RUDRA SIR

AN EXPERIENCED ENGLISH TEACHER

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THE BLUE BEAD

summary

In the story "the blue bead story" by Norah Burke, there is a girl named Sibia. She and her mom are going to get
some paper grass to sell at the market. The mugger crocodile lies in the water along the path the women take to get
to the paper grass. The women leave to go harvest the grass. On their way they passed a small campsite for graziers.
When they cross the stream they make a lot of noise because it keeps the crocodiles away. It works this time. They
climb up the steep gnat and get to the grass. The women start to toil. The women leave, and Sibia stays there on her
own. Later Sibia leaves with her hayfork. When crossing the stream another woman from the village comes to the
stream. She hops onto a rock in silence. She leans over with a gurrah and dips it into the stream. As it starts to fill it
up. Then Sibia sees the head of a crocodile just a few feet away. But it’s too late, it all happened in a second. The
crocodile lunges out of the water and grabs hold of the women's leg. She grabs onto the rock. The crocodile pulls
the women and she loses her grip. She ends up grabbing a log caught between two rocks. Sibia jumped into action,
jumping from rock to rock. In all the convulsion going on crocodile slapped its tail. Water flew all over but Sibia
didn't stop. She drove the hayfork into the saurian’s eye as hard as she could. The mugger let go and
disappeared. Sibia dragged the women back to her campground, then Sibia goes back to get her pitch fork. . Sibia is
ecstatic. Beside it there is a blue bead.

The story starts off with a girl, a crocodile(mugger), and a bead.

Sibia (12) is one of many very poor resident of Gajur. everyone in Gajur was poor. Merchants, Graziers,
Everyone! She never owned anything of her own. All she wares is rags. And her family cant even afford a new
needle to make her necklace, or a hand full of beads from the shops. after she toiling all day, went to the river alone
to go see if the clay slabs behind some rocks were still there. so she walked down the Ghats and walked across the
stepping stones. but shortly after she came another woman came to fill her gurrahs but she didn’t make all the way
across, fore a armoured mugger lunged at her leg dropping the Brass gurrahs in the river! Sibia new she had to do
something! She needed to help her! So she quickly ran over to the lady and jumped in the boiling bloody water
faced the armoured Saurian right in the eye, and stabbed it right in the eye! the convulsion made the Crocodile swim
away in pain. the crocodile wouldn't die, well not yet anyway! Sibia then brought the woman to shore, and stoped
the wounds with sand and bound them with a rag and helped her home. then when she came back to get her grass,
sickle and fork, she saw it. she saw the blue bead laying in the stream. she picked it up and took it home with the
other things and ecstatically told her mother that she found a new bead for her necklace.

Q1. Who was Sibia? Where did she live?

Ans. Sibia was a little poor girl. She lived in a mud house of a village which was full of shrill noise.

Q2. How was Sibia dressed?

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AN EXPERIENCED ENGLISH TEACHER
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Ans. Sibia was a very poor girl. She had no sari or other clothes. She was wearing a rag which was of earth like
colour. She had torn the rag into two pieces to make her skirt and sari.

Q3. What was Sibia eating in her meal?

Ans. Sibia was eating chupatti wrapped round a smear of green chilli and rancid butter. The amount of her food
was not sufficient. So she divided it into two to look it more. But she was not unhappy with what she got. She was
eating the meagre meal with smile.

Q4. What do you think about her character?

Ans. Sibia was an ever smiling little girl who was happy with whatever she had. She did not complain against her
poverty.

Q5. How was the appearance of Sibia?

Ans. Sibia was a young little girl. She was also very poor. So she did not get enough food. Therefore she looked
thin and lean. Her complexion was like the earth and she was wearing an earth coloured rag which she had torn into
two pieces to make her skirt and sari. But there was no lack in her smile.

Q1. Who had ebony hair and great eyes? Who was born to toil?

Ans. Sibia, the poor little girl of the village had ebony hair and a pair of great eyes. She was born to toil as they
were very poor and had to labour hard for living.

Q2. Who was described as immature child woman?

