CONVERSATIONS-II

Ability Enhancement Course of English under NEP 2022-23

For

II Semester- B. Sc/BCA

School of English Language

NRUPATHUNGA UNIVERSITY

Nrupathunga Road, Bengaluru-560 001

Published by

NRUPATHUNGA UNIVERSITY

Nrupathunga Road, Bengaluru-560 001

Revised Edition April 2023

CONVERSATIONS-2: Ability Enhancement English Textbook for II Semester

B.Sc./B.C.A courses is prepared by the Members of the Textbook Committee,
Nrupathunga University.

© Nrupathunga University

Revised Edition 2023

MEMEBERS OF THE TEXT BOOK COMMITTEE
NRUPATHUNGA UNIVERSITY
BANGALORE

Chairperson

Prof. B.K. Mohan Kumar

Chairperson and Head,
Associate Professor
Department of English
Nrupathunga University, Bangalore

Internal Members

Dr. Anita Rao

Associate Professor
Nrupathunga University, Bangalore

Prof. Suvarna Patil

Assistant Professor
Nrupathunga University, Bangalore

Prof. Waseem Akram

Assistant Professor
Nrupathunga University, Bangalore

External Members
Dr. B.N. Sreekeerthy
Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
Bangalore University, Bangalore

Dr. Chandan
Assistant Professor
GFGC, Rajajinagar, Bangalore

Dr. Mekhala Venkatesh

HOD, Department of English
Associate Professor,
Jain (Deemed to be University), Bangalore

3
 PREFACE

Our state has been the fore runner in ushering National Education Policy, NEP –
2020, which focuses primarily on equipping the student community with
knowledge, skills, values and leadership qualities to transform India into a global
super power. NEP is in tune with the global education development agenda
mooted by the UN in 2015, where Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) seek
to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning
opportunities for all by 2030.

NEP emphasizes predominantly on receptive, productive and creative skills. The

conceptual shift in the knowledge domain and job industry has compelled
academicians to reorient their approach in framing the curriculum. An all-
inclusive platform has been created with this core idea in mind, for bringing
students from all walks of life irrespective of caste, religion, gender and socio-
economic backgrounds under the umbrella of higher education.

In this light, the Department of English has made definite attempts to equip the
undergraduate students with requisite skills in language to appreciate literary
and non- literary titles. Conversations-1, course-book for the first Semester
Under-Graduate B.Sc and BCA students, focuses on two components; Grammar
section, which deals mainly with the fundamental aspects of language and literary
section which handles different genres of writing. Grammar is critical in framing
sentences meaningfully which expresses our thoughts and ideas, whether orally
or in written form. The erroneous use of English languageliterally closes the doors
of job markets for our students who basically need to orient their grammar skills.
Therefore, this section is replete with relevant examples and exercises which
makes learning more stimulating and interesting. Thus, grammar teaching which
is a veritable challenge at all levels is made easy with necessary content
envisaging that the learners’ knowledge of the language becomes complete and
precise. The literary section has an array of writings ranging from poetry to
articles and TED talks on relevant issues that will awaken young minds to
understand, express and share various experiences of life.

In the article “Seven Wonders” by Lewis Thomas the term, “Wonder” is defined
by the author as, “something marvelous and miraculous, surprising, raising
unanswerable questions about itself, making the observer wonder, even raising
skeptical questions. Anything wonderful is something to smile in the presence of,
in admiration”. The faculty strongly desires that our student community raise
skeptical questions, develop enquiring minds and in days to come contribute to
the society in meaningful ways and achieve success in their chosen paths.

4
I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to all the committee members who have
contributed significantly in bringing out this textbook.

Finally, I hope this text book infuses enthusiasm in students to not only master
the language but also inculcate the societal norms which is paramount in nation
building.

Prof. B K Mohan Kumar

Head of Department – English
Associate Professor
Nrupathunga University
Bengaluru

5
Objectives

• Hone LSRW (Reading. Listening, Writing and Speaking) Skills

• Acquire Skills for Specific Reading
• Learn to process data into applicable information.
• Learn to refine active listening skills.
• Cultivate competence in speaking in different routine contexts.
• Obtain basic efficiency in word building.
• Improve writing skills through application of writing in routine andcreative
contexts.

Course Outcomes for the First Semester

• Acquiring LSRW Skills for negotiating language applications

• Focused Reading
• Preparing notes in an organized manner
• Speaking coherently in formal and informal situations
• Interpreting data projected in different ways.
• Using a corpus of vocabulary items in Communication.
• Developing core competency in writing
• Exuding confidence in conversations
 CONTENTS

PART I – Grammar Section

Chapter 1: Active and Passive Voice

Chapter 2: Dialogue Writing and Narrative writing

Chapter 3: Vocabulary Skills :

1. Homophones
2. Homonyms

Chapter 4: Paragraph Writing

PART II – Literary Section

Chapter 5: The Necessity Of Normalising Queer Love- Panti Bliss

Chapter 6: Disability and India Nipun Malhotra

Chapter 7: We Will Rebuild Worlds Meena Kandasamy

Chapter 8: The Biker with a Big Heart AC Shilton

Chapter 9: My Three Visions for India APJ Abdul Kalam
Chapter10: Bankers are Just Like Anybody Else Except Richer Ogden Nash

PART III- One Act Play

Chapter 11: Dear Departed Stanley Houghton

Question Paper Pattern

 PART – 1

WORKBOOK

UNIT – 1

RECEPTIVE SKILLS

Reading and Listening Skills

 Chapter – 1 Active and Passive Voice

Active Voice – Here, the subject performs the action. He/she is the doer of the action. It is a pretty
straightforward relationship between the subject and the verb. So, we can say that a verb is in the
active voice when the subject is the doer of the action that is expressed by the verb.

The sentences in Active Voice are simple and easy to understand.

Look at the following examples:

• I am drinking tea.
• He played cricket.
• They will help you.

Passive Voice – Here, the subject receives the action that is expressed by the verb. Therefore, we
can say that the verb is in passive when the subject of the verb is acted upon.

It is generally used to show the action, which means that the focus is on the action and not the
subject who does the action. Sentences in Passive Voice are not simple, as more importance is
given to the action rather than the subject.

Take a look at the following examples:

• Tea is being drunk by me.

• Cricket was played by him.
• You will be helped by them.

Changing the voice from Active to Passive

When a verb changes from Active Voice to Passive, the subject and object change places with
each other. The past participle form of the verb is used as the main verb in passive voice.

Active and Passive voice: Words come together to form a sentence and these sentences can be
formed in more than one way. The way these sentences are made make a lot of difference in
writing and we are going to learn all about that in this chapter. One thing to note here is that no
Matter what the structure of the sentence is, the meaning of the sentence does not change. That’s
actually a very important point to remember throughout this chapter. Keep it in mind. Let’s dive
straight into the realm of Active and Passive voice.

You know that every subject has a subject, a verb, and an object. A subject is an agent who
performs the verb on the object. Let’s understand this with the help of an example:

• I swim in the ocean. – I is the subject, swim is the verb, and ocean is the object.
• My mom plays violin. – My mom is the subject, plays is the verb, and violin is the object.

Active voice: When a subject is directly acting on the object, the sentence is written in Active
voice.

Passive voice: When the object is acted upon by the subject, the sentence is written in Passive
voice.

Active Voice Passive Voice

I ate the strawberry pie The strawberry pie was eaten by me

I bought a Honda car A Honda car was bought by me

The sun rises from the east East is where the sun rises

Reema can do skydiving Skydiving can be done by Reema

In both the above sentences, the meaning remains the same and only the structure is what that
changes. Usually, the structure or sequence of the subject, verb, and object expressed in the active
voice sentence gets reversed in the passive voice of the same sentence. To understand the
difference, just focus on how the subject and object change the structure of the sentences in the
table below:

Now you must have gotten some idea of how the active and passive voice sentences look like.
Note again how the meaning has stayed the same throughout. You may use some different words
in situations where you must. But this conversion from one voice to another voice is really simple
when you know a few rules that we will chalk out for you here:

Structure of Active and Passive voice:

Active voice: Subject + Verb + Object

Passive voice: Object + Verb + Subject

You must have seen that the verb form changes when you switch from active to passive voice.
Now verbs used are of two kinds: the main and the auxiliary verbs. Usually, an auxiliary verb is
accompanied by the main verb. The auxiliary verb like be, do or have shown the tense or mood of
the verb. For example, in the sentence “I have finished my scuba diving course in the Havelock
Islands”, finished is the main verb and have is the auxiliary verb.
As a thumb rule, Passive voice sentences always take the third form of the verb also called the past
participle form of the verb (example- eat, ate, eaten- eaten is the third form of a verb). Notice this
being used in the sentence above in the table: “The strawberry pie was eaten by me.”

So the usage of the main verb is pretty simple to convert. It’s the auxiliary verb that we need to
understand further. Let’s get into it:

Rules for changing Active voice to Passive voice:

1. Simply exchange the places of the subject and the object. The subject should become the
object and vice-e-versa while changing a sentence from Active to Passive voice or reverse.

• Active voice: She bought a new car. (She is the subject and a new car is an object.)
• Passive voice: A new car was bought by her. (A new car is a subject and her is the object.)

2. Always blindly convert the main verb into its past participle or third form while converting
from active to passive voice. To remind you what the third form of a verb looks like, let’s
look at a few examples:
 First Second form Third form
form

Buy Bought Bought

Sing sang sung

Grow grew grown

• Active voice: Bhaanu wrote a book on gun violence.

• Passive voice: A book on gun violence was written by Bhaanu.

3. Use the word “by” before the subject in the passive sentence. For example:

• Active voice: My brother sang a song.

• Passive voice: A song was sung by my brother.
4. Change of tense of the auxiliary word: Now when you change the verb form of the main verb,
the tense of the auxiliary also changes accordingly. Let’s see this with the help of a few examples:

• Present tense
• Active voice: He paints a picture.
• Passive voice: A picture is painted by him.
• Past tense
• Active voice: She walked my dog home.
• Passive voice: My dog was walked home by her.
• Future tense
• Active voice: Sheena will do the craft work.
• Passive voice: Craft work will be done by Sheena.
5. Sometimes you may completely omit the subject from the passive voice if the idea you are
trying to convey is clear. You just have to take a judgment call for that. For example:

• Active voice: Distance is measured in kilometers.

• Passive voice: Kilometers is a measurement unit for distance.

6. Words like “with” or “to” are also used in passive voice. You may recall that we use “by” quite
frequently in an active voice to passive voice conversion.

• Active voice: I know her.

• Passive voice: She is known to me.
• Active voice: Love fills my heart.
• Passive voice: My heart is filled with love.
Now test yourself by solving these Problems and Practice Questions on Active and Passive Voice.

That pretty much sums up our chapter of Active and Passive voice. We recommend you pick up
a few sentences below, identify whether they are in active or passive voice and convert them to
the other form.

• I love my music teacher.

• This painting is done by me.
• She cast a beautiful spell on me.
• I want to go home after school.

Solved Questions

Change the sentences from Active Voice to Passive Voice.

1. Active Voice – She does not cook food.

Passive Voice – The food is not cooked by her.

2. Active Voice – Peter gave me flowers on my birthday.

Passive Voice – I was given flowers by Peter on my birthday.

3. Active Voice – You are waiting for your friend.

Passive Voice – Your friend is being waited for by you.

4. Active Voice – The children have broken the window pane.

Passive Voice – The window pane has been broken by the children.
5. Active Voice – I shall have my car sold.
Passive Voice – My car will have been sold by me.

Example :

He made a loud noise. (Active)

A loud noise was made by him.

Change the Voices of the Verbs (Passive)
in the following Sentences :

A book is being read by him.

(Passive)

He is reading a book. (Active)

1. Who did the job?

2. Can you break the door?

3. Will she sing a song?

4. Is he speaking English?

5. Are you eating a banana?

6. Why are you washing the car?

7. When will he give the money?

8. Where will he met you?

9. How do you make a cake?

10. Whom did you tell the story?

11. He was struck by lightning.

12. I was quite shocked by the

language that he used.

13. We were both filled with horror

the sight of that event.
14. I was much hurt by his voice and
manner.
15. Should I be found at home by
him, he would not be received by
me.
 Dialogue Writing

Dialogue Writing, is an important writing skill. It is useful in many ways. Dialogues denote
communication between two or more people in real time. Dialogues always need to be
written very carefully otherwise, should be short, crisp, and meaningful. They are written in
novels, stories and plays. While writing a dialogue, different punctuation marks like
exclamation marks and question marks are used. The dialogues are enclosed within quotation
marks. Plato, the famous philosopher from Greece, was the first one to use dialogues.
What is Dialogue Writing in English?
Dialogues are an effective tool of communication. In fiction, dialogue is a verbal exchange
between two or more characters. Dialogues make stories, plays interesting. The entire plot of
the story depends on the quality of the dialogue. The dialogues need to be impactful in order
to leave an impression on the readers’ minds. Dialogues are an effective tool of
communication. Dialogues should be written using correct punctuation marks and good
vocabulary. Short dialogues leave a deeper impact. Good vocabulary should be used while
writing dialogue. When writing dialogues, make sure to divide them between the speakers
and always use a new paragraph for a new dialogue.
When we speak, we use many words and expressions which we don’t use when we write.
Some of the rules to follow when writing a dialogue:

a. The language must be simple and direct; the language may be colloquial but avoid
using slang.
b. Contractions or interjections can be used
c. Dialogue must be according to the situation in which it is taking place
d. Do not make it too long
e. Human characters must be given names.
f. Put a colon (:) after the name of the speaker.

A. Examples of Dialogue writing in different situations:

1. Dialogue between a teacher and students:

Teacher: Meena, tell me, what am I teaching?

Meena: Sir, you are teaching Parts of Speech.

Teacher: Mona, look at the board. See the word – Adjective! Is the spelling correct?
Student: Yes, Sir. The spelling is correct.
Teacher: Can anyone tell me what a noun is?
Sheema: Sir, A noun is the name of a person, a place or a thing.
Teacher: Correct. Now tell me, Delhi is the capital city of India. Name any two nouns used inthis
sentence.
Sunil: Delhi and the city are the two nouns. Teacher: Tell me what kind of nouns are they?
Anil: Delhi is a proper noun and the city is a common noun.
Teacher: Absolutely right. Now time is up. We will continue the topic in the next class.
Students: Thank you sir.

2. Dialogue between a father and a son on ‘Career plans’.

Father: Pratik come here, I want to talk to you. Now that you have appeared for the Class XII
exams, what are your plans for the future?

Pratik: I have yet to decide Papa. I think I’ll join some college.

Father: Don’t you feel that by now you should have decided your goal in life?

Pratik: Yea I have already decided. My ultimate goal is to become a cricket player.

Father: Is it? It’s too late now. Have you ever played for your school cricket team?

Pratik: Yes, I have played thrice in the school.

Father: Well! If you were not a member of your school team you should forget about cricket.

Pratik: But father, I love cricket, I cannot stop playing it.

Father: You are a grown-up boy now. Be serious and decide a suitable career for yourself.

Pratik: Ok, I will think again papa.

Father: Good, I want you to study well and make your future bright.

3. Dialogue between passenger and booking clerk:

Clerk: Good morning! How may I help you?
Passenger: I want a reservation of two tickets to Delhi.
Clerk: Have you filled the reservation form?
Passenger: Here it is!
Clerk: But there is no seat available on 25th January.
Passenger: Is there any seat available in Jan Shatabdi Express.
Clerk: Yes. There are two seats available in Jan Shatabdi Express.
Passenger: What is the time of departure?
Clerk: The time of departure is 07:38 am.
Passenger: Please book two tickets. Thank you, Sir.
 4. Dialogue between a shopkeeper and a customer:
Customer : What is the rate of KajuBarfi?
Shopkeeper : Sir, it is Rs. 600 per kg,
Customer : Pack half a kg for me.
Shopkeeper : Sure, in a minute, Sir
Customer : But you have weighed less than half a kg.
Shopkeeper : Don’t worry sir, you’ll have less weight to carry.
Customer : Oh! Thank you for a good piece of advice.
Shopkeeper : Well, I am here to do good to my customers, sir.
Customer : Here’s your money.
Shopkeeper : But, you have given me 50.Rs less, sir!
Customer : Don’t worry; you’ll have to count less money. I’m simply following
your advice, sir.

B. Exercises:
i. Renu calls up Suman to make a plan for the weekend. Complete the dialogue
between Renu and Suman by filling in the gaps:

Renu : (i) ............................... this weekend?

