English worldwide

Unit 1

Name ________________________________________ No. _______ Class _________ Date ________________

1. Due to the British colonial empire the English language has spread all over the world.
The following countries are just a few of the many around the world where English is still widely
spoken as a second language.
Can you match each country with its flag?

NIGERIA JAMAICA PHILIPPINES INDIA SINGAPORE

a. _________________ b. ________________ c. _______________

d. _________________ e. _________________

2. Although the countries have the same language, they are culturally rich and diverse.
Match each traditional dish to one of the countries in the previous exercise.

a. Bhelpuri: ____________________ b. Guso salad: ________________ c. Efo riro soup: ____________

d. Satay: ____________________ e. Callaloo: ___________________

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3. Food is an important part of Indian culture. It is not just important for eating, but it is also a way
of socialising and getting together with family, relatives and friends.

A. Read the following text taken from the novel The Hundred-foot Journey, by Richard
C. Morais.

“I, Hassan Haji, was born, the second of six children, above my grandfather’s
restaurant on the Napean Sea Road in what was then called West Bombay, two
decades before the great city was renamed Mumbai. (…) But let me start by the
beginning. In 1934, my grandfather arrived in Bombay from Gujarat, a young man
riding to the great city on the roof of a steam engine. (…) We were poor Muslims,
subsistence farmers from Bhavnagar, and a severe blight among the cotton fields in
the 1930s left my starving seventeen-year-old grandfather no choice but to migrate
to Bombay, that bustling metropolis where little people have long gone to make
their mark.

My life in the kitchen, in short, starts way back with my grandfather’s great
hunger. And that three-day ride atop the train, baking in the fierce sun, clinging for
dear life as the hot iron chugged across the plains of India, was the unpromising
start of my family’s journey. (…)

To understand the Bombay from where I come, you must go to Victoria Terminus
at rush hour. It is the very essence of Indian life. Coaches are split between men
and women, and commuters literally hang from the windows and doors as the
trains ratchet down the rails into the Victoria and Churchgate stations. The trains
are so crowded there isn’t even room for the commuters’ lunch boxes, which arrive
in separate trains after rush hour. These tiffin boxes – over two million battered tin
cans with a lid-smelling of daal and gingery cabbage and black pepper rice and sent
on by loyal wives – are sorted, stacked into trundle carts, and delivered with
utmost precision to each insurance clerk and bank teller throughout Bombay.

That was what my grandfather did. He delivered lunch boxes.

A dabbawallah. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Victoria Terminus at rush hour Daal (lentils with onions and tomatoes) A dabbawallah
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B. Go through the text and find out:

1. Where Hassan was born.

2. When and how his grandfather got to Bombay.
3. What his grandfather did before he went to Bombay.
4. Why the family had to migrate to the big city.
5. How long it took for his grandfather to arrive in Bombay.
6. What a tiffin box is.
7. What a dabbawallah is.

C. Now watch the following video describing the dabbawallah job: delivering of home-cooked
lunch in tiffin tins, a daily tradition in India’s bustling commercial capital, Mumbai.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyiuRWJ2AKE

D. Complete the following sentences:

1. The food in the lunch boxes is cooked by _____________________________ .
2. Dabbawallah literally means _________________________________________ .
3. In 15 years of work Bablu Bacche has been late only ______________________ .
4. Every day _______________ lunch boxes travel to Mumbai.
5. There are ________________ dabbawallahs in Mumbai.
6. The system started when India was ____________________________________ .
7. It started because British people didn’t ________________________________________
and didn’t want to __________________________________________________________ .

8. At lunch office workers discuss _______________________________________________

but don’t discuss __________________________________________________________ .

9. Downtown malls and food quarters aren’t threatening this system because dabbawallahs are
_________________________________________________________________________

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 E. Watch the film The Lunchbox to learn more about this Indian cultural tradition.

SYNOPSIS:
A mistaken delivery in Mumbai's famously efficient lunch box delivery system connects a young
housewife to an older man in the dusk of his life as they build a fantasy world together through notes
in the lunch box.

TRAILER
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2350496/

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 Answer keys

1. a. Philippines b. India c. Singapore d. Nigeria e. Jamaica.

2. a. India b. Philippines c. Nigeria d. Singapore e. Jamaica.

3.
B.
1. Above his grandfather’s restaurant on the Napean Sea Road, West Bombay.
2. In 1934, on the roof of a steam engine train.
3. He was a farmer.
4. They didn’t have enough food to live because of a bad crop on the cotton fields.
5. Three days.
6. Tin cans with a lid filled with food that wives send to their husbands at work.
7. A man who delivers lunch boxes.
D.
1. (…) the workers’ wives.
2. (…) lunch box carriers.
3. (…) 2 or 3 times.
4. (…) 200,000 (…)
5. (…) 5,000 (…)
6. (…) under colonial rule.
7. (…) eat the local food (…) be seen carrying their own food from home.
8. (…) whose food is better (…) whose wife makes better food.
9. (…) the model of efficiency.

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