Ans. Sibia was described as an immature child woman.

Q3. Why was she called born to toil? How was her feet?

Ans. She was born to toil as she was very poor and had to work hard for living from the very childhood.

Q4. Give a description of the poor girl according to the passage.

Ans. According to the passage Sibia was a poor girl of about twelve years old and she had ebony hair and a pair of
great eyes. She is described as an immature woman. Her complexion was oily brown and she did barefooted.

Q5. What did Sibia want to buy? What was the reason for not buying the thing?

Ans. Sibia wanted to buy glass bead or glass bangles. But she could not buy them as she had no money of her
own. In fact she was very poor and even unable to meet the two ends.

Q1. Why was Sibia marked for work?

Ans. Sibia was marked for work as they were very poor. She had to work hard since her childhood.
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AN EXPERIENCED ENGLISH TEACHER
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Q2. Why was she going to the cliffs above the river?

Ans. She was going to the cliffs above the river for getting paper grass which would be supplied to the paper mill.

Q3. Who were going with her?

Ans. Her mother and some other women were going with her to the cliffs above the river for paper grass.

Q4. Why did the women toil for the whole day? What did the agent do then?

Ans. The women toiled almost the whole day for getting paper grass from the river side cliffs. But the agent only
sat idly on silk cushion and smoked at the hookah.

Q5. What tasks had Sibia been doing since her childhood?

Ans. Sibia was doing a lot of household works since her childhood. She used to cook food, husked corn, brought
firewood, dried dung, fetched water, cut grass for fodder, removed weeds and carried them to other place.

Q1. What did the big crocodile feed on generally? What other animals did he prey?

Ans. The bid crocodile generally fed on fish. Other animals such as monkeys and deer who came to the river were
also among his prey.

Q2. What was the other things which was the big crocodile fed on?

Ans. The other things on which the bid crocodile was fed on were a pi-dog full of parasites or a skeleton cow an
sometimes a half-burned dead body.

Q3. What was the blue bead?

Ans. The blue bead was nothing but a worn out piece of blue glass. It was perhaps a neck of a blue glass bottle.

Q4. Where was the blue bead shining?

Ans. The blue bead was shining where the big crocodile took rest. It was shining in the sunlight like a precious
Stone.

Q5. How did the piece of the blue glass become worn out?

Ans. The blue glass which was nothing but a neckpiece of a blue bottle became worn out due to constant rolling in
the river. It was then shaped like a precious stone which was glimmering in the sunlight.

Q2. From where did the crocodile come?

Ans. The crocodile came from the deep water. It was out of black water, curved with whirlpools and into the frill
of gold shallows by the stepping-stones.
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Q3. Describe the crocodile. What rolled inside him?

Ans. The crocodile was twice the length of a tall man. The mugger crocodile was blackish brown above and
yellowy white under. He is described as an antediluvian saurian- prehistoric juggernaut, ferocious and formidable.

A silver bracelet rolled inside the crocodile which he had swallowed to aid digestion.

Q4. What was being floated down the river and where were the sleepers lying?

Ans. Timber was being floated down the great Indian river from forests further up. There were sleepers lying
struck around the stones until someone came to dislodge them and send them on their way or until floods lifted them
and jostled them along.

Q5. Where did the crocodile come to rest? What travelled around him?

Ans. The crocodile came to rest in the glassy shallows, among logs and balanced there on tiptoe on the rippled
sand with only his raised eyes out of the water and raised nostrils breathing the clean sunny air.

Broad sparkling water travelled around the crocodile, between cliffs and grass and forested hills.

Q6. What was a little flycatcher doing?

Ans. A little flycatcher was flirting and trilling along on the sun-whitened stepping-stones.

Q7. Who lay motionless and for what?

Ans. The mugger crocodile, blackish brown above and yellowy white under, lay motionless waiting forever till
food came.

Q8. Describe his mouth. Where was it fixed?

Ans. The crocodile’s mouth rain almost the whole length of his head.