Suman : I don’t have any special plan.
Renu : How do you like the idea (ii) .............................. the zoo?
Suman: That sounds good, But I (iii) ............................. my parent’s permission.
Renu : I’ll come to your house this evening and request your parents to allow you to join
me to see the zoo.
Suman : Ok.
Renu : (iv) ................................... in the evening?
Suman : Yes. They will be at home.
Renu : Then I’ll surely come.
 ii. Interviewer and Sajeeda have a conversation.

Interviewer : Why do you think you (i) .............................................. ?

Sajeeda : Mam, I am qualified for the job and I have a passion for
teachingchildren and the traits make me suitable for the job.
Interviewer : Can (ii) ................................. any foreign language?
Sajeeda : Yes, I can speak and write German.
Interviewer : What (iii) .....................................in graduation?
Sajeeda : Mam, I have graduated in Chemistry Honours.
Interviewer : Do you (iv) ....................................experience?
Sajeeda : Yes, I have teaching experience of 5 years in a public school.
Interviewer : Well, then we may consider you for the job.

iii. Complete the dialogue between two friends on the topic air pollution.

Neetu : Vibhu, why are you (i) ..................................eyes?

Vibhu : I feel acute irritation in them. What is the reason for it?
Neetu : It is due to (ii)…………………….
Vibhu : Oh yes, the air is full of fumes.
Neetu : These fumes have (iii)…………………….
Vibhu : Yes, it has sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. I forgot to bring my sunglasses
today
Neetu : How would sunglasses help?
Vibhu : They shield (iv)…………………….
Neetu : Then, I’ll also wear mine from tomorrow.
Vibhu : Yes, you must.

iv. Read the conversation between two teachers and complete the dialogue in a suitable
way.

Shanker : Did you visit the book fair in PragatiMaidan?

Aruna : No. Did you?
Shanker : Yes, (i) …………………….
Aruna : Did you buy any books?
Shanker : Yes, (ii) …………………….

Aruna : Well, what sort of science fiction books did you buy?
Shanker : Stories about space and unidentified flying objects.
Aruna: Were (iii)…………………….
Shanker : Yes, books of all the subjects were available there.
Aruna : Do you have any idea (iv) ................................ ?
Shanker: I guess it will go on till 30th of this month.
Aruna : Then I’ll definitely go there and buy some good books.
C. Write the following dialogues:
i. Between two friends about a television programme they both enjoy watching.
ii. Between a teacher and a student about a forthcoming examination.
iii. Between a mother and daughter about health care.
iv. Between a bank employer and a customer on opening an account.

WRITING NARRATIVES

We use narratives to talk about the past. We can use them to tell a story or to describe past
events, including personal anecdotes or to report a conversation. Take a look at the examples
below. One is a report of a personal experience of the past and the other of an event.

When I lived on the island, I enjoyed walking on the beach in the early morning with Bonnie -
my best friend and my dog.

Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 after Germany had attacked Poland
two days earlier. Britain had been trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement.

Let us look at a conversation now: Ex. Read this conversation and the narrative between two
co- passengers in a train:

Gupta: Are you also going to Delhi?

Venkatesh: No. I am travelling to Mathura

Gupta: Do you live in Mathura or are you just visiting it?

Venkatesh: I am in the textiles business and am attending to business in Mathura. I am not on

a pleasure trip.

Ans: Two co- passengers, Venkatesh and Gupta, started a conversation in a train as they were
both travelling in a train going to Delhi. Gupta inquired whether Venkatesh was also going to
Delhi. Venkatesh replied in the negative (opposite of negative is affirmative), further adding
that he was going to Mathura. Gupta enquired whether Venkatesh lived in Mathura or was
just going on a visit. Venkatesh responded that he was going to Mathura on business as he
was into the textile business and was not on a pleasure trip.
Try rewriting the entire narrative in the present tense.

Points to observe

• If one follows a particular tense, either present or past, it is better to adhere to the same
tense throughout
• There can be instances where the future & present or present & past can be mixed in a
narrative (Find such narratives)
• The entire conversation can also be rewritten in the present tense
• The right reporting verbs need to be adapted to the context used
• There is greater flexibility in use and addition of sentences and words than in
Direct/Indirect Speech which reports verbatim what is spoken
• Take care to see that you do not use wrong vocabulary which can result in
miscommunication/misunderstanding
SAMPLE EXERCISES

Dialogue to Narrative:

Ajay: Do you want to play with us?

Mohan: Yes, But I am too late.

Ajay: It does not matter, come to the ground.

Mohan: Thanks

Ajay asked Mohan if he wanted to play with them. Mohan replied in the affirmative, but
regretted that he was too late. However, Ajay said that it did not matter and advised him to
come to the ground. It was then that Mohan thanked him.

Narrative to Dialogue:

Sonu asked Shiela what she was thinking of. Shiela replied that she was thinking about her
future. Sonu further enquired as to what her future plan was, when Shiela answered that she
wanted to be a politician.

Sonu : “What are you thinking of?”

Shiela : “I am thinking about my future.”

Sonu : “What is your future plan?”

Shiela : “I want to be a politician.”

 Homophone

What is a Homophone?

Homophones are words that are pronounced the same way but have different meanings.
Homophones can be tricky for a new language learner. They can even be confusing for a
primary speaker of a language, especially while writing.

There are thousands of homophones in English, including many commonly used words,
and their identical pronunciations.

Definition of homophone:
1. grammar : one of two or more words pronounced alike but different in meaning or
derivation or spelling (such as the words to, too, and two)
2. a character or group of characters pronounced the same as another character or group
A. Some common examples of homophones, including the words used in a sentence,
are:
1. Brake/break: When teaching my daughter how to drive, I told her if she didn't hit
the brake in time she would break the car's side mirror.
2. Cell/sell: If you sell drugs, you will get arrested and end up in a prison cell.
3. Cent/scent: I won't spend one cent on a bottle of perfume until I know that I love
the scent.
4. Die/dye: If you accidentally drank a bottle of fabric dye, you might die.
5. Flour/flower: To bake a flower-shaped cake, you’ll need some flour.
6. Right/write: There is no right way to write a great novel.
7. Heal/heel: If the heel breaks on your shoe, you might fall. However, your injuries
will heal over time.
8. Idle/idol: Being idle makes me unhappy, but listening to my idol Taylor Swift makes
me happy.
9. Knight/night: The knight is on his way to the castle, but traveling at night is very
dangerous.
 10. Sea/see: At my beach house, I love to wake up and see the sea.

Note:

Why do languages have homophones? There are different reasons why languages have
homophones. Some languages have significantly fewer phonetic syllables than others and this
limited syllable set makes homophones almost inevitable. Chinese is one such family of
languages, and with Chinese dialects’ emphasis on context, homophones play an important
role in communication and understanding.

In other languages, such as English, homophones largely stem from words’ pronunciations
changing over time. All languages evolve as people migrate, mesh with new cultures, develop
new technology and new needs, and integrate new languages with their own. Languages
evolve into distinct regional dialects as well and sometimes, words that are homophones in
one dialect aren’t homophones in another. One example of this in US English are the words
“marry,” “merry,” and “Mary.” In some parts of the US, these three words sound the same
and in others, they have distinct pronunciations.

B. Frequently confused Homophones:

There are several homophones in the English language which are confusing at some point.
These frequently confused homophones include:

1. Accept/except: Accept is a verb that means to take or receive. Except is used as

a preposition or conjunction to mean but or exclude.
2. Affect/effect: Affect is a verb and indicates influence. Effect is a noun and is the result
of an action or change.
3. Compliment/complement: Compliment means a polite expression of praise or
admiration for someone or something. Complement means something that enhances or
completes.
4. Then/than: Then is a versatile word used as an adverb, noun or adjective to show the
order of how things happened. Than is a subordinating conjunction you can use to
make comparisons.
5. To/too: To can be a preposition or infinitive when used with a verb. Too is an adverb or
asynonym for also.
6. You’re/your: You're is a contraction for you are. Your is a pronoun
 C. Let us know how homophones are used:
1. Pallavi’s shoes are [two/too] small.

2. Raja has [two/too] dogs.

3. Their [son/sun] is the only child in the family.

4. The [son/sun] was shining through the window.

5. Sunil [new/knew] to speak Spanish.

6. Syeeda started a [new/knew] job today.

7. He held the railing as he walked down the [stairs/stares].

8. The cat sits in the window and [stairs/stares] at the squirrel.

9. I can [sea/see] the mountains in the distance.

10. Fishermen make their living from the [sea/see].

D. Tick the correct word from the brackets:

1. The actors had to shoot the [scene/seen] three times.

2. The cat was last [scene/seen] in the backyard.

3. We want to [billed/build] a new shed in the garden.

4. Have you [scene/seen] my keys?

5. The [weather/whether] on the weekend is supposed to be sunny.

6. The final cost depends on [weather/whether] you choose the small or the large size.

7. She [blew/blue] out the candle and went to sleep.

8. We painted the ceiling in [blue/blew].

9. The snowstorm will [affect/effect] thousands of travellers.

10. The [affect/effect] of the changes was unexpected.

11. At the grocery store, coffee is in the same [aisle/isle] as tea.

12. Thousands of seabirds nest on the small [aisle/isle].

13. They weren't [allowed/aloud] to take their dog into the store.

14. The teacher read the instructions [allowed/aloud] to the students.

15. The day was warm, so the students [ate/eight] their lunch outside.

16. She works for [ate/eight] hours every weekday.

17. The dog chased the [ball/bawl] into the neighbour’s yard.

18. The [capital/capitol] building was built in 1878.

19. The children [bear/bare] a resemblance to their grandfather.

20. After the sale, the store's shelves were almost [bear/bare].

E. Choose the correct words from the pairs of homophones to complete the paragraph:

I had once written a lovely --------- (story/storey). It was a fantastic ------- (tail/ tale) of fairies
and goblins hosting a--------- (ball/bawl). I showed it to eat to------- (our/hour) teacher-------
(who’s/whose) eyes became rather big after she-------- (read/red) it. She was a -------- (dear/
deer) old ------ (soul/sole), so she did not want to -------- (tell/ tale) me that writing stories
would be a ------ (waste/waist) of time for me. She even told me that it was a -------(great/
grate) story.

F.Find the homophones of the following words, and write the meanings of each:

1.Aloud -------------

2. Know

3. Seen

4. Grown -------------

5. Night ------------
 Homonyms

Introduction:

Homonyms are words that are spelled the same and sound the same but have different
meanings.

Definitions of Homonymy:

Originally, the word "homonym" comes from the conjunction of the Greek prefix
homo-, meaning "same", and suffix -ṓnymos, meaning "name". Thus, it refers to two or more
distinct concepts sharing the "same name" or signifier.Therefore, a homonym is a word that
has two different meanings, even though the uses look and sound exactly alike.

Hartmann and Stork define that homonyms are different words with the same
pronunciation that may or may not be identical in spelling.

Examples of homonyms: lie as in you have to lie down and lie in don’t lie, tell the truth.

(Note: Some homonyms have more than two meanings.

For example: “tender" can also mean sensitive, easily chewed, or even refer to chicken
strips.)

A. The following is a list of homonyms with their meanings:

Homonyms Meaning 1 Meaning 2

Address to speak to location

Air oxygen a lilting tune or voice

Arm body part division of a company

Band a musical group a ring

Bark out layer of a tree the sound a dog makes

Bat an implement used to hit a ball a nocturnal flying mammal

Bright very smart or intelligent filled with light

Circular taking the form of a circle a store advertisement

Current up to date flow of water

to show your thoughts by

Express a fast version of something
using words

Fair equitable beautiful

Kind a type of something caring

Lie to recline to tell a falsehood

Match to pair like items a stick for making a flame

Mean average not nice

a piece of metal that holds a inside front position on the

Pole
flag starting line of a race

Pound unit of weight to beat

Quarry a site for mining stone to extract or obtain slowly

Ring a band on a finger something circular in shape

Right correct direction opposite of left

Rock a genre of music a stone

Rose to have gotten up a flower

Spring a season coiled metal

Tender gentle offer of money

Tire to grow fatigued a part of a wheel

a source for water in the

Well in good health
ground
B. Types of Homonyms:

1. Complete (full, absolute)homonyms:The homonyms that have the same

pronunciation and the same spelling i.e. spoken and written forms.
Example: bank (embankment) and bank (place where money is kept)

2. Partial homonyms:The words that are “exactly” alike in pronunciation but differ in
spelling and meaning.
Example: morning and mourning; there and their.
3. Near homonyms: They do not sound exactly alike.
Example: except and accept; loose and lose.
4. Lexical Homonyms: When the homonyms belong to the same part of speech, they
are called lexical homonyms. The difference is only in their lexical meaning. Theycan be
found under one entry in the dictionary.
Example: trunk (part of an elephant) and trunk (a storage chest).
5. Grammatical Homonyms: The difference between homonyms is not only confined tothe
lexical meaning but the grammatical types are also different, they are called grammatical
homonyms. Verbs occurring as transitive and intransitive or lexical units that occur as
nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.
Exhaem
W n tphlee:dcifufetr(evn.)c,e cuuttt (n.), cut (adj.)) are examples of such homonyms
C. Homonymy and Ambiguity

Homonymic clash (sometimes called homonymic conflict) is a term used to refer to theambiguity
arising from homonyms because of the similarity in spelling and/or pronunciation.

Example: I’ll meet you by the bank, which may mean ‘I’ll meet you by the financial
institution’ or ‘I’ll meet you by the riverside’.

The words red (a colour) and read (past participle of read) are the ones that create theambiguity
in the sentence because of their identical articulation.

D. Choose the suitable word from the brackets:

1) Your perfume has a wonderful------- . (scent, cent)

2) I banged my------ on the leg of the table. (toe, tow)
3) What do you take to work? (root, route)
4) The wind the door closed.(blew, blue)
5) She returned to the------ of the accident.(scene, seen)
6) I had an apple and a------ for lunch.(pear, pair)
7) We walked home-------the park.(through, threw)
8) I can play a few-------on the guitar. (cords, chords)
9) Don't touch the cat's------- . (tail, tale)
10) I can't eat this------- pizza.(whole, hole)
E. Choose the correct option, a or b

1. The kids are going to watch TV tonight. (a) small clock worn on the wrist
What time is it? I have to set my watch . (b) look at

2. Which page is the homework on? (a) one sheet of paper

Please page the doctor if you need help. (b) to call someone on an electronic
pager

3. Let’s play soccer after school. (a) participate in a sport

The author wrote a new play . (b) theatre piece
4. Ouch! The mosquito bit me! (a) a tiny amount
I’ll have a little bit of sugar in my tea. (b) past tense of bite
5. My rabbits are in a pen outside. (a) a writing instrument which uses ink
Please sign this form with a black pen . (b) an enclosed area

Visit:

https://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331684069_Homonymy

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21
 Paragraph Writing

A paragraph is a number of sentences grouped together that relate to one topic or a group of
sentences that develop a single point. A good paragraph deals with one topic or one idea. This
idea is expressed in the topic sentence, which is usually the first sentence in the paragraph.
All sentences in a good paragraph relate to the topic sentence. A good paragraph also has a
concluding sentence.

In other words a good paragraph is composed of a topic sentence (or key sentence),
relevant supporting sentences, and a closing (or transition) sentence. This structure is the
key focusing on the main idea and creating a clear and concise image.

An effective paragraph will have a single, clear focus. This focus should first be outlined
in the topic sentence, and then explored in depth through the supplementary sentences.

Given below are a few points that will enable you to write a good paragraph:

• Decide on a guiding idea for the paragraph and create a topic sentence.
• Explain the guiding idea.
• Give an example (or multiple examples).
• Explain the example(s).
• Complete the paragraph's idea or draw a conclusion.
TASK 1

Look at the following paragraphs and identity the topic sentence (TS), the supporting
sentences (SS) and the concluding sentence (CS)

A. In times gone by, lions lived in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa. ( ) Humans
killed hundreds of lions either out of fear or for sport. ( ) When areas were cleared to
make towns and villages, lions and other animals were killed in large numbers. ( ) Now
there are no lions left in the Middle East or Northern Africa. ( ) Lions can be found in
Asia and the Eastern part of Central Africa. ( ) They are mostly found in Zoos or national
parks. ( )
B. In these modern times we live a fast-paced life. We speed on highways that never end,
take jet planes to travel faster. ( ) Fast food restaurants save us time. ( ) Our machines are
working faster than ever, and we can enjoy more leisure time. ( ) Then, in our leisure
time, we grumble because things move too slowly ( ) There should be no irrelevant
information in a paragraph; if there is, then the paragraph is badly written, because the
meaning link between the topic sentence and other sentences will be lost.
 TASK 2

Look at the following paragraph. Is there any irrelevant information? Underline the irrelevant
sentences, if any, in the paragraph.

