CBSE Class 12 English Lost Spring Notes Set 04

Lost Spring

About the Author

Anees Jung is an Indian author, journalist and columnist. Born into a family of scholars and poets, Anees started her career in writing with the Youth Times, a Times of India publication, where she worked as a journalist and editor. As an author, she had worked to bring out the stories of the marginalised and oppressed communities in India. She has written several books, including 'Unveiling India' and 'Beyond the Tigers: Tracking Rajan'.

Chapter Sketch

These excerpts are taken from the author’s book Lost Spring : Stories of Stolen Childhood. This chapter is divided into two parts containing the author's first-hand-experience with poverty and traditions prevailing in some parts of India. The first part describes the plight of the poor ragpickers of Seemapuri. The second part describes the miserable conditions of the bangle-makers of Firozabad.

About the Characters

The Narrator Anees Jung herself is the narrator who in a simple and straightforward manner presents of vivid image of poverty that affects childhood in the nation. Her writing style is powerful which encourages people to work to better their conditions.

Part 1 - Sometimes I Find a Rupee in the Garbage

• Saheb: He is a young ragpicker from Seemapuri. He is simple and hopeful of the better future. He believes in the false promises made by powerful people.
• Other Young Ragpickers: They are some other boys who roam around the streets with Saheb.
• Pandit and his Boy: These are the characters of a story that the narrator had heard. These characters present how the situation had changed from past to now.

Part 2 - I Want to Drive a Car

• Mukesh: He is a young boy from Firozabad. He is a daring and a hopeful boy who wants to break free from the fate of bangle-making. He wants to become a motor-mechanic and seems to be determined to do so.
• Mukesh’s Father: He is a bangle maker by profession who regrets not being able to send his sons to school.
• Mukesh’s Grandmother: She represents the generation which thinks that bangle-making has been their destiny.
• Mukesh’s sister-in-law: She is a frail young woman. She seems to be a traditional wife who cooks and practices all marital customs like veiling before male elders.
• Savita: She is an innocent young girl who is practicing bangle-making with an old woman.
• Other characters: This includes the old lady with Savita and her husband along with some characters who Anees talks to. They present how their situations are bad as they practice bangle-making and live in poverty without any hope of betterment.

Summary of the Chapter

The given chapter comprises of two different interactions with boys who live in poor and dismal condition.

Part 1- Sometimes I Find a Rupee in the Garbage

Saheb: The Ragpicker
The author meets Saheb and his friends when they were looking through the garbage of her neighbourhood. Saheb and his family had come from Dhaka, Bangladesh after their fields were destroyed by storms. They had come to Delhi to find a better livelihood. When the author asks Saheb about not going to school, she gets to know that his locality has no school. So, the author promises to build a school for him. After some days, when Saheb asks her about the school, the author is embarrassed. Saheb's real name is Saheb-e-Alam which the author finds ironical. The name means Lord of the Universe which is in contrast with his real situation.

Poor Condition
Saheb and his friends remain barefoot throughout the day. When the author enquires about it, the boys give various reasons. However, the author feels that these are excuses to hide their poverty. The author then remembers a story told by a man from Udipi. As a boy, he had noticed the priest’s son praying for a pair of shoes. This wish was fulfilled as thirty years later, the priest’s son has a pair of shoes.

Seemapuri and Ragpickers
The author goes to Seemapuri, a place at Delhi’s border. Seemapuri is a home to many Bangladeshi refugees who came here in 1971 and are ragpickers. They live in mud structures with roofs of tin and tarpaulin. There is no water or drainage facility. The ragpickers have been living in 30 years with only valid ration cards. They do not have stable homes and live in areas where they can find food. Children are born in them and become ragpickers. Over the years, rag-picking has become an art. Garbage is similar to gold for the ragpickers as it provides them income. For children, garbage is filled with wonder as they find different things in it.