His mouth was closed and fixed in that evil bony smile and where the yellow underside came up to it, it was
tinged with green.

Q1. Who had a thick-inch armoured hide? How had this ‘thick-inch armoured hide’ survived and prospered?
What grew him to his great length?

Ans. The crocodile had a thick-inch armoured hide and nothing could pierce it. Not even rifle bullets which would
bounce off.

From the day the crocodile had made for the water, he was ready to fend for himself immediately. He had
lived by his brainless craft and ferocity. Escaping the birds of prey and the great carnivorous fishes that eat baby
RUDRA SIR
AN EXPERIENCED ENGLISH TEACHER
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crocodiles, he had prospered, catching all the food he needed and storing it till putrid in holes in the bank. Tepid
water to live in and plenty of rotted food grew the crocodile to his great length.

Q2. Where did the crocodile live and sun himself? With whom did the crocodile sun himself? What would he
do if alarmed?

Ans. The crocodile lived well in the river and sunned himself, sometimes with other crocodiles- muggers, as well
as the long-snouted fish-eating gharials. The crocodile sunned with them on the warm rocks and sandanks where the
sun dried the clay on them quite white.

The crocodile sunned with the other crocodiles and long-snouted fish-eating gharials on the warm rocks and
sandbanks where the sun dried the clay on them quite white. They would plop off into the water from here in a
moment if alarmed.

Q3. What did the big crocodile feed on? Why did he go down to the burning ghats sometimes?

Ans. The big crocodile fed mostly on fish but also on deer and monkeys that came to drink, perhaps a duck or two.
He also fed on a pi-dog full of parasites or a skeleton cow sometimes at the ford.

Sometimes, the crocodile went down to the burning ghats to find the half-burned bodies of Indians cast into
the stream.

Q4. What glimmered beside the crocodile? Describe it.

Ans. A blue gem glimmered beside the crocodile in the shoals as he lay waiting.

It was not a gem though: it was sand-worn glass that had been rolling about in the river for a long time. It
was perforated right through- the neck of a bottle perhaps- a blue bead.

Q2. Where did ‘she’ live? What was ‘she’ dressed in?

Ans. Sibia lived in the shrill noisy village, above the ford. She lived in a mud house, having the same colour as the
ground. Sibia was 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.

Q3. Why did Sibia tear the rag?

Ans. Sibia had torn the earth-coloured rag in two to make skirt and sari.

Q4. What was Sibia eating?

Ans. Sibia was eating the last of her meal, chupatti wrapped round a smear of green chili and rancid butter and she
divided this also, to make it seem more and bit it, showing straight white teeth.

Q5. Describe Sibia.

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AN EXPERIENCED ENGLISH TEACHER
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Ans. Sibia was a little girl, a thin starveling child dressed in an earth-coloured rag. 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. She
remained bare foot and often goosey-cold on a winter morning. She was born to toil.

Q6. What had Sibia owned all her life?

Ans. In all her life, Sibia had never owned anything but a rag. She had never owned even one anna- not a pice, not
a pi, even to say, a handful of blown glass beads from the stall in the bazaar where they were piled like stars, or one
of the thin glass bangles that the man kept on a stick and one could choose which colour to have.

Q7. How and where were the glass beads piled? What did shopkeeper keep on a stick?

Ans. The blown glass beads were piled like stars in the stall of the bazaar.

The shopkeeper kept thin glass bangles on a stick and one could choose which colour to have.

Q8. What type of life had ‘she’ led with her parents and brothers?

Ans. Sibia knew what finery was because she had been with her parents and brothers all through the jungle to the
little town at the railhead where there was the bazaar. She had walked through all the milling people and the dogs
and monkeys full of fleas, the idling gossiping bargaining humanity spitting betel juice, heard the bell of a sacred
bull clonking as he lumped along through the dust and hubbub.

Q9. Where had Sibia paused? Why? What did Sibia taste sometimes?

Ans. Sibia had paused, being amazed, before the sweetmeat stall. She had paused to gaze at the brilliant honey
confections, abuzz with dust and flies. They smelled wonderful, above the smells of drains and humanity and cheap
cigarettes.