Our dog Buster is a sprightly, mischievous spitz. The first thing he did when he was brought
home from the breeder’s farm was to chew up my rubber slipper. The breeder lives on a farm
on the outskirts of the city. She was a teacher once, but now she has taken up breeding dogs.
Next he `read’ my father’s newspaper thoroughly - a shredding machine couldn’t have done a
better job. Then he chased our neighbour’s poor little kitten all-round the garden, yapping
furiously. He had a big grin on his face, but we were exhausted. Now rewrite the paragraph
without the irrelevant sentences. Think of a title for the paragraph.
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Principles of Constructing Good Paragraphs:

1. A good paragraph must have UNITY. To achieve unity, there should be only one idea
in each paragraph.

TASK 3

Look at the following passage. There are two main ideas, and therefore, there must be two
paragraphs. Read the passage and use/to indicate where a new paragraph should begin. Also
underline the topic sentence of each paragraph.

There was a time in history when this land we now call Britain was not an island. It was
joined to the rest of Europe, and hills and forests once stood where the North Sea and the
English Channel are today. Then, owing to some great earthquakes, much of the land sank,
the sea rushed in and only high parts remained above the surface of the water. How do we
know this? Fishermen trawling in the North Sea and the English Channel have found in their
nets the bones of pre-historic animals that must have been roaming about on what was once
dry land. Sabre-toothed tigers, mammoths and other creatures that have disappeared long
ago could not have been paddling about in canoes, could they?

2. The logical sequence of thought or Order is a feature of a good paragraph. There must
be chronological order if an event is being described or logical development of thought
if it is a question of ideas/opinions or even a process.

TASK 4

Put the following sentences in the correct order to make a coherent paragraph. Sentence (b) is
the first sentence.

(a) Others feared that, one day, he might accept the crown of Rome which had been offered
him. ( )

(b) On March 15th, in 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was assassinated on the steps of the Capitol in
Rome. (1)

(c) Some were jealous of his outstanding success as a general. ( )

(d) A number of rich and famous Roman senators plotted his downfall. ( )

(e) So his `friends’, Brutus, Cassius and Casca with others thrust their daggers into the great
leader. ( )

(f) Then they dipped their daggers in his blood and held them up for all to see. ( )

3. A paragraph should be fully developed. An idea expressed in the topic sentence should
not be abandoned half-way through. Look at the following paragraph. What is wrong
with it?

There are three reasons why I am not admitting my child to that school. In the first place,
the school is far away from where we live. Yes, the school does have a bus, but can you
imagine a child of 5 having to spend nearly an hour to reach school? That’s the time it
takes for the bus, with a lot of pick-up points on the way. I definitely will not send my child
to that school.

The topic sentence says that there are three reasons, but the paragraph ends up mentioning
only one. This is a paragraph that has not been fully developed.
 Now look at the improved version of the same paragraph.

There are three reasons why I am not admitting my child to that school. In the first place,
the distance my child will have to commute is too much. Secondly, I cannot afford the fees.
Thirdly, and most importantly, I do not approve of the type of education the school offers.

TASK 5

Write a short paragraph according to the specification given below. Begin with the topic
sentence provided. Add supporting sentences and a concluding sentence.

Topic Sentence: There are both advantages and disadvantages in owning a TV.

Supporting Sentences: Two advantages and two disadvantages.

Concluding Sentence: Explain why you do or do not like owning a TV.

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Types of Paragraphs:

i. Descriptive Paragraphs:
“Description is the art of translating perception into words.” (Kane and Peter: OUP; 1986)
When you write a descriptive paragraph, you try to reproduce in words what you see, hear
or experience. The aim of a descriptive paragraph is to be as accurate and effective as
possible.

Study the descriptive paragraph about a garden given below. Is it an effective paragraph?

Sunset is the time of day when our sky meets the outer space solar winds. There are blue,
pink, and purple swirls, spinning and twisting, like clouds of balloons caught in a whirlwind.
The sun moves slowly to hide behind the line of horizon, while the moon races to take itsplace
in prominence atop the night sky. People slow to a crawl, entranced, fully forgetting the
deeds that must still be done. There is a coolness, a calmness, when the sun does set.

TASK 6

Write description of a place you know or like very much. To make sure that you catch the
attention of the reader in the first two sentences, think of a powerful topic sentence.
Remember to include effective supporting sentences and a concluding sentence.
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Description can be of persons too. However, while describing persons, we tend to choose
details that we feel reflect the personality of the individual.

My grandmother had always been short and fat and slightly bent. Her face was criss-cross of
wrinkles running from everywhere to everywhere... Her silver locks were scattered untidily
over her pale, puckered face, and her lips constantly moved in audible prayer.

TASK 7

Now you write a paragraph describing a friend or relative. Describe what you feel are the
features that reflect his/her personality.

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Processes too can be described/ can be represented through a diagram or pictures - the text
that accompanies these diagrams/pictures describes the process verbally.

The Process of cleaning and organizing your study room.Here is how you can clean and
organize your study room.
This is the perfect system for cleaning your room. First, move all of the items that do not have
a proper place to the centre of the room. Then get rid of at least few things that you have not
used since the last year. Remove all of the trash, and wash all the dirty dishes/things. Now
find a location for each of the items you had placed in the centre of the room. Wipe off the
dust, and clean the room. Organize your books properly. Keep the essential items reachable.
Other remaining items, see if you can squeeze them in under your bed or stuff them into the
back of your closet. Once done with the things you feel happy and relaxed.

TASK 8

Much of the text in your science books describes a function or a process. Describe one such
function or process from your text-book.

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ii. Narrative Paragraphs:

Narrative Paragraphs tell a story or an event. It could be a tale, novel, and an account of
one’s life, natural phenomena, or social events. The paragraph should be arranged
chronologically that is in the order in which they have happened. Therefore a
Narrative paragraph must have:
• Central idea ( what the story/event about)
• A plot (conflict, climax…)
• Setting (when and where the story or event takes place)
• Adequate description (background information, development, conclusion)
Narrative paragraphs describe about the things happened. Read the paragraph below, in which
the writer has narrated an event of the day everything went wrong.
 iii. The day everything went wrong:

This was a day I am not likely to forget for a long time. It started when my alarm failedto go
off and I woke up really late. I had exactly 15 minutes to get ready for school. In my hurry I
failed to check the water temperature and ended up standing under a spray of boiling water.
Then, while trying to finish breakfast in a minute and a half I knocked the juice off the table.
Mom scolded and not allowed without cleaning up the mess, so I had to clean everything before
I could dash out of the house. There is a ditch with dirty water near the bus stop. And so it had
to happen today that I tripped and fell in it. I was wet with mud all over my starched white shirt.
So I knew what to expect at school.

Car Accident

It is this mad craze for speed that is responsible for many road accidents. Only last year, I
witnessed what might have been a fatal accident on the Kashmir road. I was motoring down
from Srinagar, and as I was nearing Kohala, I came upon the wreckage of two cars on the
road. The smash had been caused by a car taking a sharp curve at 60 mph and crashing into a
car coming up. Happily, no one was killed, but many were badly injured, and the two cars were
total write-offs. To drive fast down a twisting mountain road is to court disaster.

TASK 9

Write a narrative paragraph describing an exciting/interesting/strange event. Write about 150

words:

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 iv. Reflective Paragraphs:
They deal with ideas and opinions. In other words, they are concerned with our brain,
thinking and other cognitive aspects. Most reflective paragraphs try to justify or persuade.

Read the following paragraph about Mercy. Mention the topic sentence in the paragraph.

To forgive an injury is often considered to be a sign of weakness; it is really a sign of

strength. It is easy to allow oneself to be carried away by resentment and hate into an act of
vengeance; but it takes a strong character to restrain these natural passions. The man who
forgives an injury proves himself to be the superior to the man who has wronged him, and
puts the wrong-doer to shame. Forgiveness may even turn a foe into a friend. So mercy is the
noblest form of revenge.

This paragraph is about what the writer thinks. The supporting sentences are used to
strengthen the main idea that mercy is not weakness. Notice how the writer has first presented
the common view and then introduced his own view. Also notice how he achieves an impact
by placing the topic sentence at the end of the paragraph

TASK 10

Choose one of the topics given below and write a paragraph about your ideas on the topic:

Anger/ Gratitude/ Humility /Contentment

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 Chapter – 5

THE NECESSITY OF NORMALISING QUEER LOVE

- Panti Bliss

Introduction of the writer

Panti regularly hosts the annual Dublin Pride celebrations, which take place in the month of
June every year. 'Panti' is short for 'Pandora Panti Bliss'. Rory O'Neill's first drag performance
was in 1998. O'Neill and his alter ego Panti are the subject of a documentary about his early
life, The Queen of Ireland, the events surrounding comments O'Neill made about homophobia
and Panti's role during Ireland's successful campaign for marriage equality. The Queen of
Ireland premiered on 21 October 2015, followed by its planned nationwide release in Ireland
from 23 October 2015.

Rory O'Neill (born 16 November 1968), also known by his stage names Panti, Panti Bliss
and Pandora Panti Bliss, is a drag queen and gay rights activist from Ballinrobe, CountyMayo,
Ireland. He is considered to be Ireland's foremost drag queen. From 1996 to 2012, Panti was the
hostess of the annual Alternative Miss Ireland pageant.
 Pre Reading Activity:

1. Discuss the terms gender binary, homophobia, LGBTQ.

2. Share your views on gender equality

***********************************************************

THE NECESSITY OF NORMALISING QUEER LOVE

- Panti Bliss

Hi. Hi. I am 45 years old. I know I look amazing, thank you. And I am 45 years old and I have
never once unselfconsciously held hands with a lover in public.

I am 45 years old and I have never once casually, comfortably, carelessly held hands with a
partner in public.
I don’t know how many of you can even imagine what that might be like because, of course,
it’s a small thing, isn’t it, holding hands with a lover in public? And it’s not that nobody wanted
to, it’s just that we didn’t feel comfortable to do that.
Now, like many gay people, when I was younger, in my young life, I struggled at one time
against being gay. I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t want to be this thing that I didn’t really
understand. This thing that I had learned was shameful or joke-worthy. But when I eventually
did sort of understand and come to accept who and what I am, I have never since that moment,
never once, have I ever wished that it turned out differently. I am thoroughly, deeply,
delightedly, happy to be gay. It suits me. I am really good at it.
And yet, every day I am jealous of straight people, because that private, little, small, intimate
gesture of affection has never once been mine. Every day I see young, straight couples walking
through the park and they are casually holding hands and I am jealous of them. I see a teenage
couple at a bus stop and she is leaning into him, and her hand is in his, and both of their hands
are tucked into his jacket pocket for warmth, and I am jealous of that teenage couple.
I will sometimes see a man who unconsciously put his hand, a protective arm, around his
girlfriend and she will link her fingers through his, and I am jealous of that. Maybe you’re on
Grafton Street and you see an older lady and she gestures to draw her husband’s attention to
something in the window, and without even thinking he just takes her hand and they stand there
peering into the window discussing whatever it is that drew their attention and their hands are
just carelessly joined together, and I am jealous of that.
Because gay people do not get to hold hands in public without first considering the risk. Gay
people do not get to put an arm through another arm or put a hand on a boyfriend’s waist
without first considering what the possible consequences might be. We look around to see:
where are we, who’s around, is it late at night? What kind of area is it? Are there bored teenagers
hanging around looking for amusement? Are there bunches of lads standing outside a pub?
And if we decided OK, maybe it is, it’s OK, well then, we do hold hands, but the thing is that
now those hands are not casual and thoughtless. They are now considered and weighed. But
we stroll on hand in hand trying to be just normal and carefree just like everybody else, but
actually we’re not. Because we are constantly scanning the pavement ahead, just in case.
And then even if we do see, you know, a group of blokes coming towards us, maybe we will
decide sort of silently to continue holding hands, defiantly. But now our small, intimate gesture
between two people in love is no longer a small, intimate gesture. It is a political act of defiance,
and it has been ruined.
And anyway, then you sort of think: “Well, we’ve had such a lovely afternoon poking around
in that garden center looking at things for the garden we don’t actually have.” And then you
think, all it will take is one spat ‘faggots’ or a split lip to turn that really lovely afternoon into
a bad afternoon that you will never want to remember. And even if you are somewhere where
you think: “Ah, it’s perfectly fine here. Nobody here is going to react badly to our tiny gesture.”
You know, I don’t know, say you’re wandering through a posh department store. Even then
people will notice.

Now, they may only notice because they’re thinking: “Isn’t nice to see two gays holding hands
in public?” But they still notice, and I don’t want them to notice because then our small,
intimate, private, little, human gesture has been turned into a statement, and I don’t want that
to be turned into a statement. Our little private gesture, like Schrödinger’s cat, is altered simply
by being observed.

We live in this sort of homophobic world, and you might think that a small, little thing like
holding hands in public, “Well, it’s just a small thing,” and you’re right. It is indeed just a small
thing. But it is one of many small things that make us human, and there are lots of small things
every day that LGBT people have to put up with, that other people don’t have to put up with.
Lots of small things that we have to put up with in order to be safe or not to be the object of
ridicule or scorn. And we are expected to put up with those things and just thank our blessings
that we don’t live in a country where we could be imprisoned or executed for being gay.

And we are so used to making those small adjustments every day that even now we rarely
ourselves even notice that we are doing it, because it is just part of the background of our lives.
This constant malign presence that we have assimilated, and if we complain about it, we are
told that we have nothing to complain about because, “Aren’t you lucky that you don’t live in
Uganda?” And yes, I am lucky that I don’t live in Uganda, but that’s not good enough. This
isn’t some sort of game or competition where the person who has it the worst wins the right to
complain and everybody else has to just put up or shut up.

Our society is homophobic. It is infused with homophobia. It is dripping with homophobia.

And when you are 45 years old and you have spent 30 putting up, 30 absorbing all of those
small slights and intimidations and sneers and occasionally much worse, you just get tired of
it. You get fed up putting up. I am fed up of reading yet another article by yet another straight
person explaining why I am less somehow than everybody else.
You get fed up listening to people describe you as intrinsically disordered, people who don’t
even know you, from their celibate pulpits. You get fed up of the scrawled graffiti, and you get
fed up of people sneeringly describe things as gay. You get fed up of steeling yourself to pass
by the Saturday night drunks hoping that they won’t notice you, and you get fed up of people
using their time and energies and talents to campaign against you being treated just like every
other citizen.
I’m 45 and I’m fed up putting up. Now I would, of course, prefer if nobody harbored any
animosity towards gay people or any discomfort with gay relationships, but, you know, I can
live with the kind of small, personal, private homophobia that some people might have. For
example, I can live with Mary in Wicklow who sometimes turns on the television and sees
Graham Norton and thinks, “Oh, he seems nice enough but does he have to be so gay?” I can
live with that. I can live with Mary who doesn’t know any gay people, apart from that fella who
does her hair once a month in ‘Curl Up and Dye’.Mary, whose only knowledge of gay people
and our relationships comes from what she has gleaned from schoolyards, church and
Coronation Street. I can live with that.

Now I would be happy to sit down on the sofa and watch Coronation Street with Mary. I would
be happy to have a cup of tea with her and discuss with her why she feels a little uncomfortable
with gay relationships and I would hope that Mary would change her mind. I would hope that
she would meet more gay people and find out pretty quickly that we are just as ordinary, just
as nice or just as annoying as all of you people are. And I would hope that she would change
her mind for her own sake as much as anybody else’s, because gay people are just as capable
of bringing goodness into Mary’s life as anybody else.
But that kind of personal discomfort with gay people and their relationships is entirely different
from the kind of homophobia that manifests itself in public. The kind of homophobia that
manifests itself in an attempt to have LGBT people treated differently or less than everybody
else. The kind of homophobia that seeks to characterize gay people and their relationships as
less worthy of respect. That kind of homophobia I do have a problem with, and I think gay
people should be allowed to call it when they see it, because it is our right to do so.
Of course, many people object to the word homophobia itself. They object tothe
‘phobia’ part. “I’m not afraid of you,” they say. But I’m not saying that homophobes cowerin
fear every time they pass a Cher album, but they are afraid. They are afraid of what the worldwill
look like when it treats gay, lesbian and bisexual people with the same respect as everybodyelse.
They are afraid that they won’t fit in this brave new world of equality. But, of course, theirfear
is irrational because, of course, the world will not look any different. Kids will still want to eat
ice cream, dogs will still play fetch, the tide will still come in, and parallel parking will still be
difficult.

