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Digital Text Book

Prepared by , ATHIRA A J

B ED English P T M college of education, Maruthoorkonam

English Text book Viii

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Unit in a glance Freedom is not a privilege it’s a right

Poem: Still I Rise ( Maya Angelou) Prose: A Devoted Son (Anita Desai) Speech: My Vision for India (Abdul Kalam)

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Learning Outcomes By learning this unit , the learner will be able to : • Read and comprehend a prose • Read and appreciate poems • Identify features of a speech • Enrich vocabulary • Gather ideas on poetic devices. • Enrich creative and critical thinking • Express opinions and share feelings with other learner's • Construct language discourses like slogan , speech, character sketch etc. • Develop an awareness on freedom • Develop confidence through performance based activities.

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Freedom is an innate right which humans have since their birth. Freedom is not something that can be touched, seen, felt or reached. All this gives a vague idea about freedom. What exactly does freedom mean? Different people have different opinion, definition and thoughts about the idea of freedom. Some talk about freedom in political sense, some talk about social freedom, some about personal independence and some define it as religious freedom. But the fact that everyone wants to be free, holds true in all cases. “The best road to progress is freedom’s road.” – John F. Kennedy Freedom is the choice to live one’s life doing what one wants, live where one wants, eat by own choice and learn what one’s heart desires. This means that freedom can apply to different aspects of life and freedom is not an absolute .

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“There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” -Virginia Woolf Here is a poem which reveals the importance of being confident to overcome anything through self-esteem. It shows how nothing can get us down.

Still I Rise -

Maya Angelou

You may write me down With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.

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Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries? Explain to meaning of the following phrases as used in the poem Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard ’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

• • •

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes,

……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………… ………….

You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

What does “I dance like l 've got diamonds” mean ? ……..……………………………………. ……………………………………………. ……………..….………..........................

I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise

Why does she repeats “I Rise”? ……………………………………………………

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Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

Maya Angelou was born on 4 April 1928, St. Louis, Missouri, United State. She was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Her famous works are On the Pulse of Morning, Woman Work, A Brave and Startling Truth etc. She obtained many awards such as Presidential Medal of Freedom, Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album etc. She passed away on 28 May 2014, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States

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Answer the following

• Who is the author of the poem? • What is the poem mainly talk about? • In "Still I Rise," what are the inherited "gifts" that the writer brings with her? • What is the author's intention of the poem? • What does Angelou compare her hope to in "Still I Rise"? • In "Still I Rise," the writer addresses 'you' several times in the poem. Who is meant by 'you' what does it mean? • In Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise," what techniques are used to express inequality?

Let’s analyze the poem 1. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem? (The rhyme scheme, or pattern, can be identified by giving end words that rhyme with each other the same letter.) 2. What are the poetic devices used in this poem? • Assonance (Repetition of vowel sounds in the same line ) sound of /i/ in “With your bitter, twisted lies”

• Imagery (to make readers perceive things involving their five sense.) For example, “You may write me down in history”; “You may shoot me with your words” and “I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide • Rhetoric question

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(question that is not to receive an answer; it is just posed to make the point clear) Example “Does my sassiness upset you?”; “Does my sexiness upset you?” and “Did you want to see me broken?” • Simile (It is used to compare an object or person with something else to make the meanings clear to the readers.) Example “But still, like dust, I’ll rise”; “Just like moons and like suns” and “’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines”. • Anaphora (It refers to the repetition of a word or expression in the first part of some verses. ) Example The poet has repeated the words “You may” in the opening lines of the poem to express her ideas. • Enjambment It is defined as a thought or clause that does not come to an end at a line break and moves over the next line. For example, “You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

• • 3.what are the main themes of the poem. • Confidence • Self respect • Freedom • • • • 11

Slogan Slogan writing

Prepare a slogan on racism

Debate

Conduct a debate on “women’s freedom in 21 St century”.