At home, Sibia sometimes tasted wild honey, or crunched the syrup out of a stalk of sugar cane. However,
these sweets were green and magenta.

Q1. What were the other wonders to see?

Ans. There were other wonders to see in the bazaar: satin sewn with real silver thread, tin trays from Birmingham
and a sari which had got chips of looking glass embroidered into the border.

Q2. What was the cloth stall stacked with?

Ans. The cloth stall was stacked with great rolls of new cotton cloth, stamped at the edge with the maker’s sign of
a tiger’s head. It smelled so wonderful of its dressing, straight from the mills that Sibia could have stood by it all
day.

Q3. What wonders did the Kashmiri travelling merchant show?

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Ans. Sibia joined the crowd round a Kashmiri travelling merchant on his way to the bungalows. He showed dawn-
coloured silks that poured like cream, a little locket chest with turquoises and opals in it. Best of all was a box
which, when one pressed it, a bell tinkled and a yellow woollen chicken jumped out.

Q4. What tasks had Sibia been doing since her childhood?

Ans. Sibia, in all her life from birth to death, was marked for work. Since she could toddle, she had husked corn
and gathered sticks, put dung to dry cooked and weeded, carried and fetched water and cut grass for fodder.

Q5. Where was she going with her mother and other women?

Ans. Sibia was going with her mother and some other women to get paper grass from the cliffs above the river.

Q6. What did the women toil at? What would the agent do?

Ans. The women collected paper grass from the cliffs above the river. When they had enough of it, they could take
it down by bullock cart to the railhead and sell it to the agent who would arrange for its dispatch to the paper mills.

The women toiled all day at this work.

The agent sat on silk cushions, smoking a hookah. He would buy paper grass from the women and arrange
for its dispatch to the paper mills.

Q7. What did Sibia carry with her? Why could she not skip on the way back?

Ans. Sibia carried her sickle and homemade hayfork.

Sibia could skip on the way out but not on the way back when she ached with tiredness and there was a great
load to carry.

Q1. What were some of the women wearing? What was Sibia making?

Ans. Some of the women were wearing necklaces made out of lal-lal-beeges, the shiny scarlet seeds, black one
end that grew everywhere in the jungle.

It was best to have new necklaces each year, instead of last year’s faded ones and Sibia was making one
necklace too, for herself.

Q2. How did Sibia drill each seed in her necklace? Why must she wait till they could buy another?

Ans. Sibia thought it would be nice to hear the rattling swish round her neck, as she froushed alone, with lots of
necklaces. However, she had to drill each seed, hard as stone, with a red-hot needle.

The family needle was snapped so she must wait till they could buy another.

Q3. What did Sibia long for so that she could decorate her little golden body?
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Ans. Sibia longed for strings and strings of glass and beads-anklets, earrings, nose-rings, bangles- all the gorgeous
dazzle of the bazaar to decorate her little golden body.

Q4. Which track did the women follow? What did they pass on their way?

Ans. Chattering as they went, the women followed the dusty track toward the river.

On their way, the women passed a Gujar encampment of grass huts where the nomadic graziers would live
for a time until their animals had perhaps finished easy grazing within reach, or they were not able to sell enough of
their white butter and white milk in the district, or there was no one to buy the young male buffaloes for tiger-bait or
perhaps a cattle-killing tiger was making a nuisance of himself.

Q5. What did the Gujar women wear? From where did they fetch water?

Ans. The Gujar women wore trousers, tight and wrinkled at the ankles and large silver rings, made out of melted
rupees in their ears.

The Gujar women fetched water in the big brass gurrahs from the river for the camp.

Q6. Where had the Gujar men and boys gone? What were the buffaloes doing?

Ans. The Gujar men and boys were out of the camp with the herd or gone to the bazaar to sell produce.

One or two buffaloes were standing about, creatures of great wet noses and moving jaws and gaunt black
bones.

Q7. What were the Gujars called and why?