The most vocal homophobes who know that they long ago lost the arguments around the
decriminalization of homosexual sex or every other advance for gay people since. These days
you will find those very vocal homophobes clustered around the same-sex marriage debate —
and it is quite the spectacle because, of course, they know that they can’t just come right out
and bluntly say what drives them, which is an animus towards gay people, and a disgust at
what they imagine we do in bed, because they know that that won’t wash with the general
public anymore. So, they are forced to sort of scramble for any other reason that they can think
of to argue their case. So, they come up excuses such as gay people are going to destroy the
institution of marriage, gay couples will be wandering through orphanages picking babies off
shelves trying to find one that matches their new IKEA sofa.Or that allowing gay people to get
married will destroy society itself, and many, many more including my own personal favorite,
which is the old argument that the word ‘marriage’ is defined in some dictionary as a union
between a man and a woman, and that therefore same-sex marriage can’t possibly bea
‘marriage’. Which is a piffling argument against words and dictionaries and not an argument
against same-sex marriage.
Earlier this year I was invited to take part in the St. Pat’s for All parade in Queens, New York.
Now it is a really lovely, charming, grassroots event in Queens which was set up in response
to the ban on gay groups marching in the famous Manhattan St. Patrick’s Day Parade. In that
Manhattan St. Patrick’s Day Parade any Irish group who wants can march, Irish policemen can
march, Irish firemen, Irish footballers, Irish community groups, Irish volleyball teams, Irish
book clubs. Any Irish people who want to have a good shot at being allowed to march in that
parade — except for Irish gays, because, as far as the organizers of that parade are concerned,
gays are nothing more than walking sex acts, and there is no place for buggery in their parade.
Now, I actually saw a small documentary once about one of the leaders of the organizers of
that parade, they are the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and they’re like a Catholic Orange Order
— they dress the same and everything — and in the documentary, he was a nice old fellow,
and he had this lovely wife, and they seemed very happy together. And when I looked at them,
I saw this life lived together, and I imagined if I asked him about their life together, that he
would remember the first time they met, he would remember how nervous he was on their first
date together, and how proud he was when he turned and saw her coming up the aisle in that
dress that she had fretted over for so long.
And I imagine that if I asked him, he would remember that phone call to say that she had gone
into labor and the dash across town, and the other time when she went so far past her due date
that she promised she would bounce up and down on a trampoline until the baby bounced out
of her and how they laughed so hard about that.
And I imagine he would remember other occasions like when their youngest broke his arm and
cried all the way to the hospital, and that other time when she was sick and he could not sleep
alone in the empty bed and so in the middle of the night he got up and went back to the hospital
even though he knew they wouldn’t let him in to see her at that hour.
I imagine that he would remember all of those things and many more. All of the small things
that go up to making a relationship and making a person a person. And when I looked at him,
I imagined all of those things too. But when he looks at me he doesn’t see me that way. He
doesn’t see gay people that way. To him we are just sex acts and there is no place for sex acts
in his parade.
I am 45 years old and I am fed up putting up. Not anymore.
I’m 45 old and I am not putting up anymore because I don’t have the energy anymore. Putting
up is exhausting.
I am 45 years old and I’m not putting up anymore because I don’t have the patience anymore.45
years old! I was born six months before the Stonewall riots, and you have had 45 years to work
out, that despite appearances, I am just as ordinary, just as unremarkable, and just as human
asyou are.
I’m 45 years old and I am not asking anymore, I am just being — human
being.Thank you for your time.
Thank you. Thank you
Vocabulary

1. Lad : a young boy

2. Stroll : a leisurely walk
3. Blokes : a man on the street
4. Faggot : derogatory term for a homosexual man
5. Malign : disrespectful
6. Sneer : a contemptuous expression
7. Gleaned : to accumulate resources
8. Animus : feeling of enmity
9. Piffling : unimportant
10. Stonewall riots : protests by members of gay community against the
a police raid

Questions:

1. What has the writer never done in public?

2. Why is the writer jealous of the elderly couple?
3. What are the factors that decide the holding of hands for gays in public?
4. Describe the homophobic world the writer mentions in the article.
5. What is the malign presence that the writer talks about?
6. What is the argument of straight people against gay marriage?
7. What is the 45-year-old writer fed up about?
8. How does the society treat a gay man?
Extended activity:

1. Watch the movie NaanuAwanallaAwalu.

2. Interview a person from the transgender community.
 Chapter – 6

DISABILITY AND INDIA

- Nipun Malhotra

About the Author

Nipun Malhotra (born 1 September 1987) is an Indian social entrepreneur and disability rights
activist. He was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, with arthrogryposis. In 2012, he started a
disability rights advocacy organization based in Delhi called Nipman Foundation. Malhotra is
the Founder Chair of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry's (FICCI)
Diversity & Inclusion Working Group on Empowering Persons with Disability.

About the Ted Talk:

Co-founder and CEO, Nipman foundation, change-maker, Author Nipun Malhotra strongly
believes that mental liberation is not restricted by physical limitations. In his ted talk he says
that the disabled are outside the ecosystem and ignored by Society, governments and the world
at large. Outside the ecosystem because they need to think out of the box to show their presence.
With the story of his life he brings out the disability movement in India.
He divides the Ted-Talk into two parts. The first is about himself to frame the context and in
the second part he talks about the frame work that he has developed to solve a lot of problems
that persons with disabilities in India face. On the whole the ted talk is inspiring and motivating
for not only the disabled but also the normal, common people.
 Pre Reading Activity:

1. Discuss in groups the various types of Disabilities.

2. Disabled students/ professionals stigmatized at educational and work places. If so list out
the various challenges faced by the disabled community.
3. You may have heard about various disabled personalities achieving success in their
chosen fields. List out their names and achievements.
4. How India's disabled community fought to halt a legislative change amid the lockdown –
and won.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DISABILITY AND INDIA

- Nipun Malhotra

Good afternoon everybody, it's wonderful to be here and I would like to thank TEDx NMIMS,
Bangalore for choosing this topic outside out which is I think very applicable to both my life
and to persons with disabilities specially in India, because we are often outside the ecosystem
and ignored by Society, governments and the world at large and out because we need to think
out of the box to show our presence and I think that's really been the story of what my life and
the disability movement in India. So the topic that I'm going to speak about is disability, my
life and the three years.

I've divided a talk into two parts, the first is where I'm going to speak about myself to set the
context and the second is about the frame work that I have developed to which everything can
solve a lot of problems that persons with disabilities in India face, but more on that later.

I was a born on 1st September 1987, it was 8:30 a.m.in the morning when I mom went to a
hospital in Mumbai for cesarean surgery. She chose first September strategically because she
knew she had to do caesarean delivery so and first September happened to be Ganesha
Chaturthi in that particular year and she was a very religious person and as all of you know
Lord Ganesha has been considered the remover of obstacles so I'm sure she went on with a lot
of hope that her first child will remove a lot of obstacles in her life and give her a lot of joy and
happiness. But when I was born and when I was taken out of my mother's womb I was bleeding,
my arms and legs were fractured and doctors did not really know what to do with me and one
doctor actually shouted “Oh No” and that's when my mom realized there's something wrong
and she started inquiring “who a what's happened” and doctors in order they did not want to
share that he knew with her because that would be extremely traumatizing. I was immediately
taken to a baby incubator and wrapped the blanket and as I often say you know that the baby
incubators the only place where if you were wrapped in a blanket and not naked there's
something wrong with you.
 Eventually my parents knew there was something wrong with me and a lot of doctors were
invited to give a diagnosis. I was born with this disability called arthrogryposis which basically
means that the muscles in my arms and legs were not fully developed and they would not
develop throughout my lifetime. Unfortunately, at that time doctors were not really sensitive on
how to react with a child with disability. There were some doctors who told my parents that
perhaps it's worth keeping him alive because his neck is straight but we don't really know what
else he can do in life. There was another doctor that who actually told my parents that their sonis
going to live the life equivalent to a wooden doll and that's why I write here the story of a wooden
doll.

But what was the turning point in my life when there was this one doctor who told my mother
that “your son is never really going to deprive you of the joys of motherhood” and I think that
really was the turning point in my life since then it became a parent's mission of life to judge
me for what I can do and not what I cannot do and they decided to fight against society to give
me a completely normal life.

My first few years were filled with operations, injections and various tough decisions that my
parents had to take and by the time I was around four years old, it was finally time to send me
to a normal school and there were a wide variety of people who told my parents that perhaps
Nipun should go to a special school for the disabled and not to a normal school because he is
not normal. But what my parents told everybody at that time, and I think they said that to one
for the rest of my life, is that of course he's normal and just happens to have a disability and we
don't want to protect him by sending into sending him to a special school because eventually
he has to face the normal challenges in life.

I'm lucky that they thought that way and I think that was the second best decision they took in
their life. There were a wide variety of schools that rejected me that they went to around 20
Schools that did not want to really give me admission before there was this one school that
finally decided to enroll me and see me for my abilities and not my disabilities.

My school had a very big theater and I wanted to participate in plays and every year I used to
lend up for auditions but the theatre teacher was into short how-to ready enroll me in the play.
So the first year that I landed up she said “no one's watching, we don't really ever hold for you,
you will have to go back”. The second year I landed up again she again had to send me back
but the third year when I landed up she said “oh! Wow” and she allowed me to do a part in the
play. I was of course thrilled I went back home and told everybody that “I've got a great role
I'm going to be in my school” and in production the next day when I landed up I realized that I
was a tree on the set of the play because the teachers thought that perhaps I'm very good at you
know staying physically atone place so why not and I really enjoyed that experience and I think
what that taught me is that in life you of course won't always get what is ideal but I think you
should make the most out of everything that you really can get and I think that's about thinking
outside out.
After my school I wanted to get into the best of institutions but most government colleges in
this country warrant to the accessible and I went to a private college for a year which wasn't
which was accessible. I decided to reapply to Delhi University and I remember to see and Steve
in the interview were the principal actually told me “Nipun, I love your CV, but the economics
rooms are on the first floor for around hundred and twenty-five years and we cannot shift it
down for one person”. I said there was no problem. I mean “I'll go up on third every day” and
for four days I actually took two weightlifters with me and climbed up one floor every day and
finally did thanks to my persistence, the college shifted economics classroom down and they
also thought out of the box where they could not make the first floor accessible but they shifted
Economics from down which I think was great and I also became the founder of the Enabling
committee in St.Stephen's through which our St. Stephen's became completely accessible
during my time at college and now St. Stephen's is one of the most accessible colleges in the
country.

Apart from that, I made a lot of friends and Saints Stephen’s, I was a founder of the
Entrepreneurship cell and my life changed to a large extent when I was in St. Stephen's, but I
still remember what my third year at St.Stephen's. I decided to apply for Delhi School of
Economics for a master's in economics and even though I was working hard at the end I heard
some people whispering that is impossible. I wanted to prove them wrong and I locked myself
into my room for a couple of months and worked hard and when the results came out, I had
scored a52nd ranked nationwide and had actually defeated two friends of mine who were
making those statements about me.

So, I think that was a proud moment for me, though Delhi School of Economics still ended up
becoming a major turning point in my life because when I was in Delhi School of Economics
I decided to sit for placements and when I sat for placement. I saw the discrimination persons
with disabilities face first and there's this one company that rejected me because they wanted
to see me sit on a wheelchair 48 hour, they couldn't believe I could do that and I refused to do
that. There's a second that rejected me because they did not have a disabled worker and that
after going through 7 rounds of interviews and there was a third interview that had actually
asked me, if I read a book with my life these are just three anecdotes of course I'm not going to
go into many other many other of the dozens of interviews that I applied for, but this of course
was a real low point in my life.

I did not know what to do in life, I almost started penning my obituary, I locked myself in my
room for one month. I was under extreme depression, but it's then that I realize that I've been
very lucky, I can use that to transform the life of other people with disabilities rather than just
you know give up at life and that's

When I started in the pen Foundation.

Through my framework, I decided to concentrate on the three years as I call them which are
the main challenges that persons with disabilities face and I think if these things are taken care
of, then persons with disabilities can have a much more empowered life both in India and
worldwide. The first one today is a problem attitude. I think people with disabilities are not
really treated as equal by others around them and in society, we as people with disabilities do
not really want sympathy, nor we want to be treated with ignorance but we want empathy and
we want to be treated as equals just like you would treat anybody else. I mean, for example, a
couple of year’s back I was actually denied entry by this particular restaurant because they said
that as a policy we don't allow people with disabilities inside. It was of course, an extremely
shocking incident a particularly humiliating experience, but when I sent out a tweet about it
and the tweet went viral, I was shocked to hear the similar stories, that a lot of people with
disabilities face. Where they're not allowed to enter public spaces because people just don't
want to be around them. Even when they say, enter a restaurant, many families lock up the
children with disabilities because there are social stigmas associated with them.

There are many in India who actually believes that perhaps because of their previous karma
they have a disabled child today. Just to give you a simple anecdote, the World Health
Organization says that 15%of the world's population is disabled, but as for the official census
in India only around 2.2 1 percent of India's population is disabled. I'm sure India's not the
country of Superman, where less disabled people are born. It's just that India doesn't report its

Disabled population. So, I think equality comes right from home. I was lucky that I was born to
brave parents, but I saw discrimination first hand, like that restaurant that I mentioned. My
school life where I was not treated like an equal.

These are daily battles that people with disabilities face and I think the attitude battle can be
Won. I think people with disabilities can be much more empowered both in India and the rest
of the world with the second plan. That is accessibility and again due to lack of time I'm not
really going to go into detail about accessibility but I'm just going to try to explain what
disability in my way can be reduced by the social mode of the disability, which says the dispute
is not really a medical problem as such but it's a social problem and the social problem basically
means that disability exists due to the barriers that exist in society. The barriers might be in
terms of physical infrastructure, they might be in terms of laws, it might be in terms of policies,
and I think by making physical infrastructure accessible is the first step towards making India
an equal-opportunity country. I'll give you a simple example just from this very room, for that
I can come here and speak just like any other TEDx speaker you're on this stage because the
organizers of TEDx chose to build a ramp through which I could come on stage. If this ramp
didn't exist, I would not have managed coming up on stage. So this ramp actually makes me
somebody who's just equivalent to any other TEDx speaker who is onstage and I think that's
really what I'm trying to talk about through accessibility and so talking about accessibility some
of the things that we've done at a foundation are, we plan to make various events accessible
like the J Poetry Festival the nh7 weekend erthe Serendipity Arts Festival and one of our main
reasons why we focus so much on accessible events is because we feel that a person with
disabilities can come out and celebrate in the open and people realize that people’s disabilities
need the physiological understanding to help the individual to enjoy life, also by changing
working attitudes in society.

The third and the most important plan, is the support of the government in making the lives of
the disabled community much more equal and on par with the others. It takes a certain
determination in the form of policies that benefit the disabled community. it is not just through
legislations and acts, but it majorly by becoming sensitive in the government’s approach
towards the disabled community.

With this I thank you all for having come here and given me a patient hearing.

Glossary:
 Factual Questions

1. Where was Nipun Malhotra born?

2. Why was he kept in the incubator immediately after the birth?
3. What was the disability Nipun born with?
4. What life lessons did Nipun learn from playing a role in the school play?
5. What does thunder indicate?
6. What does the public hanging of man and woman in love suggest?
7. What does forest fire represent?

Paragraph Questions

1. How did Nipun Malhotra change his disability into his strength? Elucidate with reference
to Disability and India.
2. What are the problems faced by disabled persons in India?
3. What is the status of disability in India?

Essay Questions

1.
 Chapter – 07

We will rebuild Worlds

By – Meena Kandasamy

A Note on the Author:

Ilavenil Meena Kandasamy is an Indian poet, activist and translator from Chennai. She has
earned her doctorate in Sociolinguistics from Anna University in Chennai. She has published
two collections of poetry, Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010) at the age of 20. From 2001-
2002, she has edited The Dalit, a bi-monthly alternative English magazine of the Dalit Media
Network. Her poetry writing career began at the age of 17 and she also started translating many
Dalit writers’ books into English; so also, translated Tamil works into English. She has also
written many novels in English.

Meena’s themes revolve around linguistic identity, feminism and caste erasure. She has won
the first prize in the All India Poetry Competition for Mascara and My Lover speaks of Rape.
The tone she uses is aggressive and anti caste with a feminist vigour. In an interview with
Sampsonia Way Magazine, Meena says "My poetry is naked, my poetry is in tears, my poetry
screams in anger, my poetry writhes in pain. My poetry smells of blood, my poetry salutes
sacrifice. My poetry speaks like my people, my poetry speaks for my people.” Her social
media audience – around 100,000 followers on Twitter – is “more political than literati”.

We Will Rebuild Worlds is all about the experience of Dalits, the indignities suffered in a caste-
ridden, hierarchical society and the protest and retorts that they are preparing, in order to
retaliate. She speaks not only as an angry young woman but also becomes the spokesperson of
the marginalized. She recollects the injustices suffered by the Dalits and also motivates them
to resist thousands of years of oppression like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
 WE WILL REBUILD WORLDS

-Meena Kandasamy

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--

Pre-reading activity

Have you ever felt that you have been insulted for no reason?

