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प्रश्न
Why do you think that the poet has chosen the title ‘Telephone Conversation’? If you were to suggest another title for the poem, what would it be?
उत्तर
'Different- are We?' could be another suggestion for the title of the poem.
However, the poet has chosen a very appropriate title for the poem - 'Telephonic Conversation'. It refers very aptly to the shallow racism being projected by the conversation between the landlady who is 'white' and the poet who is 'dark'. The telephone symbolises the gap between the two ends of the line, the impossibility for both ends to meet.
APPEARS IN
संबंधित प्रश्न
B1. Select
Fill in the blanks choosing the correct alternatives from those given in the bracket:
(i) The author was inspired and motivated to read ............................................ by the time she was eleven.
[Shakespeare, Chaucer, G.B. Shaw]
(ii) Every lesson .......................... ......... took was spiced with half a dozen or more anecdotes.
[Mrs. Rowlands, Sister Monica, Mr. A.N. Patil]
(iii) The teachers helped the narrator to become ..................................... . .
[confident, happy, independent]
(iv) Mrs. Cynthia Nesamani and Sister Monica gave .......................................... to the narrator.
[freedom to do what he wanted, advice to do something, instructions to produce better results]
In a way, one of the greatest gifts any teacher can give a student, I think, is to inculcate a curiosity to learn.
I've been incredibly lucky to have at least one such teacher at every stage in my life. The first was Mrs. Rowlands who taught me in primary school. She taught me to read without ever pushing me. She made me want to read more by giving 'me some of the most interesting children's books available. And although I still love to go back to those books from time to time, it was only because of her that I was able to read Shakespeare by the time I was ten, and Chaucer a year later.
In later years, it was Mr. A.N. Patil, my Marathi and Hindi Teacher who made a huge impression on me. Every lesson he took, was spiced with half a dozen or more anecdotes from a wide variety of subjects: among them history, politics, religion and sociology. I was, and still am in awe of his knowledge, which despite rather desperate attempts, I doubt I'll ever be able to match.
There have also been other teachers who helped me to try to become independent: to think and act for myself using my own judgement, which to my mind has been just as, if not more important, than actually learning anything.
After all, it's much too easy to become a completely useless repository of facts and little else.
Two teachers whom I remember in particular are Mrs. Cynthia Nesamani and Sister Monica, both taught me in school. The former, by and large, gave me a free rein to do what I wanted to do. I, being one of those people who dislike instructions, she helped me to produce much better results than I'd have otherwise done.
B2.Complete
Read the extract and complete the following:
The teacher can
(i) .............
(ii) ..............
(iii )..............
(iv).................
B3. Similar word
Look at the following sentences arid pick the word having similar meaning to the given word and rewrite:
(i) Spiced His conversation is always with a lot of humour. (made interesting, garnished, flavoured)
(ii) Repository
The library should not merely be a ................ of books. (store-house, reservoir, tank)
(iii) Inculcate
It is the responsibility of the parents and teachers to .......values in the child's formative years. (imbibe, give, show)
(iv) Incredibly
I have been .. lucky to have at least one such teacher at every stage in my life. (importantly, unbelievably, beautifully)
B4. Language study
(i) There have also been other teachers. They have helped me to try to become
independent. (Combine using 'who')
(ii) It was only because of her that I was able-to read Shakespeare.
(Rewrite beginning with: If it was not for her, ).
B.5 Out motivators
Look at the following table and complete it by presenting your own views
| Personalities | Influence on your life |
| (i) Teachers | |
| (ii) Parents | |
| (iii) Relatives | |
| (iv) Friends |
How is the father’s helplessness brought out in the poem?
Give reasons for the following statement.
The article has been titled ‘Silk Road.’
Read the text below and summarise it.
The Great Desert Where Hippos Once Wallowed
The Sahara sets a standard for dry land. It’s the world’s largest desert. Relative humidity can drop into the low single digits. There are places where it rains only about once a century. There are people who reach the end of their lives without ever seeing water come from the sky.
Yet beneath the Sahara are vast aquifers of fresh water, enough liquid to fill a small sea. It is fossil water, a treasure laid down in prehistoric times, some of it possibly a million years old. Just 6,000 years ago, the Sahara was a much different place.
It was green. Prehistoric rock art in the Sahara shows something surprising: hippopotamuses, which need year-round water.
“We don’t have much evidence of a tropical paradise out there, but we had something perfectly liveable,” says Jennifer Smith, a geologist at Washington University in St Louis.
The green Sahara was the product of the migration of the paleo-monsoon. In the same way that ice ages come and go, so too do monsoons migrate north and south. The dynamics of earth’s motion are responsible. The tilt of the earth’s axis varies in a regular cycle — sometimes the planet is more tilted towards the sun, sometimes less so. The axis also wobbles like a spinning top. The date of the earth’s perihelion — its closest approach to the sun — varies in cycle as well.
At times when the Northern Hemisphere tilts sharply towards the sun and the planet makes its closest approach, the increased blast of sunlight during the north’s summer months can cause the African monsoon (which currently occurs between the Equator and roughly 17°N latitude) to shift to the north as it did 10,000 years ago, inundating North Africa.
Around 5,000 years ago the monsoon shifted dramatically southward again. The prehistoric inhabitants of the Sahara discovered that their relatively green surroundings were undergoing something worse than a drought (and perhaps they migrated towards the Nile Valley, where Egyptian culture began to flourish at around the same time).
“We’re learning, and only in recent years, that some climate changes in the past have been as rapid as anything underway today,” says Robert Giegengack, a University of Pennsylvania geologist.