Ans. The Gujars were called junglis because they were born and bred in the forest. For countless centuries, their
forebears had lived like this, getting their living from animals, from grass and trees. They scratched their food
together and stored their substance in large herds and silver jewelry. They were Man in the wandering Pastoral Age,
not Stone Age Hunters and not yet Cultivators.

Q1. What could they hear rushing along?

Ans. The women could hear the river rushing along. The river was twinkling between the trees, sunlit beyond dark
trunks.

Q2. Where did the women go? Why did they gird up their skirts? What else did they do?

Ans. The women came out on the shore and made for the stepping-stones. They approached the river in a noisy
crowd.

The women girded up their skirts so as to jump from stone to stone. They also clanked their sickles and forks
together over their shoulders to have ease of movement.
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Q3. In what mood did they cross the river? What frightens crocodiles?

Ans. The women came out on the shore and made for the stepping-stones. They had plenty to laugh and bicker
about as they approached the river in a noisy crowd. They shouted their quarrels above the gush of the river.

Noise frightens crocodiles. The big mugger did not move because of noise and all the women crossed in
safety to the other bank.

Q4. What did the women do to get at the grass?

Ans. The women had to climb a still hillside to get at the grass but all fell to with a will and sliced away at it
wherever there was foothold to be had.

Q5. What ran below them? Name the animals they could see.

Ans. The broad river ran below the women, pouring powerfully out from its deep narrow pools among the cold
cliffs and shadows, spreading into warm shallows, lit by kingfishers.

One could see great turtles, mahseer and crocodiles too. They could be seen sometimes, lying out on the
slabs of clay but there were none to be seen at the moment.

Q1. What did Sibia imagine herself to be?

Ans. Wind coming across hundreds of miles of trees cooled Sibia’s sweating body and she could look down over
the river as if she were a bird. Although she did not dare to stop for a moment under her mother’s eye, her
imagination took her in swooping flight over the bright water and golden air to the banks where she had played as a
child.

Q2. What did Sibia store and where? How would they look if she could use anything for colouring?

Ans. Sibia stored some little bowls moulded of clay white they hardened. She stored them in the cavelets above
the high-water mark of the highest flood.

If there were anything that could be used for colouring, they would look fine, painted with marigolds and
elephants.

Q3. What pulled Sibia back to work?

Ans. The sharp word of her mother ‘child’ and the glare of her angry sweating face pulled Sibia back to work and
they toiled on.

Q4. Why did the loaded women set out to cross the river again?

Ans. After toiling hard, at last, it was time to go back to see their animals and the evening meal. The loaded
women set out to cross the river again.
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Q5. Where did Sibia go?

Ans. The loaded women set out to cross the river again. Sibia hung back. She would just dawdle a bit and run and
see if the little clay cups were still there in the cave, waiting to be painted and used.

Q6. Where did the women go? Who came down alone to the stepping-stones?

Ans. Although the women were tired and loaded, they still talked. They crossed the river safely and disappeared
up the tracks into the trees on the other side. Even their voices died away.

Sibia came down alone to the stepping-stones.

Q1. When and why did Sibia put her load down?

Ans. Sibia was heavily weighted, her muscles stretched and aching. The hayfork squeaked in the packed dry grass
and dug into her collarbone close under the skin, in spite of the sari bunched up to make a pad.

Sibia put her load down on a big boulder to rest and leaned, breathing on the fork.

Sibia was halfway over when she put her load down.

Q2. Where did the Gujar woman come down and why?

Ans. A Gujar woman came down with two gurrahs to the water on the other side in order to get the good clear
water. She waked onto the stepping-stones to quickly fill both gurrahs to the top without sand.

Q3. What happened just then? What did the woman do? What did Sibia see?

Ans. The Gujar woman was within a yard of the crocodile when he lunged at her.

The great reptile heaved out of the darkling water. The formidable creature slashed at her leg, with his livid
jaws yawning and all his teeth flashing.

The woman screamed and dropped both brass pots with a clatter on the boulder, from whence they bounced
to the water.

Sibia saw the brass pots bob away in the current. The two good vessels were gone.