Poem writing Compose a poem on hope

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As we grown up our roles changes. let's read a story about a devoted son which reflect a relationship between a father and a son and how it transformed in course of time

Devoted son Anita Desai

When the results appeared in the morning papers, Rakesh scanned them barefoot and in his pyjamas, at the garden gate, then went up the steps to the veranda where his father sat sipping his morning tea and bowed down to touch his feet. “A first division, son?” his father asked, beaming, reaching for the papers. “At the top of the list, papa,” Rakesh murmured, as if awed. “First in the country.” Bedlam broke loose then. The family whooped and danced. The whole day long visitors streamed into the small yellow house at the end of the road to congratulate the parents of this Wunderkind, to slap Rakesh on the back and fill the house and garden with the sounds and colours of a festival. There were garlands and halwa, party clothes and gifts nerves and temper and joy, all in a multi-coloured whirl of pride and great shining vistas newly opened: Rakesh was the first son in the family to receive an education, so much had been sacrificed in order to send him to school and then medical college, and at last the fruits of their sacrifice had arrived, golden and glorious. To everyone who came to him to say “Mubarak, Varmaji, your son has brought you glory,” the father said, “Yes, and do you know what is the first thing he did when he saw the results this morning? He came and touched my feet. He bowed down and touched my feet.” This moved many of the women in the crowd so much that they were seen to raise the ends of their saris and dab at their tears while the men reached out for the betel-leaves and sweetmeats that were offered around on trays and shook their heads in wonder and approval of such exemplary filial behaviour. “One does not often see such

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behaviour in sons any more,” they all agreed, a little enviously perhaps. Leaving the house, some of the women said, sniffing, “At least on such an occasion they might have served pure ghee sweets,” and some of the men said, “Don’t you think old Varma was giving himself airs? He needn’t think we don’t remember that he comes from the vegetable market himself, his father used to sell vegetables, and he has never seen the inside of a school.” But there was more envy than rancor in their voices and it was, of course, inevitable not every son in that shabby little colony at the edge of the city was destined to shine as Rakesh shone, and who knew that better than the parents themselves? And that was only the beginning, the first step in a great, sweeping ascent to the radiant heights of fame and fortune. The thesis he wrote for his M.D. brought Rakesh still greater glory, if only in select medical circles. He won a scholarship. He went to the USA. where he pursued his career in the most prestigious of all hospitals and won encomiums from his American colleagues which were relayed to his admiring and glowing family. What was more, he came back, he actually returned to that small yellow house in the once-new but increasingly shabby colony, right at the end of the road where the rubbish vans tipped out their stinking contents for pigs to nose in and rag-pickers to build their shacks on, all steaming and smoking just outside the neat wire fences and well tended gardens. To this Rakesh returned and the first thing he did on entering the house was to slip out of the embraces of his sisters and brothers and bow down and touch his father’s feet. As for his mother, she gloated chiefly over the strange fact that he had not married in America, had not brought home a foreign wife as all her neighbours had warned her he would, for wasn’t that

what all Indian boys went abroad for? Instead he agreed, almost without argument, to marry a girl she had picked out for him in her own village, the daughter of a childhood friend, a plump and uneducated girl, it was true, but so old-fashioned, so placid, so complaisant that she slipped into the household and settled in like a charm, seemingly too lazy and too good-natured to even try and make Rakesh leave

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home and set up independently, as any other girl might have done. What was more, she was pretty— really pretty, in a plump, pudding way that only gave way to fat—soft, spreading fat, like warm wax— after the birth of their first baby, a son, and then what did it matter? For some years Rakesh worked in the city hospital, quickly rising to the top of the administrative organization, and was made a director before he left to set up his own clinic. He took his parents in his car—a new, sky-blue Ambassador with a rear window full of stickers and charms revolving on strings— to see the clinic when it was built, and the large sign-board over the door on which his name was printed in letters of red, with a row of degrees and qualifications to follow it like so many little black slaves of the regent. Thereafter his fame seemed to grow just a little dimmer—or maybe it was only that everyone in town had grown accustomed to it at last—but it was also the beginning of his fortune for he now became known not only as the best but also the richest doctor in town. However, all this was not accomplished in the wink of an eye. Naturally not. It was the achievement of a lifetime and it took up Rakesh’s whole life. At the time he set up his clinic his father had grown into an old man and retired from his post at the kerosene dealer’s depot at which he had worked for forty years, and his mother died soon after, giving up the ghost with a sigh that sounded positively happy, for it was her own son who ministered to her in her last illness and who sat pressing her feet at the last moment—such a son as few women had borne.