Discuss in groups what the reasons might be for being treated differently.

We will rebuild / worlds from shattered glass/ and remnants of holocausts.

Once impaled for our faith / and trained to speak in voiceless whispers / we’ll
implore / you to produce the list / from hallowed memories / of our people
disgraced/ as outcastes / degraded / as untouchable at / sixty-four feet / denied
a life/ and livelihood and done to death /

in so many ways it would take / an encyclopedia to describe and steven-spielberg

/ or some-such-guy to produce the special effects for a blockbuster version /

not just the stories of how/ you charred to death forty-four of our men and
women and children / because they asked for handfuls of rice/

electrocuted children to instant death because they played in your well / and
other ghastly carnages

but the crimes of passion/

our passion/ your crimes

poured poison and pesticide through the ears-nose-mouth/ or hanged them in

public / because a man and a woman dared to love/ and you wanted / to teach /
other boys and other girls / the lessons of / how to / whom to / when to /
where to / continue their caste lines

and we will refresh your mind with other histories / of how you brutally
murdered and massacred our peoples / with the smiling promise of / heaven in
the next birth / and in this / a peace that / never belonged.
We will wipe away the / sham of your smiles / that appear and / disappear like
commercials on prime time tv / smiles that flash across / botoxed faces / smiles
that crease / plucked eyebrows / smiles that are pasted and / plastered to your
lips/ smiles that sell yourself / smiles that seek to / sell us into soulless worlds.

We will singe the many skins you wear to the world/ the skins you change at
work / the skins called castes and / skins called race / the skins you mend once a
week / the skin you bought at a sale/ the skin you thought was yours / the filthy
rich stinking skin you thought you could retain at bed.

Shorn of style / and a hypocrisy named / sophistication / there would be nothing

for you to do but gape at our combat gears.

We will learn/ how to fight/ with the substantial spontaneity/

with which we first learnt / how to love.

So / now/ upon a future time/

there will be a revolution.
It will begin in our red-hot dreams that surge that/ scorch that / scald that sizzle

like lava / but never settle down never / pungently solidify.

It will begin / when the song in the sway/ of our hips/ will lead us to dance and

sing/ and stand up straight / put up a pretty fight/ redeem and reclaim/ the

essence of our earth.

It will begin / as our naked bodies / held close together / like hands in prayer /

against each other/ like hands in prayer / set to defy the dares the /diktats

the years the terms / the threats / that set us apart.

It will begin / as we give names to our children and/ give names to our / inward

anger and aches and / name ourselves / with words of fury / like forest fires /

with the words of wrath / like stealthy wildcat eyes / that scare the cowards/ in

power /away.

It will begin / the way thunder rises in our throats and / we will brandish our

slogans with a stormy stress and succeed / to chronicle to / convey the last

stories / of our lost and scattered lives.

It will begin / when the oppressors will wince/ every time they hear our voices

and their sparkly silence will never be taken for a sacrament

It will begin when never / resting we will scream / until / our uvulas tear away

and our breathless words breathe life to the bleeding dead and in the black magic

of our momentary silences / you will hear two questions / India, what is the c

aste of sperm? / India, what is the cost of life? and the rest of our words will

rush/ in this silenced earth / like the rage of a river in first flood.

It will begin / that day when / we will pay /

all that it takes / for the dangerous price of love.

Glossary:

Holocausts: killing on a mass scale

impaled: pierce with a sharp instrument

hallowed: made holy

Steven Spielberg: American film director,producer and screenwriter

carnages: bloody slaughter or injury

botoxed: injected botulinum toxin for cosmetic purposes

pungently: having a strong smell or taste

diktats:an order imposed by someone in power without popular consent

brandish: a gesture like a wave or flourish indicating anger

sacrament: religious ceremony

uvulas: a fleshy extension at back of soft palate which hangs above throat

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Factual Questions
1. What do shattered glasses suggest?
2. Why is Steven Spielberg mentioned?
3. Why were men and women charred to death? What does it suggest?
4. What is the reference to skins here?
5. What does thunder indicate?
6. What does the public hanging of man and woman in love suggest?
7. What does forest fire represent?
Do a project on some of the Dalit Movements in IndiaWrite a profile of the writer Devanoor
Mahad

Paragraph Questions

1. How have the lower castes been physically abused?

2. “…sparkly silence will never be taken for a sacrament” .Whose silence is the poetreferring
to? Why is the word sacrament used here?
3. What are the crimes of passion and who suffers due to the so called crime?
4. Comment on how she describes the beginning of the revolution.
5. What is the dangerous price one has to pay for love and why?

Essay Questions

1. How does Meena dream of building a new world? Explain with the help of the images
used.
2. How are the Dalits described in this poem?
3. How have the upper castes been described?
4. Comment on the concluding lines of the poem.

Suggested Reading:

Langston Hughes: I, too

Mulk Raj Anand: Untouchable

Extended Activities:

Watch and review Jai Bheem and Asuran

Write a paragraph on the origin of the word Dalit

 Chapter-8

The Biker with A Big Heart

Her son’s organ donation saved his life. So he rode 2,300 kilometres to meet her

Photo: John
Francis Peters

A. C. SHILTON FROM BICYCLING MAGAZINE Published Feb 7,

2022 13:27:06 IST
About the Author:
A C Shilton is a Tennessee based award winning freelance journalist and editor. Her work
has appeared in national and regional magazines, newspapers, and websites. She is the
columnist for Outside On line’s Eat and Drink magazine. She is also a consistent
contributor to Runner’s World Bicycling. Men’s Journal. YES Magazine, State pacific
Standard and many other Publications.
As a journalist her writings comprise of illness, food, the outdoors and environmental and
social justice issues.
She divides her time between investigative works and writing features. Her investigative
work was featured in the Netflix docuseries “The Innocent Man”.
About the Article:
Pre- Reading Activity:
1. What type of donations have you heard about? Discuss.
2. Do you know about the organ donation? Share your views on the organ donor if you
know him/her.
3. Discuss the importance of Blood Donation and Organ donation.

It took several drafts to get the letters right. To dis-till her boy’s life into the two
dimensionality of words on paper. To paint a picture of someone full of energy and love,

so that the beneficiaries of his death—the recipients of his organs— would know just
how lucky they were.

Three weeks earlier, the thread that held Christine Cheers’s world together had been
ripped away. On 21 February 2018, someone on the other end of the phone had said the
words that bring parents to their knees: “There’s been an accident.”

Her son, James Mazzuchelli, 32, a flight surgeon with the United States Navy, had been
injured in a helicopter training mission at a military base in California. If she wanted to
see him while he was still alive, she needed to get on the next flight from Florida—and
she needed to pray.

James was still breathing when Christine and James’s step father,David Cheers, arrived at
Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California, the next morning. Machines were
keeping him alive, and the doctors told Christine that what she was seeing was likely his
future—that her scuba-diving, very worst day a stranger’s best one.

Christine instructed the hospital to begin the organ donation process. These few words, as
hard as they were to say, would soon ripple outwards, allowing a man to return to work, a
military veteran to regain his health and an ailing cyclist to get back on his bike.

Mike Cohen was just 18 when he’d been diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukaemia
in 2004. Doctors warned him that the treatment protocol could cause lasting damage to
his heart. At the time, surviving cancer seemed like the more pressing concern. He took
his treatment seriously, doing the radiation and chemotherapy and even moving from
New York to San Diego,California, for his last year of chemo because his oncologist felt
that mild weather would be easier on his body.The risk had paid off—two years after his
diagnosis, he was cancer-free. And the move had been a good fit, too. As soon as he was
healthy enough to get outside, he was hiking or riding his bike. A casual cyclist as a kid,
Mike became bike-obsessed.
To celebrate his sixth year without cancer, Mike decided to ride his bike cross-country to
New York. From the start, it was a grind.

What he didn’t know during that ride was that his heart was beginning to fail, and in the
years that followed,his health continued to deteriorate.Even on days he didn’t ride his
bike, he always felt tired. Then one evening 2017, he started having chest pains.

His brother, Dan, rushed him to the emergency room, where doctors discovered a clot the
size of a golf ball lodged in his left ventricle. They tried blood thinners, but the clot
wouldn’t budge. Soon hospital staff were preparing him for open-heart surgery to install
a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), which would do the pumping that his heart
couldn’t accomplish.

The implanted LVAD required constant access to an electrical outlet,which meant Mike
was literally tethered to the indoors by a cord that ran out of his abdomen. Even with an
emergency backup battery pack, “You couldn’t go out in public because you couldn’t
trust that someone wouldn’t knock into the cord,” he says. His old active life seemed like
a thousand lifetimes ago.

Doctors had told him the device could work for eight months or eight years. Six months
later, though, Mike was in a San Diego hospital with another clot. His heart was failing.
He would need a new one.Heart transplant priority lists are tricky. You have to be sick
enough to truly need the new organ but not so sick you can’t withstand the lengthy
surgery or the immunosuppressant drugs heart transplant patients take to sustain the new
organ. Mike fit those parameters and was at the top of the list. Now he just had to hope
he survived the wait for a new heart.

On the plus side, Mike’s bloodwork showed the clot had dissolved enough that he could
safely go home.As he packed his bag on 24 February,a nurse walked in. “I have good
news and bad news,” she said. Mike asked for the bad news first. “You’re not going
home today,” she said. The good news? They’d found him a heart.

The next morning, Mike woke up in a hospital bed with a new heart beating in his chest. His
energy seemed to improve immediately: He took his first steps around his hospital room just five
days later and was walking the hallways shortly after. “The old heart was like a two. With the
LVAD my energy was like a five,” he says. “This heart is a 10.”
After two weeks, he was sent home with instructions to report to cardiac rehabilitation,
where he was limited for the first few days to slow walking on a treadmill. Across the
room he spied a stationary bike. He knew he wasn’t ready yet, but it became a beacon.
And two weeks later, with his doctor's permission, he threw a leg over and soft-pedalled.

Christine Cheers wasn’t leaving the hospital until every last one of her son's organs left
the building.She and David watched hospital employees carry coolers from the operating
room: his kidneys, pancreas and liver went to various recipients.His corneas went to an
eye bank; tissue and bone went to tissue and bone banks. That left his heart.

“That was the one I cared about most,” Christine says. As a serviceman and physician,
James embodied the ideals of bravery and altruism. “James had such an amazing heart,”
she says.When a hospital representative delivered the news that James’s heart was
headed out of the hospital, David and Christine watched as the cooler was taken away.

James Mazzuchelli loved adventure, serving in the Navy, and helping others.

In the ensuing weeks, Christine descended into a grief so deep that climbing out seemed
impossible. Her lone

consolation, she knew, would be to find out that James’s organs had helped people. That
the recipients were doing all right. So she wrote each recipient, at least the four she knew
of, a letter.The part Christine wanted to get right was the one about what organ donation
had meant to her son. How glad he would be that his heart and kidneys and tissue were
helping others. She didn’t want the recipients to feel guilty about the heft and gravitas of
the gift they'd gotten. On 19 March,Christine put the final copies of her letters in the
mail.

Two months after his surgery,Mike Cohen got a call from the organization that had
coordinated the transplant. There was a letter for him. When he got it, he unfolded the
typewritten pages and took a breath.

Christine described her son’s love for serving his country and the fact that he considered
everyone a friend and never judged a soul. He was selfless, she wrote, had a quirky sense
of humour and was a brilliant and gifted doctor. She described his love for scuba diving,
snowboarding and motorcycles.

As he read Christine’s letter, Mike began to understand just how special his new heart
was. Eager to know more about James, Mike googled him. Except for the fact that Mike
shaved his head and had a beard—James had had a full head of hair and was clean-
shaven—they had a lot in common. They were both athletic,and practically the same age.
James was 32 when he died, while Mike had turned 33 on the very day of James's
accident.

Another thing he learnt about James:He was buried in Jacksonville, Florida.Back in

rehab, Mike had hatched a plan to take another cross-country trip as soon as his doctor
said it was okay. The end point of that ride now came into focus. He wanted to pay his
respects in person. It seemed fitting to make the journey by bike—to show just how
transformative his new heart was.

Left: Mike recovering from the operation. Right: Mike and Seton (left) on the road
beside the RV that trailed them.

He took his time before responding to Christine: a week to process her letter and another
week to compose his own. He wanted to get the tone just right, to accurately express how
grateful he was for James’s heart and how determined he was to keep it beating for years
to come. He communicated his desire to stay in touch with James’s family, if that what
they wanted.

Of the four letters Christine had sent, she got a response to two. The first was from the
man who got one of James's kidneys and his pancreas. He thanked her, saying how the
organs had changed his life—that he could go back to work and provide for his family.
But his letter subtly hinted that the thank-you note was all the contact he wished to have.

Mike’s letter was a balm for a wound that Christine felt would never heal.And so began
the emails and texts, which proved comforting to her. She even began avidly following
Mike ’s Instagram posts .“Knowing he was doing well really helped,” she says.By
September 2018, Mike was back to riding and building up his mileage. His physicians
were impressed by his progress and his cautious approach, so much so that they
ultimately gave their blessing for the cross-country ride he was planning for the
following year.

The trip would be slow in order to not overstress his heart and immune system: four
hours of riding a day maximum, keeping his heart under 150 beats per minute—doctor’s
orders.

Mike recruited Dan (who had become certified as a medical assistant so he could care for
Mike after his first open-heart surgery) to tag along in an RV as support. Then Mike
asked his friend Seton Edgerton to ride with him. They figured the trip,starting from the
cardiac ward at the San Diego hospital that treated Mike and finishing at James’s grave,
would take just under two months. They would bike most of the way and ride in the RV
only on the busiest highways.

When Mike announced on social media that he was riding to his donor's grave site, the
Cheers family decided they would meet him there.

It was only day one of a 2,300-kilometer bike trip, and, as with his first cross-country
trip, his heart was not cooperating. Perhaps he hadn’t eaten enough or hydrated properly.
Whatever the cause, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that he had to keep his
heart rate under 150 beats per minute, but the steep Cuyamaca Mountains east of San
Diego were sending it sky-high.

Seton had rigged Mike’s heart-rate monitor so he could see the read-out on the computer
attached to his bike's handlebars as they rode. He watched helplessly as the beats-per-
minute number shot up. Both men were thinking to themselves: This is just the first
day. Should we even be attempting this?

But on they rode. Across Arizona and then on to Texas, Mike and Seton rolled along in
matching blue jerseys, the struggles of that arduous first day behind them as Mike’s heart
rate settled down. Still, somewhere in the desert, they took a wrong turn and ended up
slogging through deep sand.In the first 1,600 kilometres, they got a combined 24 flat
tires.

From Florida, Christine and David followed along on social media, worrying about
traffic and dogs and all the things that can befall a rider in the middle of nowhere. A few
times, when Mike and Seton couldn’t find roads suitable for riding, they detoured on to
an interstate highway, causing Christine to wince at the thought of trucks whizzing by
those boys—and that heart. If it had been her son, she might have called him and scolded
him. But Mike wasn’t her son; he was a stranger with her son’s heart.
“As cliché as it sounds, I wanted her to know that James’s heart was in a safe
place,” says Mike, shown here with Christine.

On 20 November 2019, Mike and Seton pedalled the last few kilometres of their trip. All
Mike could think about was what a gift it was to be healthy. He had doubted his body for
so long, but now he finally felt that there could be a normal life ahead.

As he got closer to the cemetery,Mike grew nervous, unsure what kind of emotions may
be attached to meeting strangers who had already come to mean so much to him. “It’s
just such an intense moment to share with someone I’ve never met,” he says.
Christine and David Cheers got to the grave site early. They wanted sometime alone with
their son before Mike arrived. It was a perfect day: sunny and warm. Then Mike and
Seton coasted into the cemetery and rode towards the couple at James’s grave.

Mike got off his bike, handed it to Seton, and walked straight to Christine. At a loss for
words, he managed a quiet “Hi.”

In that moment, Christine felt a deep sense of calm, as if she’d known Mike her entire
life. They folded into a deep hug. Then came the tears. They weren’t tears of grief. They
were tears of relief, from a mother who knew she’d done right by someone she’d deeply
loved, and from a grateful man who’d been accepted by the family whose worst day was
his best.

Together, the two then walked the few steps to James’s headstone.Mike squatted down
and took a deep breath, feeling the strong pulse of James’s heart in his chest. Silently he
told James how thankful he was for his sacrifice and how sorry he was they’d never get
to be friends. He promised to take care of his heart.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Glossary:
Dis-till- Extract the essential
Deteriorate- To become progressively worse.
Tethered- To chain so as to restrict its movement.
Beacon- A light or other visible object serving as a signal, warning, or guide at sea,on
an airfield, etc.
Altruism- Selfless concern for the well-being of others
Heft and Gravitas- Seriousness and importance of manner, causing feelings of respect
and trust in others
Avidly- With great enthusiasm, interest, or desire, eagerly
RV- recreational vehicle
Rigged- Controlled by deceptive or dishonest means
Arduous- Difficult and tiring.
Detoured- Take a long roundabout route.