Q4. What did the Gujar woman do to save herself?

Ans. The Gujar woman recoiled from the crocodile but his jaws closed on her leg at the same moment as she
slipped and fell on the bone-breaking stone and clutched one of the timber logs to save herself.

Q5. What did the crocodile try to do to grab his prey?

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Ans. The woman was clinging to the log that jammed between two boulders and screaming while the crocodile
pulled on her leg, threshing his tail – bang! - bang! to and fro in great smacking flails as he tried to drag her free and
carry her off down into the deeps of the pool. There was blood everywhere.

Q6. What did Sibia do then seeing the Gujar woman?

Ans. Seeing the Gujar woman being attacked by the crocodile, Sibia sprang. She came, leaping like a rock goat,
from boulder to boulder. Though it was difficult to cross these stones, she came on wings, choosing her footing in
mid-air without even thinking about it and in one moment she was beside the shrieking woman.

Q7. What did the crocodile do in the boiling bloody water? What did he do seeing Sibia?

Ans. The crocodile fastened round the leg of the woman, tugged to and fro and smiled at his victory.

The crocodile’s eyes rolled on to Sibia. One slap of the tail could kill her. He struck. Up shot the water,
twenty feet and fell like a silver chain. He did this again and the rock jumped under the below.

Q8. Why did Sibia not hesitate?

Ans. Sibia did not hesitate to face the mugger in the daily heroism of the jungle, it was as common as a thorn tree.

Q1. What did Sibia aim at? What did she use to save the Gujar woman?

Ans. Sibia aimed at the reptile’s eyes.

Sibia, with all the force of her little body, drove the hayfork at the eyes and one prong went in while its pair
scratched past on the horny cheek.

Q2. What happened to the crocodile?

Ans. The crocodile reared up in convulsion, till half his lizard body was out of the river, the tail and nose nearly
meeting over his stony back. Then he crashed back, exploding the water and in an uproar of bloody foam, he
disappeared.

Q3. When would the crocodile die?

Ans. The crocodile would die. Not yet, but presently, though his death would not be known for days; not till his
stomach, blown with gas, floated him. Then he would be found upside down among the logs at the timber boom,
with pus in his eye.

Q4. What did Sibia do to bring the woman out of water?

Ans. Sibia got her arms round the fainting woman and somehow dragged her out from the water. She stopped her
wounds with sand and bound them with rag and helped her home to the Gujar encampment where the men made a
litter to carry her to someone for treatment.
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Q5. Where was the fork lying? What did Sibia see there?

Ans. The fork was lying in the river, not carried away, luckily, and Sibia bent down to pick it up out of the water.

Sibia saw the blue bead when she bent down to pick it up out of the water.

Q6. Describe the blue bead. What did Sibia do?

Ans. Sibia saw the blue bead when she bent down to pick it up out of the water.

It was not blue now, with the sun nearly gone, but a no-colour white-blue and its shape wobbling in the
movement in the stream.

Sibia reached her arm down into a yard of the cold silk water to get it. However, she missed it first of all
because of refraction.

Q2. What did she do with the bead? Why?

Ans. Sibia twisted the bead into the top of her skirt against her tummy. She did this so that she would know if it
burst through the poor cloth and fell.

Q3. What did she take before setting off home?

Ans. Sibia picked up her fork and sickle and the heavy grass before setting off home.

Q4. What was Sibia not thinking about?

Ans. Sibia’s bare feet smudged out the wriggle-mark of snakes in the dust; there was the thin singing of malaria
mosquitoes among the trees and this track was much used at night by a morose old makna elephant- the Tusk less
one but Sibia was not thinking about any of them.

Q5. Whom did Sibia meet on the way? Why was she scolding Sibia?

Ans. Sibia met her mother on her way back. Sibia’s mother came to look for her. She was scolding because when
she got back home, Sibia was not there. She thought something had happened to Sibia.

Q6. What did Sibia tell her mother?

Ans. Sibia, bursting with her story, cried out that she had found a blue bead for her necklace.