It was a strange fact, however, that talent and skill, if displayed for too long, cease to dazzle. It came to pass that the most admiring of all eyes eventually faded and no longer blinked at his glory. Having retired from work and having lost his wife, the old father very quickly went to pieces, as they say. He developed so many complaints and fell ill so frequently and with such mysterious diseases that even his son could no longer make out when it was something of significance and when it was merely a peevish whim. He sat huddled on his string bed most of the day and developed an exasperating habit of stretching out suddenly and lying absolutely still, allowing the whole family to fly around him in a flap, wailing and weeping, and then suddenly sitting up, stiff and gaunt, and spitting out a big gob of beteljuice as if to mock their behaviour. It was Rakesh who brought him his morning tea, not in one of the china cups from which the rest of the family drank, but in the old man’s favourite brass tumbler, and sat at the edge of his bed, comfortable and relaxed with the string of his pyjamas dangling out from under his fine lawn night-shirt, and discussed or, rather, read out the morning news to his father. It made no difference to him that his

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father made no response apart from spitting. It was Rakesh, too, who, on returning from the clinic in the evening, persuaded the old man to come out of his room, as bare and desolate as a cell, and take the evening air out in the garden, beautifully arranging the pillows and bolsters on the divan in the corner of the open veranda. On summer nights he saw to it that the servants carried out the old man’s bed onto the lawn and himself helped his father down the steps and onto the bed, soothing him and settling him down for a night under the stars. All this was very gratifying for the old man. What was not so gratifying was that he even undertook to supervise his father’s diet. One day when the father was really sick, having ordered his daughter-in-law to make him a dish of soojie halwa and eaten it with a saucerful of cream, Rakesh marched into the room, not with his usual respectful step but with the confident and rather contemptuous stride of the famous doctor, and declared, “No more halwa for you, papa. We must be sensible, at your age. If you must have something sweet, Veena will cook you a little kheer, that’s light, just a little rice and milk. But nothing fried, nothing rich. We can’t have this happening again.” The old man who had been lying stretched out on his bed, weak and feeble after a day’s illness, gave a start at the very sound, the tone of these words. He opened his eyes—rather, they fell open with shock—and he stared at his son with disbelief that darkened quickly to reproach. A son who actually refused his father the food he craved? No, it was unheard of, it was incredible. But Rakesh had turned his back to him and was cleaning up the litter of bottles and packets on the medicine shelf and did not notice while Veena slipped silently out of the room with a little smirk that only the old man saw, and hated. Halwa was only the first item to be crossed off the old man’s diet. One delicacy after the other went—everything fried to begin with, then everything sweet, and eventually everything, everything that the old man enjoyed. The meals that arrived for him on the shining stainless steel tray twice a day were frugal to say the least—dry bread, boiled lentils, boiled vegetables and, if there were a bit of chicken or fish, that was boiled too. If he called for another helping—in a cracked voice that quavered theatrically—Rakesh himself would come to the door, gaze at him sadly and shake his head, saying, “Now, papa, we must be careful, we can’t risk another illness, you know,” and although the daughter-in-law kept tactfully out of the way, the old man could just see her smirk sliding merrily through the air. He tried to bribe his grandchildren into buying him sweets (and how he missed his wife now, that generous, indulgent and illiterate cook), whispering, “Here’s fifty paisa,” as he stuffed the coins into a tight, hot fist. “Run down to the shop at the crossroads and buy me thirty paisa worth of jalebis, and you can spend the remaining