Factual Questions:

1. How did Christine Cheers’s world get “ripped away”?

2. What was Christine’s son’s profession?
3. Why did David go to California?
4. What did Cohen suffer from?
5. Why did Mike decide to ride a bike cross-country?
6. Why did Mike need a new heart?
7. Who followed Mike’s instagram posts and why?
 8. Why did Christine cry on seeing Mike?

Paragraph Questions:

1. Describe the ordeal of the Cheers when they saw their son in the hospital.
2. What was in the letter that Christine wrote to Mike?
3. Describe Mike’s bike journey from the hospital to the grave of his donor.
4. Why did Christine use a stethoscope on Mike?

Essay Questions:

1. Analyse how organ donations are priceless in the context of this story.
2. What was similar in Mikes and James’s life?
3. Comment on Christine’s role as a mother.

Extended Activity:

1. Make a poster presentation of Organ Donors.

2. Have an Interview with Organ Donors.
3. Watch a Hindi movie: Ship of Theseus
4. Extended Reading:
5. Because of Organ Donation : A Collection of inspiring stories celebrating the Gift
of Life by Brenda E Cortez
 Chapter – 09

APJ Abdul Kalam’s vision for India: a must read for all Indian

At the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam

Pre-Reading Activity:
2. Have you heard to any Speeches by the Statesmen of India?
3. Discuss on the current Issues faced by India.
4. Debate on Development Programme of the Government of India.
About the Author:
APJ Abdul kalam, born on 15th October, 1931, at a time when India was under
British occupation. He was born to a Tamil Muslim family in Tamil Nadu. His
father was a boat owner while his mother was a housewife. Kalam had five
siblings and was the youngest in the family.

Dr APJ Abdul Kalam is a fountain of inspiration to the people of India. He was

admired and addressed as Sir APJ Abdul Kalam. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul
Kalam was such a leader, a rare personality for the world to witness, a leader
who is intelligent, wise, selfless and loved by all. Furthermore, he was a man
who has a very strong appeal among the masses. Moreover, his statesman stature
is way above the discriminatory lines of caste and religion.
About the Speech:

‘My Vision for India' is a speech delivered by India’s former President, Dr.
A.P.J Abdul Kalam, in which he describes his three visions for India to enter to
become a global super-power of developed nations. He tries to make people
realize their duties and motivate them to build a stronger India.

At the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam gave

one of his finest speeches, where he articulated his visions for India.
Here is a transcript of his inspiring speech:
I have three visions for India. In 3000 years of our history, people from all over
the world have come and invaded us, captured our lands, conquered our minds.
From Alexander onwards, The Greeks, the Turks, the Moguls, the Portuguese,
the British, the French, the Dutch, all of them came and looted us, took over
what was ours. Yet we have not done this to any other nation. We have not
conquered anyone. We have not grabbed their land, their culture, their history
and Tried to enforce our way of life on them. Why? Because we respect the
freedom of others.
That is why my first vision is that of FREEDOM. I believe that India got its
first vision of this in 1857, when we started the war of Independence. It is this
freedom that we must protect and nurture and build on. If we are not free, no
one will respect us.
My second vision for India’s DEVELOPMENT, for fifty years we have been A
developing nation. It is time we see ourselves as a developed nation. We are
among top 5 nations of the world in terms of GDP. We have 10 percent growth
rate in most areas. Our poverty levels are falling. Our achievements are being
globally recognized today. Yet we lack the self-confidence to see ourselves as a
developed nation, self-reliant and self-assured. Isn’t this incorrect?
I have a THIRD vision. India must stand up to the world. Because I believe that,
unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. Only strength respects
strength. We must be strong not only as a military power but also as an economic
power. Both must go hand-in-hand. My good fortune was to have worked with
three great minds. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai of the Dept. of space, Professor Satish
Dhawan, who succeeded him and Dr.Brahm Prakash, father of nuclear material.
I was lucky to have worked with all three of them closely and consider this the
great opportunity of my life.
I see four milestones in my career:
Twenty years I spent in ISRO. I was given the opportunity to be the project
director for India’s first satellite launch vehicle, SLV3. The one that launched
Rohini. These years played a very important role in my life of Scientist. After
my ISRO years, I joined DRDO and got a chance to be the part of India’s guided
missile program. It was my second bliss when Agni met its mission
requirements in 1994.
The Dept. of Atomic Energy and DRDO had this tremendous partnership in the
recent nuclear tests, on May 11 and 13. This was the third bliss. The joy of
participating with my team in these nuclear tests and proving to the world that
India can make it, that we are no longer a developing nation but one of them. It
made me feel very proud as an Indian. The fact that we have now developed for
Agni a re-entry structure, for which we have developed this new material. A
Very light material called carbon-carbon.
One day an orthopedic surgeon from Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences
visited my laboratory. He lifted the material and found it so light that he took
me to his hospital and showed me his patients. There were these little girls and
boys with heavy metallic calipers weighing over three Kg. each, dragging their
feet around.
He said to me: Please remove the pain of my patients. In three weeks, we made
these Floor reaction Orthosis 300-gram calipers and took them to the orthopedic
center. The children didn’t believe their eyes. From dragging around a three kg.
load on their legs, they could now move around! Their parents had tears in their
eyes. That was my fourth bliss!
Why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to
recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We
have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them.
Why?
We are the first in milk production.
We are number one in Remote sensing satellites.
We are the second largest producer of wheat.
We are the second largest producer of rice.
Look at Dr. Sudarshan, he has transferred the tribal village into a self-
sustaining, self-driving unit.
There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad
news and failures and disasters.
I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after
a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had
struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman
who in five years had transformed his desert land into an orchid and a granary.
It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of
killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among
other news. In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime. Why
are we so NEGATIVE?
Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? We
want foreign TVs, we want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why
this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect
comes with self-reliance? I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year
old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is. She
replied: I want to live in a developed India. For her, you and I will have to build
this developed India. You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed
nation; it is a highly developed nation.
Do you have 10 minutes? Allow me to come back with a vengeance. Got 10
minutes for your country? If yes, then read; otherwise, choice is yours.
YOU say that our government is inefficient.
YOU say that our laws are too old.
YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage.
YOU say that the phones don’t work, the railways are a joke, the airline is the
worst in the world, and mails never reach their destination.
YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits.
YOU say, say and say.
What do YOU do about it? Take a person on his way to Singapore. Give him
a name – YOURS.
Give him a face – YOURS. YOU walk out of the airport and you are at your
international best.
In Singapore you don’t throw cigarette butts on the roads or eat in the stores.
YOU are as proud of their underground links as they are. You pay $5(approx.
Rs.60) to drive through Orchard Road which is the equivalent of Mahim
Causeway or Pedder Road between 5 PM and 8 PM. YOU come back to the
parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over stayed in a
restaurant or a shopping mall irrespective of your status identity. In Singapore
you don’t say anything, DO YOU? YOU wouldn’t dare to eat in
public during Ramadan, in Dubai. YOU would not dare to go out without your
head covered in Jeddah. YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the
telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds (Rs.650) a month to, “see to it that
my STD and ISD calls are billed to someone else.”
YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 km/h) in Washington and
then tell the traffic cop, “Jaantahaisala main kaunhoon (Do you know who I
am?). I am so and so’s son. Take your two bucks and get lost.”
YOU wouldn’t chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than the garbage
pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand. Why don’t YOU spit Paan
on the streets of Tokyo? Why don’t YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake
certificates in Boston? We are still talking of the same YOU. YOU who can
respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in your
own. You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you
touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an
alien country, why cannot you be the same here in India?
Once in an interview, the famous Ex-municipal commissioner of Bombay, Mr.
Tinaikar, had a point to make. “Rich people’s dogs are walked on the streets to
leave their affluent droppings all over the place,” he said.” And then the same
people turn around to criticize and blame the authorities for inefficiency and
dirty pavements. What do they expect the officers to do? Go down with broom
every time their dog feels the pressure in his bowels? In America everydog
owner has to clean up after his pet has done the job. Same in Japan. Will the
Indian citizen do that here?” He’s right. We go to the polls to choose a
government and after that forfeit all responsibility.
We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do
everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative. We expect the
government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over
the place nor are we going to stop to pick up a stray piece of paper and throw
it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not
going to learn the proper use of bathrooms.
We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide the best of food and
toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the least opportunity. This
applies even to the staff who is known not to pass on the service to the public.
When it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry,
girl child and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue
to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? ‘It’s the whole system which has to
change, how will it matter if I alone forego my sons’ rights to a dowry.’
So who’s going to change the system? What does a system consist of? Very
conveniently for us it consists of our neighbors, other households, other cities,
other communities and the government. But definitely not me and YOU.
When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we
lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the
distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr. Clean to come along & work
miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand or we
leave the country and run away.
 Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their
glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure we run to
England. When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight
out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and
brought home by the Indian government.
Everybody is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the
system. Our conscience is mortgaged to money.
Dear Indians, This calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one’s
conscience too….
I am echoing J. F. Kennedy’s words to his fellow Americans to relate to
Indians…..
“ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE
DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN
COUNTRIES ARE TODAY”
Let’s do what India needs from us.
Thankyou,
Abdul Kalam

Glossary:

1. Vision: a dream, a goal

2. Invaded: attacked,occupy,assault
3. Grabbed: took hold of
4. Enforce: put in force, impose, compel
5. Nurture: take care of
6. Lack: defect, foible, fault
7. Self- reliant: independent
8. Self-assured: confident
9. Proclaim: declare, notify, pronounce
10. Inefficient: incompetent
11. Garbage: rubbish
12. Destination: end of the line, goal, target
13. Pits: depths, gulfs, ruts
14. Echoing :( here) repeating
 Guided Reading Skills:

Factual Questions:

1. Who is ‘I’ in the above speech?

2. State the impact of the invaders on India.
3. Why has India never invaded other countries?

4. “I believe that India got its first vision of this in 1857”. What is Dr.Kalam
referring to?
5. What according to Dr. Kalam should Indians protest, nurture and build on?

6. How should Indians treat freedom?

7. What is the prerequisite of self- respect?

Paragraph Questions:

1. Discuss the three positive things about India as mentioned by Dr. Abdul
Kalam.
2. Mention a few achievements which have given India a global recognition.

3. In which field, India still has to progress? Explain.

4. Do you think Indians have drawbacks? Illustrate.

Essay Questions:

1. What are the characteristics of a developed nation according to Kalam?

Explain.
2. Discuss Abdul Kalam’s three visions for India.
Extended Activity:
1. Make a Presentation on India and Science, India and History.
2. Watch the Movie –

Extended Reading:
1. ‘Quit India’ Speech by M. K. Gandhi
2. ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech by Martin Luther King Jr.

*************************************************************
 Chapter-10

"Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer"

Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

About the author:

Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) was an American poet,
best known for crisp and funny light verse. He was born on 19th August 1902, at
Rye, New York, United States.

Nash was famed for his use of surprising, pun-like rhymes, sometimes with words
deliberately misspelled for comic effect. Recognizing his unique kind of writings
the New York Times therefore, said at the time of his death in 1971, "droll verse
with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of
humorous poetry."

Further his poems are in an exaggerated verse form with pairs of lines that rhyme,
but with dissimilar length and irregular meter. Many profound truths are well
expressed with a light touch. He died on 19th May 1971 in Baltimore, United
State.
About the Poem:

The poem Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer starts with an
enthusiastic tone of celebrating banks. But in the following stanzas the poet brings
out the hard reality of Banks and Bankers. He condemns, (though, in comic tone)
the stingy attitude of the bankers in lending money and in particular to the poor, in
a way sets the tone of the poem. He comments that banks are cautious,
conservatives and the bankers deny lending money to the needy. They dislike the
people who have no money and no property to produce it as security. Hence the
writer wants the banks and the employers of the banks to act as catalysts of social
change. Thus, the poet prompts the bankers and readers to think of their duties and
responsibilities with the ultimate objectives of the banking sector.

Pre Reading Activity:

1. Differentiate the banking system in the olden days and after independence.
2. Share your views on current Indian banking system.

"Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer"

Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

This is a song to celebrate banks,

Because they are full of money and you go into them and all
you hear is clinks and clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.

Most bankers dwell in marble halls,

Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits
and discourage withdrawals,
And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe
betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless
they don't need it.

I know you, you cautious conservative banks!

If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny
them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving
of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks;
Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must
look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the jungle,
And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had
better go get the money from their wife's aunt or ungle.

But suppose people come in and they have a million and they
want another million to pile on top of it,
Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you
urge them to accept every drop of it,
And you lend them the million so then they have two million
and this gives them the idea that they would be better off with four,
So they already have two million as security so you have no
hesitation in lending them two more,
And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm,
And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the

money sent or do they want to take it withm.

Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks,

the jackasses who go around saying that health and happiness
are everything and money isn't essential,
Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant
money to maintain their health and happiness they starve
to death so they can't go around anymore sneering at good
old money, which is nothing short of providential.
 Glossary:
Clinks and clanks: sound of metal on metal or glass on glass
woe: a condition of deep suffering from misfortune, affliction, or grief
betides: happen, occur
Nancy Hanks; the mother of the 16th U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, was a
handsome young woman of humble circumstances; she was known for her intellect
and exemplary character.
Tarzan: the hero of a series of jungle stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs. a person of
superior or superhuman physical strength, agility, and prowess.
an uppity: conceited, egocentric, egoistic
withm: with them
Jackasses: a stupid person.
Sneering: contemptuous or mocking.
Providential: occurring at a favorable time.
Languor: tiredness

Questions:

I. Answer the following in a word, phrase or a sentence:

1. Why does the poem celebrate Banks?
2. What is the golden rule of the bankers?
3. How is the golden rule applied to the rich and the poor?
4. What strange attitude do the Bankers have towards the poor?
5. Why does the poet appreciate banks?
6. Where do Bankers dwell?
7. Write the different attitude towards the millionaires? Why do they have
different attitudes for the two classes of people?
II. Answer the following questions in a page each:
1. Why does the poet appreciate banks in the poem? Give reasons.
2. Describe the conservative Banks mentioned in the poem by the poet.
3. What does the Poet narrate about the bank and the millionaires?
4. Why does the poet say that the banks deserve our appreciation? Explain.
III. Answer the following questions in two pages each:
1. Write about the significance of the title of the poem.
2. Good Banking system contributes in the progress of a country. Discuss.
3. Bring out the irony in the poem, Bankers are just like ….
4. Why is the poet sarcastic and resentful in his tone in the poem? Give
reasons.
Extended activity:

1. Watch the movie The Banker, Scam 1992- Harshad Mehta Story.

2. Find out the differences between Nationalized Banks, Commercial Banks,

Co-operative Banks and Regional Rural Banks.
Extra Reading:

Nash was a baseball fan, and he wrote a poem titled "Line up for Yesterday," an
alphabetical poem listing baseball immortals. Published in Sport magazine in
January 1949, the poem pays tribute to the baseball greats and to his own
fanaticism, in alphabetical order. Here is a sampling from his A to Z list:

C is for Cobb, Who grew spikes and not corn, And made all the basemen
Wish they weren't born.

D is for Dean, The grammatical Diz, When they asked, Who's the tops? Said
correctly, I is.

E is for Evers, His jaw in advance; Never afraid To Tinker with Chance.

F is for Fordham And Frankie and Frisch; I wish he were back With the
Giants, I wish.

G is for Gehrig, The Pride of the Stadium; His record pure gold, His
courage, pure radium.

H is for Hornsby; When pitching to Rog, The pitcher would pitch, Then the
pitcher would dodge.

I is for Me, Not a hard-hitting man, But an outstanding all-time Incurable

fan.'

Q is for Don Quixote Cornelius Mack; Neither Yankees nor years can halt
his attack.

Nash wrote about the famous baseball players of his day, but he particularly loved
Baltimore sports.

********************************************************
 PART – 3

One Act Play

'The Dear Departed'

William Stanley Houghton

(1881-1913)

A Note on the Playwright

William Stanley Houghton (1881-1913), was a famous English dramatist. He was

one of the best of a group of realistic playwrights often called the Manchester School.
In every play he sought to present an idea. His best known play is Hindle Wakes. He
had a remarkable gift for dialogue that is evident in The Dear Departed. The Dear
Departed was first produced in Manchester in 1908. Here Houghton satirizes the
degradation of moral values in the British middle-class.

