions and figurative use of language.
NOTICING FORM
To make pupils notice tense form and understand the context of its use.
WRITING
- Practice in a functional genre, e.g., bulletin.
- Argumentative writing on a topic related to their life at school.
- Narrating subjective experience discussing personal likes and dislikes.
THINGS TO DO
Extension activity that will help pupils understand language rights of citizens and the problems of linguistic minorities. Social and political awareness.
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NCERT Class XII English: Prose 2 – Lost Spring
About the author
Anees Jung (1964) was born in Rourkela and spent her childhood and adolescence in Hyderabad. She received her education in Hyderabad and in the United States of America. Her parents were both writers. Anees Jung began her career as a writer in India. She has been an editor and columnist for major newspapers in India and abroad, and has authored several books. The following is an excerpt from her book titled Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood. Here she analyses the grinding poverty and traditions which condemn these children to a life of exploitation.
Notice these expressions in the text.
Infer their meaning from the context.
looking for
slog their daylight hours
roof over his head
perpetual state of poverty
dark hutments
imposed the baggage on the child
Sometimes I find a Rupee in the garbage’
“Why do you do this?” I ask Saheb whom I encounter every morning scrounging for gold in the garbage dumps of my neighbourhood. Saheb left his home long ago. Set amidst the green fields of Dhaka, his home is not even a distant memory. There were many storms that swept away their fields and homes, his mother tells him. That’s why they left, looking for gold in the big city where he now lives.
“I have nothing else to do,” he mutters, looking away. “Go to school,” I say glibly, realising immediately how
hollow the advice must sound.
“There is no school in my neighbourhood. When they build one, I will go.”
“If I start a school, will you come?” I ask, half-joking. “Yes,” he says, smiling broadly.
A few days later I see him running up to me. “Is your school ready?”
“It takes longer to build a school,” I say, embarrassed at having made a promise that was not meant. But promises like mine abound in every corner of his bleak world.
After months of knowing him, I ask him his name. “Saheb-e-Alam,” he announces. He does not know what it means. If he knew its meaning — lord of the universe — he would have a hard time believing it. Unaware of what his name represents, he roams the streets with his friends, an army of barefoot boys who appear like the morning birds and disappear at noon. Over the months, I have come to recognise each of them.
“Why aren’t you wearing chappals?” I ask one.
“My mother did not bring them down from the shelf,”
he answers simply.
“Even if she did he will throw them off,” adds another who is wearing shoes that do not match. When I comment on it, he shuffles his feet and says nothing. “I want shoes,” says a third boy who has never owned a pair all his life. Travelling across the country I have seen children walking barefoot, in cities, on village roads. It is not lack of money but a tradition to stay barefoot, is one explanation. I wonder
if this is only an excuse to explain away a perpetual state of poverty.
I remember a story a man from Udipi once told me. As a young boy he would go to school past an old temple, where his father was a priest. He would stop briefly at the temple and pray for a pair of shoes. Thirty years later I visited his town and the temple, which was now drowned in an air of desolation. In the backyard, where lived the new priest, there were red and white plastic chairs. A young boy dressed in a grey uniform, wearing socks and shoes, arrived panting and threw his school bag on a folding bed. Looking at the boy, I remembered the prayer another boy had made to the goddess when he had finally got a pair of shoes, “Let me never lose them.” The goddess had granted his prayer. Young boys like the son of the priest now wore shoes. But many others like the ragpickers in my neighbourhood remain shoeless.
My acquaintance with the barefoot ragpickers leads me to Seemapuri, a place on the periphery of Delhi yet miles away from it, metaphorically. Those who live here are squatters who came from Bangladesh back in 1971. Saheb’s family is among them. Seemapuri was then a wilderness. It still is, but it is no longer empty. In structures of mud, with roofs of tin and tarpaulin, devoid of sewage, drainage or running water, live 10,000 ragpickers. They have lived here for more than thirty years without an identity, without permits but with ration cards that get their names on voters’ lists and enable them to buy grain. Food is more important for survival than an identity. “If at the end of the day we can feed our families and go to bed without an aching stomach, we would rather live here than in the fields that gave us no grain,” say a group of women in tattered saris when I ask them why they left their beautiful land of green fields and rivers. Wherever they find food, they pitch their tents that become transit homes. Children grow up in them, becoming partners in survival. And survival in Seemapuri means rag-picking. Through the years, it has acquired the proportions of a fine art. Garbage to them is gold. It is their daily bread, a roof over their heads, even if it is a leaking roof. But for a child it is even more.
