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
Lost Spring/19
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
20/Flamingo
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?
1. What makes the city of
Firozabad famous?
2. Mention the hazards of working
in the glass bangles industry.
3. How is Mukesh�s attitude to his
situation different from that of
his family?
Lost Spring/21
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.
22/Flamingo
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.
??
Look around and find examples of such paradoxes.
??
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.
Deep Water
About the author
William Douglas (1898-1980) was born in Maine,
Minnesota. After graduating with a Bachelors of Arts
in English and Economics, he spent two years teaching
high school in Yakima. However, he got tired of this and
decided to pursue a legal career. He met Franklin D.
Roosevelt at Yale and became an adviser and friend to
the President. Douglas was a leading advocate of
individual rights. He retired in 1975 with a term lasting
thirty-six years and remains the longest-serving Justice
in the history of the court. The following excerpt is taken
from Of Men and Mountains by William O. Douglas. It
reveals how as a young boy William Douglas nearly
drowned in a swimming pool. In this essay he talks
about his fear of water and thereafter, how he finally
overcame it. Notice how the autobiographical part of
the selection is used to support his discussion of fear.
Notice these words and expressions in the text.
Infer their meaning from the context.
??
treacherous
??
misadventure
??
subdued my pride
??
bob to the surface like a cork
??
flailed at the surface
??
curtain of life fell
??
fishing for landlocked salmon
??
back and forth across the pool
It had happened when I was ten or eleven years old. I had
decided to learn to swim. There was a pool at the Y.M.C.A.
in Yakima that offered exactly the opportunity. The Yakima
River was treacherous. Mother continually warned against
it, and kept fresh in my mind the details of each drowning
in the river. But the Y.M.C.A. pool was safe. It was only
two or three feet deep at the shallow end; and while it was
nine feet deep at the other, the drop was gradual. I got a
pair of water wings and went to the pool. I hated to walk
3
24/Flamingo
Sketch map not to scale
The Yakima River is a tributary
of the Columbia River in eastern
Washington, U.S.A. The state is
named after the indigenous
Yakama people.
THE YAKIMA RIVER
Deep Water/25
naked into it and show my skinny legs. But I subdued my
pride and did it.
From the beginning, however, I had an aversion to the
water when I was in it. This started when I was three or
four years old and father took me to the beach in California.
He and I stood together in the surf. I hung on to him, yet
the waves knocked me down and swept over me. I was
buried in water. My breath was gone. I was frightened.
Father laughed, but there was terror in my heart at the
overpowering force of the waves.
My introduction to the Y.M.CA. swimming pool revived
unpleasant memories and stirred childish fears. But in a
little while I gathered confidence. I paddled with my new
water wings, watching the other boys and trying to learn
by aping them. I did this two or three times on different
days and was just beginning to feel at ease in the water
when the misadventure happened.
I went to the pool when no one else was there. The place
was quiet. The water was still, and the tiled bottom was as
white and clean as a bathtub. I was timid about going in
alone, so I sat on the side of the pool to wait for others.
I had not been there long when in came a big bruiser
of a boy, probably eighteen years old. He had thick hair on
his chest. He was a beautiful physical specimen, with legs
and arms that showed rippling muscles. He yelled, �Hi,
Skinny! How�d you like to be ducked?�
With that he picked me up and tossed me into the deep
end. I landed in a sitting position, swallowed water, and
went at once to the bottom. I was frightened, but not yet
frightened out of my wits. On the way down I planned:
When my feet hit the bottom, I would make a big jump,
come to the surface, lie flat on it, and paddle to the edge of
the pool.
It seemed a long way down. Those nine feet were more
like ninety, and before I touched bottom my lungs were
ready to burst. But when my feet hit bottom I summoned
all my strength and made what I thought was a great spring
upwards. I imagined I would bob to the surface like a cork.
Instead, I came up slowly. I opened my eyes and saw nothing
26/Flamingo
but water � water that had a dirty yellow tinge to it. I
grew panicky. I reached up as if to grab a rope and my
hands clutched only at water. I was suffocating. I tried to
yell but no sound came out. Then my eyes and nose came
out of the water � but not my mouth.
I flailed at the surface of the water, swallowed and
choked. I tried to bring my legs up, but they hung as dead
weights, paralysed and rigid. A great force was pulling me
under. I screamed, but only the water heard me. I had
started on the long journey back to the bottom of the pool.
I struck at the water as I went down, expending my
strength as one in a nightmare fights an irresistible force. I
had lost all my breath. My lungs ached, my head throbbed.
I was getting dizzy. But I remembered the strategy � I
would spring from the bottom of the pool and come like a
cork to the surface. I would lie flat on the water, strike out
with my arms, and thrash with my legs. Then I would get
to the edge of the pool and be safe.
I went down, down, endlessly. I opened my eyes. Nothing
but water with a yellow glow � dark water that one could
not see through.
And then sheer, stark terror seized me, terror that
knows no understanding, terror that knows no control,
terror that no one can understand who has not experienced
it. I was shrieking under water. I was paralysed under water
� stiff, rigid with fear. Even the screams in my throat were
frozen. Only my heart, and the pounding in my head, saidother 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
Lost Spring/19
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
20/Flamingo
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?