A Note on Comedy

When performing arts like dance or drama or written texts seek to amuse the
audience, the art is called Comedy. It leaves the audience with a positive, feel good
factor at the end. Aristophanes, the Greek dramatist, is known as the father of
Comedy.

Humour is the best way to critically review the fault-lines in a society or a person,
without hurting anyone. Comedy uses satire, irony, farce or paradox to make fun of
people and situations, thereby drawing us to face human and societal flaws in an
engaging manner. Thus, it is an effective strategy and tool for cultivating critical
insights. Charlie Chaplin is such a master story teller who can make us laugh and
think simultaneously, through his silent films. Mr. Bean, the character created by
Rowan Atkinson too, peeps into the funny side of English society. In a word, humour
aims to narrate the frailties of human existence without making us weep over them.

A Note on One Act Plays

Simply stated, a one act play is a play in one act. An act has a rising action, climax
and a resolution. An act always ends with a curtain falling or emptying of a stage or
a brief black out.

On the other hand, a scene represents one action in a series of actions happening on
the stage. It is usually expressed through entrance and exits of characters on the stage
or change of the setting or backdrop.

One act plays are limited by the duration of the performance. It is usually for about
20 to 40 minutes. It is a sub genre of the play. It focuses on a single event and has
limited characters and a few themes. The action moves fairly quickly due to paucity
of time. It focuses on one fragment of narrative and produces a single effect. The
dialogues too, are precise and terse. Long monologues or serious soliloquies are not
generally featured here. The structure moves through exposition, development and
conclusion very swiftly. It is used extensively in comedies, tragedies and farces. The
Riders to the Sea is a classic example of tragedy by J. M. Synge.

Characters

Sisters MRS. SLATER

MRS. JORDAN
Their Husbands HENRYSLATER
BEN JORDAN
VICTORTIASLATER Agirl of ten
ABELMERRYWEATHER Grandfather
 (The scene is the sitting room of a small house in a lower middle-class district of a
provincial town. On the spectator's left is the window, with the blinds down. A sofa
is infront of it. On his right is a fireplace with an armchair by it. In the middle of the
wall facing the spectator is the door into the passage. To the left of the door acheap,
shabby chest of drawers, to the right a sideboard. In the middle of the room is a table,
with chairs round it. Ornaments and a cheap American clock are on the mantelpiece,
in the heartha kettle. By the sideboard a pair of gaudy new carpet slippers. The table
is partly laid for tea, and the necessaries for the meal are on the sideboard, as also are
copies of an evening paper and of TIT-BITS and PEARSON'S WEEKLY. Turning
to the left through the doortakes you to the front door; to the right, up-stairs. In the
passage a hat-stand is visible. When the curtain rises Mrs. Slater is seen laying the
table. She is a vigorous, plump, red-faced,vulgar woman, prepared to do any amount
of straight talking to get her own way. She is in black, but not in complete mourning.
She listens fora moment and then goes to the window, opens it and calls into the
street).

MRS. SLATER (sharply) Victoria, Victoria! D'ye hear? Come in, will you?

(MRS. SLATER closes window and puts the blind straight and thenreturns to her
work at the table. VICTORIA, a precocious girloften, dressed in colours, enters.)

MRS. SLATER: I'm amazed at you, Victoria; I really am. How you can
gallivantingabout in the street with your grandfather lying dead and coldupstairs, I
don't know. Be off now, and change your dress beforeyour Aunt Elizabeth and
your Uncle Ben come. It would never do for them to find you in colours.

VICTORIA: What are they coming for? They haven't been here for ages.

MRS. SLATER: They're coming to talk over poor grandpa's affairs. Your father
sentthem a telegram as soon as we found he was dead. (A noise isheard.)

Good gracious, that's never them. (MRS. SLATER: hurries to thedoor and opens
it.) No, thank goodness! It's only your father.

(HENRY SLATER, a stooping, heavy man with a drooping moustache, enters. He

is wearing a blacktailcoat, grey trousers, ablack lie and a bowler hat. He carriers a
little paper parcel.)

HENRY: Not come yet, eh?

MRS. SLATER: You can see they haven't, can't you? Now, Victoria, be off
upstairsand that quick. Put your white frock on with a black sash.

(VICTORIAgoes out.)

MRS. SLATER: (to HENRY): I'm not satisfied, but it's the best we can do till our
new black's ready , and Ben and Elizabeth will never have thought about
mourning yet, so we'll outshine them there-

(HENRYsits in the armchair by the fire.)

Get your boots off, HENRY; Elizabeth's that prying she notices the least speck of
dirt.

HENRY: I'm wondering if they'll come at all. When you an Elizabeth quarrelled
she said she'd never set foot in your house again.

MRS. SLATER: She'll come fast enough after her share of what grandfather's left.
You know how hard she can be when she likes. Where she gets it from I can't tell.
(MRS. SLATER unwraps the parcel HENRY has brought. It contains an apple pie,
which she puts on a dish on the table.)
HENRY: I suppose it's in the family.

MRS. SLATER: What do you mean by that? Henry Slater?

HENRY: I was referring to your father, not to you. Where are my slippers?

MRS. SLATER: In the kitchen; but you want a new pair, those old ones are nearly
worn out. (Nearly breaking down.)You don't seem to realize what it's costing me to
bear up like I am doing. My heart's fit to break when I see the little trifles that
belonged to grandfather lying around, and think he'll never use them again.
(Briskly) Here! You'd better wear these slippers of grandfather's now. It's lucky
he'd just got a new pair-

HENRY: They'll be very small for me, my dear.

MRS. SLATER: They'll stretch, won't they? I'm not going to have them wasted.
(She has finished laying the table.)

Henry, I've been thinking about thatbureau of grandfather's that's in his bedroom.
You know I always wanted to have it after he died.

HENRY: You must arrange with Elizabeth when you're dividing things up.

MRS. SLATER: Elizabeth's that sharp she'll see I'm after it, and she'll drive a
hard bargain over it. Eh, what it is to have a low money grubbing spirit!

HENRY: Perhaps she's got her eye on the bureau as well.

MRS. SLATER: She's never been here since grandfather bought it. If it was only
down here instead of in his room, she'd never guess it wasn't our own.

HENRY: (startled)Amelia! (He rises.)

MRS. SLATER: Henry, why shouldn't we bring that bureau down here now? We
could do it before they come.

HENRY (stupefied): I wouldn't care to.

MRS. SLATER: Don't look so daft. Why not?

HENRY: It doesn't seem delicate, somehow.

MRS. SLATER: We could put that shabby old chest of drawers upstairs where the
bureau is now. Elizabeth could have that and welcome. I've always wanted to get
rid of it. (She points to the drawers.)

HENRY: Suppose they come when we're doing it.

MRS. SLATER: I'll fasten the front door. Get your coat off. Henry; we'll change it.

(MRS. SLATER goes out to fasten the front door. HENRY takes his coat off.
MRS. SLATER reappears.)

MRS. SLATER: I'll run up and move the chairs out of the way.

(VICTORIA appears, dressed according to her mother's instructions.)

VICTORIA: Will you fasten my frock up the back, mother?

MP.S.SLATER: I'm busy; get your father to do it.

(MRS. SLATER: hurries upstairs, and HENRYfastens the frock.)

VICTORIA: What have you got your coat off for, Father?

HENRY: Mother and me is going to bring grandfather's bureau down here.

VICTORIA: (after a moment's thought.): Are we pinching it before Aunt Elizabeth

comes?

HENRY: (shocked) No, my child. Grandpa gave it to your mother before he died.

VICTORIA: This morning?

HENRY: Yes.

VICTORIA: Ah! He was drunk this morning.

HENRY: Hush; you mustn't ever say he was drunk, now. (HENRY hasfastened the
frock, and MRS. SLATER appears carrying ahandsome clock under her arm.)

MRS. SLATER: I thought I'd fetch this down as well. (She puts it on the
mantelpiece.)
Our clock's worth nothing and this always appealed to me.

VICTORIA: That's grandpa's clock.

MRS. SLATER:Chut! Be quit! It's ours now. Come Henry, lift your end. Victoria,
don't breathe a word to your aunt about the clock and the bureau.

(They carry the chest of drawers through the doorway.)

VICTORIA: (to herself) I thought we'd pinched them.

(After a short pause there is a sharp knock at the front door.)

MRS. SLATER: (from upstairs) Victoria, if that's your aunt and uncle you're not to
open the door.

(VICTORIApeeps through the window.)

VICTORIA: Mother, It's them.

MRS. SLATER: You're not to open the door till I come down. (Knocking
repeated.)

Let them knock away. (There is a heavy bumping noise.)

Mind the wall. Henry. (HENRY and MRS. SLATER, very hot and flushed, stagger
in with a pretty old- fashioned bureau containing a locked desk. They put it where
the chest of drawers was, and straighten the ornaments, etc. The knocking is
repeated.)

MRS. SLATER: That was a near thing. Open the door, Victoria. Now, Henry, get
your coat on. (She helps him.)

HENRY: Did we knock much plaster off the wall?

MRS. SLATER: Never mind the plaster. Do I look all right? (Straightening her
hair at the glass.) Just watch Elizabeth's face when she sees we're all in half-
mourning. (Throwing him Tit-Bits.) Take this and sit down. Try and look as if we'd
been waiting for them. (HENRY sits in thearmchair and MRS. SLATER left of
table. They read ostentatiously. VICTORIA ushers in BEN and MRS.
JORDAN.The latter is a stout, complacent woman with an impassive and
anirritating air of being always right. She is wearing a complete anddeadly outfit of
new mourning crowned by a great black hat withplumes. BEN is also in complete
new mourning, with black glovesand a band round his hat. He is rather a jolly little
man, accustomedto be humorous, but at present trying to adapt himself to
theregrettable occasion. He has a bright, chirpy little voice. BEN sails into the
room and solemnly goes straight to MRS. SLATER andkisses her. The men shake
hands. Not a word is spoken.

MRS. SLATER furtively inspects the new mourning.)

MRS. JORDAN: Well,Amelia, and he's gone at last.

MRS. SLATER: Yes, he's gone. He was seventy-two a fortnight last Sunday. (She
sniffs back a tear. MRS. JORDAN sits on the left of the table. MRS.SLATER on
the right. HENRY in the armchair. BEN on the sofa with VICTORIAnear him.)

BEN: (chirpily) Now, Amelia, you mustn't give way. We've all got to diesome time
or other. It might have been worse.

MRS. SLATER: I don't see how.

BEN: It might have been one of us.

HENRY: It's taken you a long time to get here, Elizabeth.

MRS. JORDAN: Oh, I couldn't do it. I really couldn't do it.

MRS. SLATER: (suspiciously) couldn’t do what?

MRS. JORDAN: I couldn't start without getting the mourning. (Glancing at her
sister.)

MRS. SLATER: We've ordered ours, you may be sure. (Acidly) I never could
fancy buying ready-made things.

MRS. JORDAN: No? For myself it's such a relief to get into the black. And now
perhaps you'll tell us all about it. What did the doctor say?

MRS. SLATER: Oh, he's not been near yet.

MRS. JORDAN: Not been near?

BEN: (in the same breath) didn’t you send for him at once?

MRS. SLATER: Of course I did. Do you take me for a fool? I sent Henry at once
forDr. Pringle but he was out.

BEN: You should have gone for another. Eh, Eliza?

MRS. JORDAN: Oh, yes. It's a fatal mistake.

MRS. SLATER: Pringle attended him when he was alive and Pringle shall attend
him when he's dead. That's professional etiquette.

BEN: Well, you know your own business best, but-

MRS. JORDAN: Yes-it's a fatal mistake.

MRS. SLATER: Don't talk so silly, Elizabeth. What good could a doctor have
done?

MRS. JORDAN: Look at the many cases of persons being restored to life hours
after they were thought to be 'gone'.

HENRY: That's when they've been drowned. Your father wasn't drowned,
Elizabeth.

BEN: (humorously) There wasn't much fear of that. If there was one thing he
couldn't bear, it was water. (He laughs, but no else does.)

MRS. JORDAN (pained): BEN!

(BEN is crushed at once.)

MRS. SLATER (piqued): I'm sure he washed regular enough.

MRS. JORDAN: If he did take a drop too much at times, we'll not dwell on that,
now.

MRS. SLATER: Father had been 'merry' this morning. He went out soon after
breakfast to pay his insurance.

BEN: My word, it’s a good thing he did.

MRS. JORDAN: He always was thoughtful in that way. He was too honourable to
have 'gone' without paying his premium.

MRS. SLATER: Well, he must have gone round to the 'Ring-o'-Bells' afterwards,
for he came in as merry as a sand boy. I says, 'We're only waiting forHenry to start
dinner'. 'Dinner', he says 'I don't want no dinner. I'm going to bed!'

BEN: (shaking his head) Ah! Dear, dear. Experienced indignation extremely happy
and care free piqued - as merry as asandboy -

HENRY: And when I came in I found him undressed sure enough and snug in bed.
(He rises and stands on the hearthrug.)

MRS. JORDAN: (definitely) Yes, he'd had a 'warning'. I'm sure of that. Did he
know you?

HENRY: Yes. He spoke to me.

MRS. JORDAN: Did he say he'd had a 'warning'?

HENRY: No. He said, 'Henry, would you mind taking my boots off? I forgot
before I got into bed'.

MRS. JORDAN: He must have been wandering.

HENRY: No, he'd got' em on all right.

MRS. SLATER: And when we'd finished dinner I thought I'd take up a bit of
something on a tray. He was lying there for all the world as if he was asleep, so I
put the tray down on the bureau - (correcting herself) on the chest of drawers - and
went to waken him. (A pause.) He was quite cold.

HENRY: Then I heard Amelia calling for me, and I ran upstairs.

MRS. SLATER: Of course we could do nothing.

MRS. JORDAN: He was 'gone'?

HENRY: There wasn't any doubt.

MRS. JORDAN: I always knew he'd go sudden in the end.

(Apause. They -wipe their eyes and sniff back tears.)

MRS. SLATER: (rising briskly at length: in a business-like tone) Well, will you go
up and look at him now, or shall we have tea?

MRS. JORDAN: What do you say, Ben?

BEN: I'm not particular.

MRS. JORDAN: (surveying, the table) Well, then, if the kettle's ready we may as
well have tea first.

(MRS. SLATER puts the kettle on the fire and gets tea ready.)

HENRY: One thing we may as well decide now; the announcement in the papers.

MRS. JORDAN: I was thinking of that. What would you put?

MRS. SLATER: At the residence of his daughter, 235 Upper Cornbank Street, etc.

HENRY: You wouldn't care for a bit of poetry?

MRS. JORDAN: I like 'Never Forgotten'. It's refined.

HENRY: Yes, but it's rather soon for that.

BEN: You couldn't very well have forgot him the day after.

MRS. SLATER: I always fancy, 'Aloving husband, a kind father, and a faithful
friend'.

BEN: (doubtfully) Do you think that's right?

HENRY: I don't think it matters whether it's right or not.

MRS. JORDAN: No, it's more for the look of the thing.

HENRY: I saw a verse in the Evening News yesterday. Proper poetry it was- it
rhymed. (He gets the paper and reads.)
'Despised and forgotten by some you may be, but the spot that contains you is
sacred to we.'

MRS. JORDAN: That'll never do. You don't say 'scared to we'.

HENRY: It's in the paper.

MRS. SLATER: You wouldn't say it if you were speaking properly, but it's
different in poetry.

HENRY: Poetic license, you know.

MRS. JORDAN: No, that'll never do. We want a verse that says how much we
loved him and refers to all his good qualities and says what a heavy loss we've had.

MRS. SLATER: You want a whole poem. That'll cost a good lot.

MRS. JORDAN: Well, we'll think about it after tea, and then we'll look through his
bits of things and make a list of them. There's all the furniture in his room.

HENRY: There's no jewellery or valuables of that sort.

MRS. JORDAN: Except his gold watch. He promised that to our Jimmy.

MRS. SLATER: Promised to your Jimmy! I never heard of that.

MRS. JORDAN: Oh, but he did, Amelia, when he was living with us. He was very
fond of Jimmy.

MRS. SLATER: Well. (Amazed.) I don't know!

BEN: Anyhow, there's his insurance money. Have you got the receipt for the
premium he paid this morning?
MRS. SLATER: I've not seen it. (VICTORIA, jumps up fromthe sofa and comes
behind the table.)

VICTORIA: Mother, I don't think Grandpa went to pay his insurance this morning.

MRS. SLATER: He went out.

VICTORIA: Yes, but he didn't go into the town. He met old Mr. Tattersall down
the street, and they went off past St. Philip's Church.

MRS. SLATER: To the 'Ring-o'-Bells’, I'll be bound.