“I sometimes find a rupee, even a ten-rupee note,” Saheb says, his eyes lighting up. When you can find a silver coin in a heap of
garbage, you don’t stop scrounging, for there is hope of finding more. It seems that for children, garbage has a
meaning different from what it means to their parents. For the children it is wrapped in wonder, for the elders it is a means of survival.
One winter morning I see Saheb standing by the fenced gate of the neighbourhood club, watching two young men dressed
in white, playing tennis. “I like the game,” he hums, content to watch it standing behind the fence. “I go inside when no one is around,” he admits. “The gatekeeper lets me use the swing.”
Saheb too is wearing tennis shoes that look strange over his discoloured shirt and shorts. “Someone gave them to me,” he says in the manner of an explanation. The fact that they are discarded shoes of some rich boy, who perhaps refused to wear them because of a hole in one of them, does not bother him. For one who has walked barefoot, even shoes with a hole is a dream come true. But the game he is watching so intently is out of his reach.
This morning, Saheb is on his way to the milk booth. In his hand is a steel canister. “I now work in a tea stall down the road,” he says, pointing in the distance. “I am paid
800 rupees and all my meals.” Does he like the job? I ask. His face, I see, has lost the carefree look. The steel canister seems heavier than the plastic bag he would carry so lightly
over his shoulder. The bag was his. The canister belongs to the man who owns the tea shop. Saheb is no longer his own master!
“I want to drive a car”
Mukesh insists on being his own master. “I will be a motor mechanic,” he announces.“Do you know anything about cars?” I ask.
“I will learn to drive a car,” he answers, looking straight into my eyes. His dream looms like a mirage amidst the dust of streets that fill his town Firozabad, famous for its bangles. Every other family in Firozabad is engaged in making bangles. It is the centre of India’s glass-blowing industry where families have spent generations working around furnaces, welding glass, making bangles for all the women in the land it seems.
Mukesh’s family is among them. None of them know that it is illegal for children like him to work in the glass furnaces with high temperatures, in dingy cells without air and light; that the law, if enforced, could get him and all those 20,000 children out of the hot furnaces where they slog their daylight hours, often losing the brightness of their eyes. Mukesh’s eyes beam as he volunteers to take me home, which he proudly says is being rebuilt. We walk down stinking lanes choked with garbage, past homes that remain hovels with crumbling walls, wobbly doors, no windows, crowded with families of humans and animals coexisting in a primeval state. He stops at the door of one such house, bangs a wobbly iron door with his foot, and pushes it open. We enter a half-built shack. In one part of it, thatched with dead grass, is a firewood stove over which sits a large vessel of sizzling spinach leaves. On the ground, in large aluminium platters, are more chopped vegetables. A frail young woman is cooking the evening meal for the whole family. Through eyes filled with smoke she smiles. She is the wife of Mukesh’s elder brother. Not much older in years, she has begun to command respect as the bahu, the daughter-in- law of the house, already in charge of three men — her husband, Mukesh and their father. When the older man enters, she gently withdraws behind the broken wall and brings her veil closer to her face. As custom demands, daughters-in-law must veil their faces before male elders. In this case the elder is an impoverished bangle maker. Despite long years of hard labour, first as a tailor, then a bangle maker, he has failed to renovate a house, send his two sons to school. All he has managed to do is teach them what he knows — the art of making bangles.