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twenty paisa on yourself. Eh? Understand? Will you do that?” He got away with it once or twice but then was found out, the conspirator was scolded by his father and smacked by his mother and Rakesh came storming into the room, almost tearing his hair as he shouted through compressed lips, “Now papa, are you trying to turn my little son into a liar? Quite apart from spoiling your own stomach, you are spoiling him as well—you are encouraging him to lie to his own parents. You should have heard the lies he told his mother when she saw him bringing back those jalebis wrapped up in filthy newspaper. I don’t allow anyone in my house to buy sweets in the bazaar, papa, surely you know that. There’s cholera in the city, typhoid, gastroenteritis—I see these cases daily in the hospital, how can I allow my own family to run such risks?” The old man sighed and lay down in the corpse position. But that worried no one any longer. There was only one pleasure left in the old man now (his son’s early morning visits and readings from the newspaper could no longer be called that) and those were visits from elderly neighbours. These were not frequent as his contemporaries were mostly as decrepit and helpless as he and few could walk the length of the road to visit him any more. Old Bhatia, next door, however, who was still spry enough to refuse, adamantly, to bathe in the tiled bathroom indoors and to insist on carrying out his brass mug and towel, in all seasons and usually at impossible hours, into the yard and bathe noisily under the garden tap, would look over the hedge to see if Varma were out on his veranda and would call to him and talk while he wrapped his dhoti about him and dried the sparse hair on his head, shivering with enjoyable exaggeration. Of course these conversations, bawled across the hedge by two rather deaf old men conscious of having their entire households overhearing them, were not very satisfactory but Bhatia occasionally came out of his yard, walked down the bit of road and came in at Varma’s gate to collapse onto the stone plinth built under the temple tree. If Rakesh was at home he would help his father down the steps into the garden and arrange him on his night bed under the tree and leave the two old men to chew betel-leaves and discuss the ills of their individual bodies with combined passion. “At least you have a doctor in the house to look after you,” sighed Bhatia, having vividly described his martyrdom to piles. “Look after me?” cried Varma, his voice cracking like an ancient clay jar. “He—he does not even give me enough to eat.” “What?” said Bhatia, the white hairs in his ears twitching. “Doesn’t give you enough to eat? Your own son?”

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“My own son. If I ask him for one more piece of bread, he says no, papa, I weighed out the ata myself and I can’t allow you to have more than two hundred grams of cereal a day. He weighs the food he gives me, Bhatia—he has scales to weigh it on. That is what it has come to.” “Never,” murmured Bhatia in disbelief. “Is it possible, even in this evil age, for a son to refuse his father food?” “Let me tell you,” Varma whispered eagerly. “Today the family was having fried fish I could smell it. I called to my daughter-in-law to bring me a piece. She came to the door and said no. . . .” “Said no?” It was Bhatia’s voice that cracked. A drongo shot out of the tree and sped away. “No?” “No, she said no, Rakesh has ordered her to give me nothing fried. No butter, he says, no oil. . . .” “No butter? No oil? How does he expect his father to live?” Old Varma nodded with melancholy triumph. “That is how he treats me after I have brought him up, given him an education, made him a great doctor. Great doctor! This is the way great doctors treat their fathers, Bhatia,” for the son’s sterling personality and character now underwent a curious sea change. Outwardly all might be the same but the interpretation had altered: his masterly efficiency was nothing but cold heartlessness, his authority was only tyranny in disguise. There was cold comfort in complaining to neighbours and, on such a miserable diet, Varma found himself slipping, weakening and soon becoming a genuinely sick man. Powders and pills and mixtures were not only brought in when dealing with a crisis like an upset stomach but became a regular part of his diet—became his diet, complained Varma, supplanting the natural foods he craved. There were pills to regulate his bowel movements, pills to bring down his blood pressure, pills to deal with his arthritis and, eventually, pills to keep his heart beating. In between there were panicky rushes to the hospital, some humiliating experience with the stomach pump and enema, which left him frightened and helpless. He cried easily, shrivelling up on his bed, but if he complained of a pain or even a vague, grey fear in the night, Rakesh would simply open another bottle of pills and force him to take one. “I have my duty to you papa,” he said when his father begged to be let off. “Let me be,” Varma begged, turning his face away from the pills on the outstretched hand. “Let me die. It would be better. I do not want to live only to eat your medicines.” “Papa, be reasonable.”