BEN: The -Ring-o'-Bells'?

MRS. SLATER: That public-house that John Shorrock's widow keeps. He is

always hanging about there. Oh, if he hasn't paid it -

BEN: Do you think he hasn't paid it? Was it overdue?

MRS. SLATER: I should think it was overdue.

MRS. JORDAN: Something tells me he's not paid it. I've a 'warning', I know it;
he's not paid it.

BEN: The drunken old beggar.

MRS. JORDAN: He's done it on purpose, just to annoy us.

MRS. SLATER: After all I've done for him, having to put up with him in the house
these three years. It's nothing short of swindling.

MRS. JORDAN: I had to put up with him for five years.

MRS. SLATER: And you were trying to turn him over to us all the time.

HENRY: But we don't know for certain that he's not paid the premium.

MRS. JORDAN: I do. It's come over me all at once that he hasn't. ,

MRS. SLATER: Victoria, run upstairs and fetch that bunch of keys that's on your
grandpa's dressing table.

VICTORIA: (timidly) In Grandpa's room?

MRS. SLATER: Yes.

VICTORIA: I-I don't like to.

MRS. SLATER: Don't talk so silly. There's no one can hurt you. (VICTORIA goes
out reluctantly.) We'll see if he's

locked the receipt up in the bureau,

BEN: In where? In this thing? (He rises and examines it.)

MRS. JORDAN: (also rising) Where did you pick that up, Amelia? It's new since
last I was here.

(They examine it closely.)

MRS. SLATER: Oh-Henry picked it up one day.

MRS. JORDAN: I like it. It's artistic. Did you buy it at an auction?

HENRY: Eh! Where did I buy it, Amelia?

MRS. SLATER: Yes, at an auction.

BEN: (disparagingly) Oh, second-hand.

MRS. JORDAN: Don't show your ignorance, Ben. All artistic things are
secondhand.Look at those old masters.

(VICTORIAreturns, very scared. She closes the door after her.)

VICTORIA: Mother! Mother!

MRS. SLATER: What is it, child?

VICTORIA: Grandpa's getting up.

BEN: What?

MRS. SLATER: What do you say?

VICTORIA: Grandpa's getting up.

MRS. JORDAN: The child's crazy.

MRS. SLATER: Don't talk so silly. Don't you know your grandpa's dead?

VICTORIA: No, no; he's getting up. I saw him.

(They are transfixed with amazement. BEN and MRS. JORDAN left of table.
VICTORIA clings to MRS. SLATER, right of table HENRY near fireplace.)

MRS. JORDAN: You'd better go up and see for yourself, Amelia.

MRS. SLATER: Here-come with me, Henry. (HENRYdraws back terrified)

BEN: (suddenly) Hist! Listen.

(They look at the door. A slight chuckling is heard outside. The door opens,
revealing an old man clad in a faded but gay dressing-gown. He is in his stocking
feet. Although over seventy, he is vigorous and well coloured; his bright, malicious
eyes twinkle under his heavy, reddish-grey eyebrows. He is obviously either
Grandfather ABEL MERRYWEATHER or else his ghost.)

ABEL: What's the matter with little Vicky? (He sees BEN and MRS. JORDAN);
Hello! What brings you here? How's yourself, Ben? (ABEL thrusts his hand at
BEN, who skips back smartly and retreats to a safe distance below the sofa.)

MRS. SLATER (a p p r o a c h i n g ABEL gingerly) Grandfather, is that you?

(She pokes him with her hand to see if he is solid.)

ABEL: (irritated by the whispering) Of course it's me. Don't do that, 'Melia. What
the devil do you mean by this tomfoolery?

MRS. SLATER: (to the others) He's not dead.

BEN: Doesn't seem like it.

ABEL: You've kept away long enough, Lizzie; and now you've come, youdon't
seem over-pleased to see me.
MRS. JORDAN: You took us by surprise, father. Are you keeping quite well?

ABEL: (trying to catch the words.) Eh? What?

MRS. JORDAN: Arc you quite well?

ABEL: Aye, I'm right enough but for a bit of a headache. I wouldn't mind betting
that I'm not the first in this house to be carried to the cemetery. I always think
Henry there looks none too healthy.

MRS. JORDAN: Well, I never!

(ABEL crosses to the armchair, HENRY gets out of his way to the front of the
table.)

ABEL: 'Melia, what the dickens did I do with my new slippers?

MRS. SLATER: (confused) aren’t they by the hearth, grandfather?

ABEL: I don't see them. (Observing HENRY trying to remove the slippers.) Why,
you've got 'em on. Henry.

MRS. SLATER: (promptly) I told him to put them on to stretch them; they were
that new and hard. Now, Henry. (MRS. SLATER snatches the slippers from
HENRY and gives them ABEL, who puts them on and sits in armchair)

MRS. JORDAN: (to BEN) Well, I don't call that delicate, stepping into a dead
man's shoes in such haste. (HENRY goes up to the window and pulls up the blind.
VICTORIA runs across to ABELand sits on the floor at his feet.)

VICTORIA: Oh, Grandpa, I'm so glad you're not dead.

MRS. SLATER: (in a vindictive whisper) Hold your tongue, Victoria.

ABEL: Eh? What's that? Who's gone dead?

MRS. SLATER: (Loudly) Victoria says she's sorry about your head.

ABEL: Ah, thank you, Vicky, but I'm feeling better.

MRS. SLATER (to MRS. JORDAN) : He's so fond of Victoria.

MRS. JORDAN (to MRS. SLATER):Yes; he's fond of our Jimmy, too.

MRS. SLATER: You'd better ask him if he promised your Jimmy his gold watch.

MRS. JORDAN: (disconcerted) I couldn't just now. I don't feel equal to it.

ABEL: Why, Ben, you're in mourning! And Lizzie too. And 'Melia, and Henry and
little Vicky! Who's gone dead? It's someone in the family. (He chuckles.)

MRS. SLATER: No one you know, father. Arelation of Ben's.

ABEL: And what relation of Ben's?

MRS. SLATER: His brother.

BEN (to MRS. SLATER): Hang it, I never had one.

ABEL: Dear, dear.And what was his name, Ben?

BEN: (at a loss) Er - er. (He crosses to front of table.)

MRS. SLATER. (R of table, prompting): Frederick.

MRS. JORDAN (L of table, prompting). : Albert.

BEN: Er-FedAlb-Issac.

ABEL: Isaac? And where did your brother Isaac die?

BEN: In-er-in Australia.

ABEL: Dear, dear. He'd be older than you, eh?

BEN: Yes, five years.

ABEL: Aye, aye. Are you going to the funeral?

BEN: Oh, yes.

MRS. SLATER and MRS. JORDAN: No, no.

BEN: No, of course not.

(He retires to L.)

ABEL: (rising)Well, I suppose you've only been waiting for me to begin tea. I'm
feeling hungry.

MRS. SLATER: (taking up the kettle) I'll make tea.

ABEL: Come along, now; sit you down and let's be jolly.

(ABEL sits at the head of the table, facing spectators. BEN andMRS. JORDAN on
the left. VICTORIA brings a chair and sits byABEL. MRS. SLATER and HENRY
sit on the right. Both the women are next to ABEL.)

MRS. SLATER: Henry, give grandpa some pie.

ABEL: Thank you. I'll make a start. (He helps himself to bread and butter.)

(HENRY serves the pie and MRS. SLATER pours out tea. Only ABELeats with
any heartiness.)

BEN: Glad to see you've got an appetite, Mr Merry weather, although you've not
been so well.

ABEL: Nothing serious. I've been lying down for a bit.

MRS. SLATER: Been to sleep, grandfather?

ABEL: No, I've not been to sleep.

MRS. SLATER and HENRY: Oh!

ABEL: (eating and drinking) I can't exactly call everything to mind, but Iremember
I was a bit dazed, like- I couldn't move an inch, hand or foot.

BEN: And could you see and hear, Mr Merryweather?

ABEL: Yes, but I don't remember seeing anything particular. Mustard, Ben.

(BEN passes the mustard.)

MRS. SLATER: Of course not, grandfather. It was all your fancy. You must have
been asleep.

ABEL: (snappishly) I tell you I wasn't asleep, 'Melia. Damnit, I ought to know,

MRS. JORDAN: Didn't you see Henry or Amelia come into the room?

ABEL: (scratching-his head) Now let me think-

MRS. SLATER: I wouldn't press him Elizabeth. Don't press him.

HENRY: I wouldn't worry him.

ABEL: (suddenly recollecting) Ay, begad! 'Melia and Henry, what the devil did
you mean by shifting my bureau out of my bedroom? (HENRY and MRS.
SLATER are speechless). D' you hear me? Henry! 'Melia!

MRS. JORDAN: What bureau was that. Father?

ABEL: Why, my bureau the one I bought-

MRS. JORDAN: (pointing to the bureau) Was it that one. Father?

ABEL: Ah, that's it. What's it doing here? Eh? (A pause. The clock on the
mantelpiece strikes six. Everyone looks at it.)Drat me if that isn't my clock too.
What the devil's been going on in this house? (Aslight pause.)

BEN: Well, I'll be hanged.

MRS. JORDAN: I'll tell you what's been going on in this house. Father. Nothing
short of robbery.MRS. SLATER: Be quiet, Elizabeth.

MRS. JORDAN: (rising) I'll not be quiet. Oh, I call it double-faced.

HENRY: Now now, Elizabeth.

MRS. JORDAN: And you, too. Are you such a poor creature that you must do
every dirty thing she tells you?

MRS. SLATER: (rising) Remember where you are, Elizabeth.

HENRY: (rising) Come, come. No quarrelling.

BEN: (rising) My wife's every right to speak her own mind.

MRS. SLATER: Then she can speak it outside, not here.

ABEL: (rising: thumping the table) Damn it all, will someone tell me what's been
going on?

MRS. JORDAN: Yes, I will. I'll not see you robbed.

ABEL: Who's been robbing me?

MRS. JORDAN: Amelia and Henry. They've stolen your clock and bureau.
(Working herself up.) They sneaked into your room like a thief in the night and
stole them after you were dead.

HENRYand MRS. SLATER: Hush! Quiet, Elizabeth!

MRS. JORDAN: I'll not be stopped. After you were dead, I say.

ABEL: After who was dead?

MRS. JORDAN: You.

ABEL: But I'm not dead.

MRS. JORDAN: No, but they thought you were. (A pause. ABEL gazes round at
them.)

ABEL: Oho! So that's why you're all in black today. You thought I was dead.

(He chuckles.) That was a big mistake. (He sits and resumes his tea.)

MRS. SLATER: (sobbing) Grandfather.

ABEL: It didn't take you long to start dividing my things between you.

MRS. JORDAN: No, father; you mustn't think that. Amelia was simply getting
hold of them on her own account.
ABEL: You always were a keen one, Amelia. I suppose you thought the will
wasn't fair.

HENRY: Did you make a will?

ABEL: Yes, it was locked up in the bureau.

MRS. JORDAN: And what was in it, father?

ABEL: That doesn't matter now. I'm thinking of destroying it and making another.

MRS. SLATER: (sobbing) Grandfather, you'll not be hard on me.

ABEL: I'll trouble you for another cup of tea, 'Melia; two lumps and plenty of
milk.

MRS. SLATER: With pleasure. Grandfather. (She pours out the tea.)

ABEL: I don't want to be hard on anyone. I'll tell you what I'm going to do.Since
your mother died, I've lived part of the time with you, 'Melia, and part with you,
Lizzie. Well, I shall make a new will, leaving all my bits of things to whomever
I'm living with when I die. How does that strike you?

HENRY: It's a bit of a lottery-like.

MRS. JORDAN: And who do you intend to live with from now?

ABEL: (drinking his tea) I'm just coming to that.

MRS. JORDAN: You know, father, it's quite time you came to live with us again.
We'dmake you very comfortable.

MRS. SLATER: No, he's not been with us as long as he was with you.

MRS. JORDAN: I may be wrong, but I don't think father will fancy living on with
you after what's happened today.

ABEL: So you'd like to have me again, Lizzie?

MRS. JORDAN: You know we're ready for you to make your home with us for as
long you please.
ABEL: What do you say to that, 'Melia?

MRS. SLATER: All I can say is that Elizabeth's changed her mind in the last two
years. (Rising). Grandfather, do you know what the quarrel between us was about?

MRS. JORDAN: Amelia, don't be a fool; sit down.

MRS. SLATER: No, if I'm not to have him, you shan't either. We quarrelled
becauseElizabeth said she wouldn't take you off our hands at any price. She said
she'd enough of you to last a lifetime, and we'd got to keep you.

ABEL: It seems to me that neither of you has any cause to feel proud about the
way you've treated me.

MRS. SLATER: If I've done anything wrong. I'm sure I'm sorry for it.

MRS. JORDAN: And I can't say more than that, too.

ABEL: It's a bit late to say it, now. You neither of you cared to put up with me.

MRS. SLATERand MRS. JORDAN: No, no grandfather.

ABEL: Aye, you both say that because of what I've told you about leaving my
money. Well, since you don't want me I'll go to someone that does.

BEN: Come Mr. Merryweather, you've got to live with one of your daughters.

ABEL: I'll tell you what I've got to do. On Monday next I've got to do three things.
I've got to go to the lawyer's and alter my will; and I've got to go to the insurance
office and pay my premium; and I've got to go to St. Philip's Church and get
married.

BEN and HENRY: What!

MRS. JORDAN: Get married!

MRS. SLATER: He's out of his senses. (General consternation.)

ABEL: I say I'm going to get married.

MRS. SLATER: Who to?

ABEL: To Mrs. John Shorrocks who keeps the 'Ring-o' -Bells. We've had it fixed
up a good while now, but I was keeping it for a pleasant surprise. (He rises.)

I felt I was a bit of a burden to you, so I found someone who'd think it a pleasure to
look after me. We shall be very glad to see you at the ceremony. (He gets to the
door.) Till Monday, then. Twelve o' clock at St. Philip's Church. (Opening the
door.) It's a good thing you brought that bureau downstairs, 'Melia. It'll be handier
to carry across to the 'Ring-o' -Bells on Monday. (He goesout.)

THE CURTAIN FALLS

GLOSSARY:

Provincial: a place outside a capital or city

Blinds: screen for a window

Mantelpiece: a structure above or around a fireplace

TITBITS: British weekly magazine founded in 1881

PEARSON’S WEEKLY: British weekly periodical founded in 1890

Gallivanting: going around from one place to another to have fun

Tailcoat: a man’s formal coat

Bureau: a writing desk with drawers

Drive a hard bargain (idiom): to be determined to have your own way in a business
deal

Daft: silly

Pinching: stealing

Ostentatiously: in a way that is obvious/done to draw attention

Impassive: showing no expression

Furtively: secretly /dishonestly

Acidly: cruelly

Piqued: angry because one feels insulted

Sand boy: happy/carefree (as happy as a sand boy)

Poetic license: freedom to move away from the strict rules of language for artistic
effect

Disparagingly: in an unkind manner that shows one does not respect the other

Malicious: harmful

What the dickens: dickens is used instead of “devil”. An expression of annoyance

or surprise

Vindictive: having a strong urge for revenge

Disconcerted: confused/unsettled

Double faced: two faced; saying one thing and doing another

Factual Questions

1. What did Henry bring home in a paper parcel?

2. Whose slipper does Mr. Slater wear and why?
3. What does Mrs. Slater do with the bureau?
4. What does Victoria call the shifting of furniture and why?
5. How many years did Abel stay with Amelia?
6. Where had Abel kept his will?
7. To whom does Mr. Merryweather want to make his will to?
8. What are the three things Abel wants to do?
9. What does Mrs. Jordan accuse Amelia of?
10.Why does Ben refuse to shake Abel’s hand?
Paragraph Questions:

1. Describe Mrs. Slater’s preparations to invite her sister.

2. Write a note on the sisters’ one-upmanship.
3. Write a note on Victoria.
4. Who is Mrs. Shorrocks? Why is she mentioned by the grandfather?
 5. Write a note on the husbands of the two sisters.

Essay Questions:

1. What does the play tell you about human relationships?

2. Analyse the play as a humorous play.
3. Discuss the character of grandfather.
4. Analyse the relevance of the title.
5. Compare the two sisters and analyse their roles in the play.
6. Critically analyse the conclusion of the play.

Extended Reading

W .B. Yeats: A Prayer for my Daughter (poem)

William Shakespeare: King Lear (play)

Emily Bronte: Remembrance (poem)

Extended Activities

Watch and analyze the Kannada movie Bhagyavantaru

Rehearse and enact the play Dear Departed

Do a project/poster on humour

Watch and review the Hindi movie Bhagban

Collect material and conduct a research on problems of senior citizens in India

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