“It is his karam, his destiny,” says Mukesh’s grandmother, who has watched her own husband go blind with the dust from polishing the glass of bangles. “Can a god-given lineage ever be broken?” she implies. Born in the caste of bangle makers, they have seen nothing but bangles
— in the house, in the yard, in every other house, every other yard, every street in Firozabad. Spirals of bangles — sunny gold, paddy green, royal blue, pink, purple, every colour born out of the seven colours of the rainbow — lie in mounds in unkempt yards, are piled on four -wheeled handcarts, pushed by young men along the narrow lanes of the shanty town. And in dark hutments, next to lines of flames of flickering oil lamps, sit boys and girls with their fathers and mothers, welding pieces of coloured glass into circles of bangles. Their eyes are more adjusted to the dark than to the light outside. That is why they often end up losing their eyesight before they become adults.
Savita, a young girl in a drab pink dress, sits alongside an elderly woman, soldering pieces of glass. As her hands move mechanically like the tongs of a machine, I wonder if she knows the sanctity of the bangles she helps make. It symbolises an Indian woman’s suhaag, auspiciousness in marriage. It will dawn on her suddenly one day when her head is draped with a red veil, her hands dyed red with henna, and red bangles rolled onto her wrists. She will then become a bride. Like the old woman beside her who became one many years ago. She still has bangles on her wrist, but no light in her eyes. “Ek waqt ser bhar khana bhi nahin khaya,” she says, in a voice drained of joy. She has not enjoyed even one full meal in her entire lifetime — that’s what she has reaped! Her husband, an old man with a flowing beard, says, “I know nothing except bangles. All I have done is make a house for the family to live in.”
Hearing him, one wonders if he has achieved what many have failed in their lifetime. He has a roof over his head!
The cry of not having money to do anything except carry on the business of making bangles, not even enough to eat, rings in every home. The young men echo the lament of their elders. Little has moved with time, it seems, in Firozabad. Years of mind-numbing toil have killed all initiative and the ability to dream.
Why not organise yourselves into a cooperative?” I ask a group of young men who have fallen into the vicious circle of middlemen who trapped their fathers and forefathers. “Even if we get organised, we are the
ones who will be hauled up by the police, beaten and dragged to jail for doing
something illegal,” they say. There is no leader among them, no one
who could help them see things differently. Their fathers are as tired as
they are. They talk endlessly in a spiral that moves from poverty to apathy to greed and to injustice.
Listening to them, I see two distinct worlds — one
of the family, caught in
a web of poverty, burdened by the stigma of caste in which they are born; the other a vicious circle of the sahukars, the middlemen, the policemen, the keepers of law, the bureaucrats and the politicians. Together they have imposed the baggage on the child that he cannot put down. Before he is aware, he accepts it as naturally as his father. To do anything else would mean to dare.
And daring is not part of his growing up. When I sense a flash of it in Mukesh I am cheered. “I want to be a motor mechanic,’ he repeats. He will go to a garage and learn. But the garage is a long way from his home. “I will walk,” he insists. “Do you also dream of flying a plane?” He is suddenly silent. “No,” he says, staring at the ground. In his small murmur there is an embarrassment that has not yet turned into regret. He is content to dream of cars that he sees hurtling down the streets of his town. Few airplanes fly over Firozabad.
Understanding the text
1. What could be some of the reasons for the migration of people from villages to cities?
2. Would you agree that promises made to poor children are rarely kept? Why do you think this happens in the incidents narrated in the text?
3. What forces conspire to keep the workers in the bangle industry of Firozabad in poverty?
Talking about the text
1. How, in your opinion, can Mukesh realise his dream?
2. Mention the hazards of working in the glass bangles industry.
3. Why should child labour be eliminated and how?
Thinking about language
Although this text speaks of factual events and situations of misery it transforms these situations with an almost poetical prose into a literary experience. How does it do so? Here are some literary devices:
• Hyperbole is a way of speaking or writing that makes something sound better or more exciting than it really is. For example: Garbage to them is gold.
• A Metaphor, as you may know, compares two things or ideas that are not very similar. A metaphor describes a thing in terms of a single quality or feature of some other thing; we can say that a metaphor “transfers” a quality of one thing to another. For example: The road was a ribbon of light.
