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Question
Bangle sellers are we who bear
Our shining loads to the temple fair...
Who will buy these delicate, bright
Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
For happy daughters and happy wives.
Read the lines given above and answer the question that follow.
Explain the line’ lustrous tokens of radiant lives’.
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Solution
The bangle sellers invite people to buy their bangles by praising the qualities of the bangles. They say they are the shining gifts that promise happy lives in the future to the wearer of the bangles. He thinks these bangles are the tokens of happy lives and happy marriages.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Find the words in the text which show Ustad Bismillah Khan’s feelings about the items listed below. Then mark a tick (✓ ) in the correct column. Discuss your answers in class.
| Bismillah Khan’s Feelings about | Positive | Negative | Neutral |
|
1. teaching children music |
|||
| 2. the film world | |||
| 3. migrating to the U.S.A | |||
| 4. playing at temples | |||
| 5. getting the Bharat Ratna | |||
| 6. the banks of the Ganga | |||
| 7. leaving Benaras and Dumraon |
Answer the following question.
“I got him for her by accident.”
(i) Who says this?
(ii) Who do ‘him’ and ‘her’ refer to?
(iii) What is the incident referred to here?
Listen to the poem.
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth,
And spotted the perils beneath.
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.
I wish I'd been that much more willin'
When I had more tooth there than fillin'
To pass up gobstoppers.
From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin'.
When I think of the lollies I licked,
And the liquorice all sorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.
My mother, she told me no end.
'If you got a tooth, you got a friend.'
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.
Oh, I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin'
And pokin' and fussin'
Didn't seem worth time-I could bite!
If I'd known, I was paving the way
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fillin's
Injections and drillin's,
I'd have thrown all me sherbet away.
So I lay in the old dentist's chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine,
In these molars of mine.
"Two amalgum," he'll say, "for in there."
How I laughed at my mother's false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath.
But now comes the reckonin'
It's me they are beckonin'
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.
About the Poet
Pam Ayres (1947- ) is a contemporary writer, a great entertainer who writes and performs
comic verse. She started writing poems and verses as a hobby and has appeared in every
major TV show in the U.K. She has published six books of poems, and cut seven record
albums including a collection of 50 best known poems.
Listen to an interview between a radio jockey and a pilot.
Some are Purple and gold flecked grey
For she who has journeyed through life midway,
Whose hands have cherished , whose love has blest,
And cradled fair sons on her faithful breast,
And serves her household in fruitful pride,
And worship the gods at her husband's side.
Read the lines given above and answer the question that follow:
Purple and golden coloured bangles represent motherhood. How?
The blocks were all lined up for those who would use them
The hundred-yard dash and the race to be run
These were nine resolved athletes in back of the starting line
Poised for the sound of the gun.
The signal was given, the pistol exploded
And so did the runners all charging ahead
But the smallest among them,he stumbled and staggered
And fell to the asphalt instead.
He gave out a cry in frustration and anguish
His dreams ands his efforts all dashed in the dirt
But as sure I'm standing here telling this story
The same goes for what next occurred.
Read the lines given above and answer the following question:
The word ‘exploded’ is used for the firing of the pistol. What does the phrase ‘so did the runners’ in line 2 of stanza 4 mean?
Beside him in the shoals as he lay waiting glimmered a blue gem. It was not a gem, though: it was sand—?worn glass that had been rolling about in the river for a long time. By chance, it was perforated right through—the neck of a bottle perhaps?—a blue bead. In the shrill noisy village above the ford, out of a mud house the same colour as the ground came a little girl, a thin starveling child dressed in an earth—?coloured rag. She had torn the rag in two to make skirt and sari. Sibia was eating the last of her meal, chupatti wrapped round a smear of green chilli and rancid butter; and she divided this also, to make
it seem more, and bit it, showing straight white teeth. With her ebony hair and great eyes, and her skin of oiled brown cream, she was a happy immature child—?woman about twelve years old. Bare foot, of course, and often goosey—?cold on a winter morning, and born to toil. In all her life, she had never owned anything but a rag. She had never owned even one anna—not a pice.
Why does the writer mention the blue bead at the same time that the crocodile is introduced?
Ans. The author mentions the blue bead at the same time that the crocodile is introduced to create suspense and a foreshadowing of the events’to happen.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Describe the blue bead.
How did Chandni feel on reaching the hills?
What did the squirrel do if someone came too close to his tree?
Which of the following BEST captures the central idea of the short story, The Medicine Bag?