1. What makes the city of
Firozabad famous?
2. Mention the hazards of working
in the glass bangles industry.
3. How is Mukesh�s attitude to his
situation different from that of
his family?
Lost Spring/21
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.
22/Flamingo
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.
??
Look around and find examples of such paradoxes.
??
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.
Deep Water
About the author
William Douglas (1898-1980) was born in Maine,
Minnesota. After graduating with a Bachelors of Arts
in English and Economics, he spent two years teaching
high school in Yakima. However, he got tired of this and
decided to pursue a legal career. He met Franklin D.
Roosevelt at Yale and became an adviser and friend to
the President. Douglas was a leading advocate of
individual rights. He retired in 1975 with a term lasting
thirty-six years and remains the longest-serving Justice
in the history of the court. The following excerpt is taken
from Of Men and Mountains by William O. Douglas. It
reveals how as a young boy William Douglas nearly
drowned in a swimming pool. In this essay he talks
about his fear of water and thereafter, how he finally
overcame it. Notice how the autobiographical part of
the selection is used to support his discussion of fear.
Notice these words and expressions in the text.
Infer their meaning from the context.
??
treacherous
??
misadventure
??
subdued my pride
??
bob to the surface like a cork
??
flailed at the surface
??
curtain of life fell
??
fishing for landlocked salmon
??
back and forth across the pool
It had happened when I was ten or eleven years old. I had
decided to learn to swim. There was a pool at the Y.M.C.A.
in Yakima that offered exactly the opportunity. The Yakima
River was treacherous. Mother continually warned against
it, and kept fresh in my mind the details of each drowning
in the river. But the Y.M.C.A. pool was safe. It was only
two or three feet deep at the shallow end; and while it was
nine feet deep at the other, the drop was gradual. I got a
pair of water wings and went to the pool. I hated to walk
3
24/Flamingo
Sketch map not to scale
The Yakima River is a tributary
of the Columbia River in eastern
Washington, U.S.A. The state is
named after the indigenous
Yakama people.
THE YAKIMA RIVER
Deep Water/25
naked into it and show my skinny legs. But I subdued my
pride and did it.
From the beginning, however, I had an aversion to the
water when I was in it. This started when I was three or
four years old and father took me to the beach in California.
He and I stood together in the surf. I hung on to him, yet
the waves knocked me down and swept over me. I was
buried in water. My breath was gone. I was frightened.
Father laughed, but there was terror in my heart at the
overpowering force of the waves.
My introduction to the Y.M.CA. swimming pool revived
unpleasant memories and stirred childish fears. But in a
little while I gathered confidence. I paddled with my new
water wings, watching the other boys and trying to learn
by aping them. I did this two or three times on different
days and was just beginning to feel at ease in the water
when the misadventure happened.
I went to the pool when no one else was there. The place
was quiet. The water was still, and the tiled bottom was as
white and clean as a bathtub. I was timid about going in
alone, so I sat on the side of the pool to wait for others.
I had not been there long when in came a big bruiser
of a boy, probably eighteen years old. He had thick hair on
his chest. He was a beautiful physical specimen, with legs
and arms that showed rippling muscles. He yelled, �Hi,
Skinny! How�d you like to be ducked?�
With that he picked me up and tossed me into the deep
end. I landed in a sitting position, swallowed water, and
went at once to the bottom. I was frightened, but not yet
frightened out of my wits. On the way down I planned:
When my feet hit the bottom, I would make a big jump,
come to the surface, lie flat on it, and paddle to the edge of
the pool.
It seemed a long way down. Those nine feet were more
like ninety, and before I touched bottom my lungs were
ready to burst. But when my feet hit bottom I summoned
all my strength and made what I thought was a great spring
upwards. I imagined I would bob to the surface like a cork.
Instead, I came up slowly. I opened my eyes and saw nothing
26/Flamingo
but water � water that had a dirty yellow tinge to it. I
grew panicky. I reached up as if to grab a rope and my
hands clutched only at water. I was suffocating. I tried to
yell but no sound came out. Then my eyes and nose came
out of the water � but not my mouth.
I flailed at the surface of the water, swallowed and
choked. I tried to bring my legs up, but they hung as dead
weights, paralysed and rigid. A great force was pulling me
under. I screamed, but only the water heard me. I had
started on the long journey back to the bottom of the pool.
I struck at the water as I went down, expending my
strength as one in a nightmare fights an irresistible force. I
had lost all my breath. My lungs ached, my head throbbed.
I was getting dizzy. But I remembered the strategy � I
would spring from the bottom of the pool and come like a
cork to the surface. I would lie flat on the water, strike out
with my arms, and thrash with my legs. Then I would get
to the edge of the pool and be safe.
I went down, down, endlessly. I opened my eyes. Nothing
but water with a yellow glow � dark water that one could
not see through.
And then sheer, stark terror seized me, terror that
knows no understanding, terror that knows no control,
terror that no one can understand who has not experienced
it. I was shrieking under water. I was paralysed under water
� stiff, rigid with fear. Even the screams in my throat were
frozen. Only my heart, and the pounding in my head, said