• Simile is a word or phrase that compares one thing with another using the words “like” or “as”. For example: As white as snow.
Carefully read the following phrases and sentences taken from the text. Can you identify the literary device in each example?
1. Saheb-e-Alam which means the lord of the universe is directly in contrast to what Saheb is in reality.
2. Drowned in an air of desolation.
3. Seemapuri, a place on the periphery of Delhi yet miles away from it, metaphorically.
4. For the children it is wrapped in wonder; for the elders it is a means of survival.
5. As her hands move mechanically like the tongs of a machine, I wonder if she knows the sanctity of the bangles she helps make.
6. She still has bangles on her wrist, but not light in her eyes.
7. Few airplanes fly over Firozabad.
8. Web of poverty.
9. Scrounging for gold.
10. And survival in Seemapuri means rag-picking. Through the years, it has acquired the proportions of a fine art.
11. The steel canister seems heavier than the plastic bag he would carry so lightly over his shoulders.
Things to do
The beauty of the glass bangles of Firozabad contrasts with the misery of people who produce them.
This paradox is also found in some other situations, for example, those who work in gold and diamond mines, or carpet weaving factories, and the products of their labour, the lives of construction workers, and the buildings they build.
z Look around and find examples of such paradoxes.
z Write a paragraph of about 200 to 250 words on any one of them. You can start by making notes.
Here is an example of how one such paragraph may begin:
You never see the poor in this town. By day they toil, working cranes and earthmovers, squirreling deep into the hot sand to lay the foundations of chrome. By night they are banished to bleak labour camps at the outskirts of the city…
ABOUT THE
THEME
The plight of street children forced into labour early in life and denied the opportunity of schooling.
SUB-THEME
The callousness of society and the political class to the sufferings of the poor.
COMPREHENSION
Factual understanding and responding with sensitivity. Thinking on socio-economic issues as a take-off from the text.
TALKING ABOUT THE TEXT
• Fluency development
• Social awareness
Discussion on
‹ the dreams of the poor and the reality.
‹ problems of child labour.
THINKING ABOUT LANGUAGE
Focus on the use of figures of speech in writing.
THINGS TO DO
Observation of the paradoxes in the society we live in.
WRITING
Note-making and reporting.
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NCERT Class XII English Book
Prose
- The Last Lesson
- Lost Spring
- Deep Water
- The Rattrap
- Indigo
- Poets and Pancakes
- The Interview (I)
- The Interview (II)
- Going Places
Poetry
- My Mother at Sixty-Six
- An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum
- Keeping Quiet
- A Thing of Beauty
- A Roadside Stand
- Aunt Jennfer’s Tigers
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NCERT Class XII English: Poetry 1 – My Mother at Sixty-Six
About the poet
Kamala Das (1934) was born in Malabar, Kerala. She is recognised as one of India’s foremost poets. Her works are known for their originality, versatility and the indigenous flavour of the soil. Kamala Das has published many novels and short stories in English and Malayalam under the name ‘Madhavikutty’. Some of her works in English include the novel Alphabet of Lust (1977), a collection of short stories Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories (1992), in addition to five books of poetry. She is a sensitive writer who captures the complex subtleties of human relationships in lyrical idiom, My Mother at Sixty-six is an example.
Before you read
Ageing is a natural process; have you ever thought what our elderly parents expect from us?
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 realised with pain
that she thought away, and looked but soon put that thought away, and looked out at young trees sprinting, the merry children spilling out of their homes, 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 I said was, see you soon, Amma,
all I did was smile and smile and smile……
sprinting : short fast race, running wan : colourless
Think it out
1. What is the kind of pain and ache that the poet feels?
2. Why are the young trees described as ‘sprinting’?
3. Why has the poet brought in the image of the merry children ‘spilling out of their homes’?
4. Why has the mother been compared to the ‘late winter’s moon’?
5. What do the parting words of the poet and her smile signify?
Notice that the whole poem is in a single sentence, punctuated by commas.
It indicates a single thread of thought interspersed with observations of the real world around and the way these are connected to the main idea.
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