As the land dried out and vegetation decreased, the soil lost its ability to hold water when it did rain. Fewer clouds formed from evaporation. When it rained, the water washed away and evaporated quickly. There was a kind of runaway drying effect. By 4,000 years ago the Sahara had become what it is today.
No one knows how human-driven climate change may alter the Sahara in the future. It’s something scientists can ponder while sipping bottled fossil water pumped from underground.
“It’s the best water in Egypt,” Giegengack said — clean, refreshing mineral water. If you want to drink something good, try the ancient buried treasure of the Sahara.
Staff Writer, Washington Post
What kind of a person do you think the narrator is?
Is drama a good medium for conveying a social message? Discuss.
What are the cues that signal the presence of the peacock in the vicinity?
Think and answer in your own words in your notebook.
Does the poem urge us to protect only worms? What is the general message conveyed through this poem?
Using a dictionary/internet note down the main difference between a developing nation and a developed nation.
Answer the given question in your own words.
Why did the Swallow finally decide not to leave the Prince?
‘Dull would he be of soul who could pass by.’
This line of the poem can be rewritten as:
'He would be of a dull soul.'
The figure of speech is known as ‘Inversion’.
Find out one more example of Inversion from the poem.
A past student of your school has cleared his UPSC examination and being an IAS officer has been appointed as a Collector of your district. Write a formal letter to invite him to your school to share the story of his success, at a special function.
Form groups and hold debates on the following topic. Make bulleted lists of points in favour of the topic (pros) and those against it (cons). (3-6 points each).
Boys cannot cook or do any housework.
Hold a mock trial for the following offence. There should be a complainant, a defendant, and lawyers to argue the case on behalf of them. The whole class can vote to pass the judgment. On what occasions will you plead for justice? What punishment will you suggest? When will you plead for mercy?
A very poor and honest servant has broken a vase while cleaning it. The vase was valuable and the employer liked it very much.
Find out the following with the help of your teacher and the internet.
Seasonal Rains (monsoon) in India and other countries.
There were no old cities left on the earth.
What was the grandfather wearing?
Who used the zither and how?
What qualities of Mr. Phileas Fogg are highlighted in this extract? Support your answer with suitable examples.
Read these lines and answer the questions given below.
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
- Who welcomes the fish? Why?
- Which line tells you that the crocodile is hungry?
Read the comic strip again. Make groups of four and frame some questions on what you have read. Each group should ask a question in turns. You cannot repeat the same question. The team which asks more questions is the winner.
e.g:
- Which are the foreign vegetables mentioned?
- What was sad for Columbus?
Why did the family move to Patna?
Jaswantgarh is named after the Indian soldier ______.
It keeps the sack in every little______.
Look at the picture and Choose the correct word.
Why was the teacher annoyed?
Fill in the blank with rhyming word.
larder- ______
What does the earth do when the day is over?
How did he challenge everybody?
On the basis of your understanding of the given passage, make notes in any appropriate format.
The Sherpas were nomadic people who first migrated from Tibet approximately 600 years ago, through the Nangpa La pass and settled in the Solukhumbu District, Nepal. These nomadic people then gradually moved westward along salt trade routes. During 14th century, Sherpa ancestors migrated from Kham. The group of people from the Kham region, east of Tibet, was called “Shyar Khamba”. The inhabitants of Shyar Khamba, were called Sherpa. Sherpa migrants travelled through Ü and Tsang, before crossing the Himalayas. According to Sherpa oral history, four groups migrated out of Solukhumbu at different times, giving rise to the four fundamental Sherpa clans: Minyagpa, Thimmi, Sertawa and Chawa. These four groups have since split into the more than 20 different clans that exist today
Sherpas had little contact with the world beyond the mountains and they spoke their own language. AngDawa, a 76-year-old former mountaineer recalled “My first expedition was to Makalu [the world’s fifth highest mountain] with Sir Edmund Hillary’’. We were not allowed to go to the top. We wore leather boots that got really heavy when wet, and we only got a little salary, but we danced the Sherpa dance, and we were able to buy firewood and make campfires, and we spent a lot of the time dancing and singing and drinking. Today Sherpas get good pay and good equipment, but they don’t have good entertainment. My one regret is that I never got to the top of Everest. I got to the South Summit, but I never got a chance to go for the top.
The transformation began when the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and the New Zealander Edmund Hillary scaled Everest in 1953. Edmund Hillary took efforts to build schools and health clinics to raise the living standards of the Sherpas. Thus life in Khumbu improved due to the efforts taken by Edmund Hillary and hence he was known as ‘Sherpa King’.
Sherpas working on the Everest generally tend to perish one by one, casualties of crevasse falls, avalanches, and altitude sickness. Some have simply disappeared on the mountain, never to be seen again. Apart from the bad seasons in 1922, 1970 and 2014 they do not die en masse. Sherpas carry the heaviest loads and pay the highest prices on the world’s tallest mountain. In some ways, Sherpas have benefited from the commercialization of the Everest more than any group, earning income from thousands of climbers and trekkers drawn to the mountain. While interest in climbing Everest grew gradually over the decades after the first ascent, it wasn’t until the 1990s that the economic motives of commercial guiding on Everest began. This leads to eclipse the amateur impetus of traditional mountaineering. Climbers looked after each other for the love of adventure and “the brotherhood of the rope” now are tending to mountain businesses. Sherpas have taken up jobs as guides to look after clients for a salary. Commercial guiding agencies promised any reasonably fit person a shot at Everest.
