NCERT Solutions CBSE Class 12th Flamingo Lost Spring Chapter 2 Summary, Explanation, Solution - Questions & Answers
NCERT Solutions CBSE Class 12th Flamingo Lost Spring Chapter 2 Summary, Explanation, Solution - Questions & Answers
Lost Spring Summary
Saheb’s story
Sometimes I find a Rupee in the garbage’
The author encounter with a boy name saheb-e-Alam who visits every morning nearby garbage dumps to find valuable thing in garbage when she asked to saheb what are you doing? He said scrounging (छानबीन) gold in garbage.
They do not have any work to do so they started the work of ragpicker for their livelihood
Writer advised him to go to school but he said there is no school in my neighbourhood. When they build it I will go.
She made a false Promise that she would be starting school soon and he could come.
The writer is pained to see Saheb whose name means the ruler of Earth, lose the spark of childhood and roams(इधर-उधर भटकना)barefooted with his friends.
When Writer asked them why they weren't wearing chappals , one child said It is not lack of money but a tradition to stay barefoot, is one explanation. She wonders if this is only an excuse to explain away a perpetual(लगातार) state of poverty.
She remembered 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 She visited his town and the temple. 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, she 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 other rag pickers in her neighbourhood remain shoeless.
Seemapuri is a place on the periphery of Delhi, yet miles away from it. They are all Bangladeshi refugees who came here back in 1971. They live in very poor conditions in mud structures with roofs of tin and tarpaulin.(Sackcloth)
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.
Winter morning
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,” The author notices that Saheb is wearing tennis shoes. Saheb tells her that someone gave them to him. The fact that some rich boy discarded(throw away) the shoes because there was a hole in one of them does not bother him. For Saheb, who has walked his whole life barefoot, it is like a dream come true.
Saheb no longer is his own master
One morning the author sees Saheb on his way to the milk booth. He is carrying a steel canister. He informs the author that now he works at the tea stall and is paid X 800 and all his meals. But the author feels that Saheb is not happy. His face has lost its carefree look. The steel canister seems heavier than the plastic bag. The bag was his, but the canister belongs to the owner of the tea stall. Saheb is no longer his own master.
*POINTS FOR EXPLANATION*
Introduction of the story
This lesson has two stories
First story is about Saheb(A Ragpicker)
Second story is about Mukesh(A Bangle Maker)
Main characters in this story
SAHEB (ragpicker)
Actual name-Saheb-e-Alam.
He is a Ragpicker in Seemapuri.
His family left Bangladesh as their homes were swept away due to floods
They moved from Bangladesh for a better place.
Walks on Bare Feet.
Mukesh's story
“I want to drive a car”
Mukesh insists on being his own master. “I will be a motor mechanic,” he announces.Author asked, Do you know anything about cars? “I will learn to drive a car,” he answers, looking straight into her eyes. His dream looms like a mirage(unrealistic) amidst the dust of streets that fill his town Firozabad.
Firozabad, famous for its bangles It is the centre of India’s glass-blowing industry where families have spent generations working around furnaces, 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
All those 20,000 children out of the hot furnaces where they slog their daylight hours, often losing the brightness of their eyes.their houses are not good it have wobbly(unstable) doors, no windows,crowded with families of humans and animals.
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(बहुत गरम) spinach leaves. On the ground, in large aluminium platters, are more chopped vegetables. A frail(weak) young woman cooking an evening meal for her family is the wife of Mukesh's elder brother and in charge of all three men. Her husband, Mukesh and their father.
When the older man enters, she gently withdraws(out) behind the broken wall and brings her veil(घूंघट) closer to her face
first as a tailor, then a bangle maker, he has failed to renovate a house, send his two sons to school. l. 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.
Savita a young girl
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.It symbolises an Indian woman’s suhaag,
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 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.”
The author asks a group of young men to organise themselves in a cooperative. She learns the horrific truth that even if they get organised, they are taken to jail for doing something illegal and are beaten up. There is no leader among them.
A ray of hope
The author is filled with joy when she finds that Mukesh thinks differently. The boy is filled with hope. His dream of being a motor-mechanic is still alive in his eyes.
He is willing to dare. Anees asks Mukesh if he also dreams of flying a plane. Mukesh replies in the negative. He is content to dream of cars, as few planes fly over Firozabad.
MUKESH( Bangle maker)
A bangle maker
Lives in Firozabad
Belong to a family of Bangle makers
Dreams to become a driver