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“I leave that to you,” the father cried with sudden spirit. “Leave me alone, let me die now, I cannot live like this.” “Lying all day on his pillows, fed every few hours by his daughter-in-law’s own hand, visited by every member of his family daily and then he says he does not want to live ‘like this,’” Rakesh was heard to say, laughing, to someone outside the door. “Deprived of food,” screamed the old man on the bed, “his wishes ignored, taunted by his daughter-in-law, laughed at by his grandchildren that is how I live.” But he was very old and weak and all anyone heard was an incoherent croak, some expressive grunts and cries of genuine pain. Only once, when old Bhatia had come to see him and they sat together under the temple tree, they heard him cry, “God is calling me and they won’t let me go.” The quantities of vitamins and tonics he was made to take were not altogether useless. They kept him alive and even gave him a kind of strength that made him hang on long after he ceased to wish to hang on. It was as though he were straining at a rope, trying to break it, and it would not break, it was still strong. He only hurt himself, trying. In the evening, that summer, the servants would come into his cell, grip his bed, one at each end, and carry it out to the veranda, there sitting it down with a thump that jarred every tooth in his head. In answer to his agonized complaints they said the doctor sahib had told them he must take the evening air and the evening air they would make him take—thump. Then Veena, that smiling, hypocritical pudding in a rustling sari, would appear and pile up the pillows under his head till he was propped up stiffly into a sitting position that made his head swim and his back ache. “Let me lie down,” he begged. “I can’t sit up any more.” “Try, papa, Rakesh said you can if you try,” she said, and drifted away to the other end of the veranda where her transistor radio vibrated to the lovesick tunes from the cinema that she listened to all day. So there he sat, like some stiff corpse, terrified, gazing out on the lawn where his grandsons played cricket, in danger of getting one of their hard-spun balls in his eye, and at the gate that opened onto the dusty and rubbish-heaped lane but still bore, proudly, a newly touched-up signboard that bore his son’s name and qualifications, his own name having vanished from the gate long ago. At last the sky-blue Ambassador arrived, the cricket game broke up in haste, the car drove in smartly and the doctor, the great doctor, all in white, stepped out. Someone ran up to take his bag from

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him, others to escort him up the steps. “Will you have tea?” his wife called, turning down the transistor set. “Or a Coca-Cola? Shall I fry you some samosas?” But he did not reply or even glance in her direction. Ever a devoted son, he went first to the corner where his father sat gazing, stricken, at some undefined spot in the dusty yellow air that swam before him. He did not turn his head to look at his son. But he stopped gobbling air with his uncontrolled lips and set his jaw as hard as a sick and very old man could set it. “Papa,” his son said, tenderly, sitting down on the edge of the bed and reaching out to press his feet. Old Varma tucked his feet under him, out of the way, and continued to gaze stubbornly into the yellow air of the summer evening. “Papa, I’m home.” Varma’s hand jerked suddenly, in a sharp, derisive movement, but he did not speak. “How are you feeling, papa?” Then Varma turned and looked at his son. His face was so out of control and all in pieces, that the multitude of expressions that crossed it could not make up a whole and convey to the famous man exactly

what

his

father

thought

of

him,

his

skill,

his

art.

“I’m dying,” he croaked. “Let me die, I tell you.” “Papa, you’re joking,” his son smiled at him, lovingly. “I’ve brought you a new tonic to make you feel better. You must take it, it will make you feel stronger again. Here it is. Promise me you will take it regularly, papa.” Varma’s mouth worked as hard as though he still had a gob of betel in it (his supply of betel had been cut off years ago). Then he spat out some words, as sharp and bitter as poison, into his son’s face. “Keep your tonic. I want none. I want none .I won’t take any more of your medicines. None. Never,” and he swept the bottle out of his son’s hand with a wave of his own, suddenly grand, suddenly effective. His son jumped, for the bottle was smashed and thick brown syrup had splashed up, staining his white trousers. His wife let out a cry and came running. All around the old man was hubbub once again, noise, attention.

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He gave one push to the pillows at his back and dislodged them so he could sink down on his back, quite flat again. He closed his eyes and pointed his chin at the ceiling, like some dire prophet, groaning, “God is calling me now let me go.”

Anita Desai, original name Anita Mazumdar, (born June 24, 1937, Mussoorie, India), English-language Indian novelist and author of children's books who excelled in evoking character and mood through visual images ranging from the meteorology to the botanical which won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, and Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984) and Fasting, Feasting (1999), each of which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In Custody was made into a film by Merchant Ivory productions. Her children's book The Village by the Sea (1982), won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award.

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Let’s revise ❖

Who is the author of the story?

❖

What is the first thing that Rakesh does when he sees the results in the

newspaper? ❖

Why did Rakesh touch his father’s feet?

❖

Why the family whooped and danced?

❖

Why did Rakesh go to USA ?

❖

What kind of doctor is Rakesh?

❖

What happened to his mother?

❖

What sort of woman was Rakesh's wife?

❖

Why Varma bribes his grandchildren?

❖

Why was Mr. Varma jealous of Mr. Bhatia?

❖

Who takes care of Varma?

❖

What happens to Varma at the end of the story?

❖

Does Rakesh remain devoted son until the end of the story?

Answer the following ❖

Identify conflicts in "A Devoted Son."

❖

Is Rakesh a devoted son throughout? Support your answer by giving example

from text. ❖

In what sense Rakesh devoted in his own perspective?

❖

Bring out the sarcastic elements in the story.

❖

What do Varma and Bhatia seem to have common?

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Activity Character sketch ➢

Write a character sketch of Rakesh concerning his overall personality and

the cause of his change of behavior toward his father.

Story writing ➢ Give an different ending for the story Letter writing ➢ Write a letter to your friend to tell him about the story.

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Let’s listen to a inspirational speech and evaluate ourselves.

My vision for India A P J Abdul Kalam

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.

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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.

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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 26

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 orthopaedic 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 orthopaedic 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!

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, in full Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, (born October 15, 1931, Rameswaram, India—died July 27, 2015, Shillong), Indian scientist and politician who played a leading role in the development of India’s missile and nuclear weapons programs. He was president of India from 2002 to 2007. On July 27, 2015, he collapsed while delivering a lecture at the Indian Institute of Management Shillong and was pronounced dead from cardiac arrest soon afterward. Kalam wrote several books, including an autobiography, Wings of Fire (1999). Among his numerous awards were two of the country’s highest honors, the Padma Vibhushan (1990) and the Bharat Ratna (1997).

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Answer the following •

What does Kalam want us to protect us to protect and nurture?

•

Why must India stand up to the world?

•

The great scientists who inspired A P J Abdul Kalam are

•

Why do we need to give up our obsession with foreign things?

•

Find the synonym of ‘Nurture’

•

Find the antonym of ‘withhold’

Activity 1 Think what freedom means to you. Express your opinion Activity 2 Design a poster to increase awareness among freedom Activity 3 As a good citizen, think and write 5 things you should and should not do. Do

Don’t

Respect others freedom

Steal what is not yours

Activity 4 Prepare comparison of themes of devoted son and my vision for India. 28

Activity 5 Prepare a questionnaire to conduct an interview with a freedom fighter. Activity 6 Prepare a speech about freedom on independence day.

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Let's learn do some works Exercise 1 Use these words in sentences to convey two different meaning • 1. 2. •

Match

Fast

1. 2. •

Bear

1. 2. •

Addition

1. 2. •

Course

1. 2.

Exercise 2 Would and could are past forms of will and can Would and could are often used to make one’s speech polite. Use the models(could, would ,will ,can) appreciate in the blanks given below • Neethu: where are you going? Clinton: I am going to church. Neethu: ………. You buy some chocolate for me? Clinton: I …… but …… you bring me your scooter 30

• Hira. : ………. You bring me glass of wine Anu :I ……. • Vidya. :……….. see a doctor at once • Salman : ………. Give a your pen

Exercise 3 Phrases and Clauses Study the underlined groups of words. (i) (a) He wore a shirt made of cotton (b) He wore a shirt which was made of cotton. (ii) (a) Are you sure of your innocence? (b) Are you sure that you are innocent? (iii) (a) This is the exact reason for his failure. (b) This is exactly why he has failed. (iv) (a) Pay careful attention to my words. (b) Pay careful attention to what I say. (v) (a) After finishing his work, he went home. (b) He finished his work and he went home. You will notice that all underlined groups of words in sentences marked (a) merely refer to a concept or expression. They do not contain a Subject or a Main or Principal verb. Such a group of words or unit of a sentence is called a PHRASE. Each of the underlined groups of words in sentences marked (b) convey a thought? /concept and have a Subject and a Principal or Main verb. This unit/part of a sentence is called a CLAUSE.

Say whether the underlined parts of the following sentences are Phrases or Clauses.

(I)People from all over the world have invaded us.

(ii) I believe that India had its first vision of freedom in 1957. 31

(iii) It is this freedom that we must respect.

(iv) We are a great nation.

(v) I want to live in a developed India.

(vi) We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them.

(vii) We have 10 percent growth rate in most areas.

Replace the underlined phrases with Clauses.

(a) Do you know his place of birth?

(b) In his absence, the thieves looted his house.

(c) I am a citizen of India. I am a citizen. …………

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