Saheb’s Lost Childhood
A winter morning, the author sees Saheb outside the neighbourhood club. He was watching a game of tennis. He told the author that he likes the game and sometimes the guard lets him enter the club to ride the swing. That day, the author noticed that Saheb was wearing tennis shoes that were discarded by some rich boy. Another morning the author sees Saheb at a milk booth. He was carrying a steel canister. He informed the author that now he worked at the tea stall and was paid Rs. 800 and all his meals. The author feels that Saheb is not happy as he has no freedom now.

Part 2- I Want to Drive a Car

Mukesh and Firozabad
In Firozabad, the author meets Mukesh, who wishes to be a motor mechanic and to learn to drive a car. She feels that Mukesh’s dream is displaced from his reality. Firozabad is the center of India’s glass-blowing industry. Most families here work in the bangle-making. Even children work in this industry and lose their eyesight. This is so because people do not know that it is illegal for children to work in the glass furnaces with high temperatures, in dirty rooms cells without air and light.

Mukesh’s House and Family
Mukesh takes the author to his home. They walk down a path covered in garbage, crossing small and dirty houses with wobbly doors and no windows. Finally, they enter a half-built shack. In the house, the wife of Mukesh’s elder brother is cooking the evening meal. Mukesh’s father enters the house and tells the author that he has worked hard all his life. However, he could not educate his sons or build his house. He could only teach them bangle-making. Just then, Mukesh’s Grandmother states that bangle-making is their God-given lineage and they could do nothing but make bangles.

Poor Conditions in Firozabad
In Firozabad, the author sees dark houses with flames of flickering oil lamps. Boys and girls are sitting with their parents, making-bangles. The author notices a young girl, Savita, sitting beside an elderly woman. Author wonders about the irony of Savita’s life. The old lady tells her how she had not eaten properly in her entire life. Her husband tells her that he had only made a house for his family. This makes author think about if he had achieved something that others have not yet achieved.

Loss of Hope
Nothing has changed in Firozabad and people have lost all their hopes and dreams. When the author asks a group of young men to organise themselves in cooperatives, she learns that even if they do, they are taken to jail for doing something illegal and beaten up. As a result, there is no leader among them. The author finds two distinct worlds in Firozabad. One is the exploited family which lives in poverty and the other is a vicious circle of sahukars, the middlemen, the politicians, the lawmakers, the policemen and the bureaucrats, who exploit them. These powerful people have created a situation wherein a child accepts bangle making as a profession without much thought.

A Ray of Hope
The author is filled with joy when she finds that Mukesh thinks differently. The boy is filled with hope. His dream of being a motor-mechanic is still alive in his eyes. He is willing to dare. Anees asks Mukesh if he also dreams of flying a plane. Mukesh replies in the negative. He is content to dream of cars, as few planes fly over Firozabad.

Word-Meaning

• scrounging: seeking or looking for
• dumps: heaps
• looking for: dreaming of
• glibly: fluently but thoughtlessly
• hollow: insincere, superficial
• shuffles: walks by dragging one's feet along
• perpetual state of poverty: being always poor
• drowned: overcome or overpowered by
• desolation: a state of complete emptiness or destruction
• ragpicker(s): a person who collects and sells rags and other discarded things from garbage
• squatter(s): a person who unlawfully occupies an unused/ uninhabited land or building
• wilderness: an uninhabited or abandoned region
• tarpaulin: a heavy, hard-wearing waterproof cloth coated with paint
• permit(s): an official document authorising someone to do something
• transit homes: temporary homes
• proportions: shape or dimension
• canister: a round or cylindrical container for storing things
• looms: appears
• mirage: appearing possible, but not actually so
• furnace(s): an enclosed fireplace for heating metals or materials to a very high temperature
• dingy: dark and gloomy
• cells: very small rooms
• slog their daylight hours: work hard throughout the day
• brightness of their eyes: eyesight
• beam: shine brightly
• hovels: a small, dirty and simply constructed building
• wobbly: moving unsteadily from side to side
• primeval: ancient, primitive
• platters: a large flat dish or plate for serving food
• impoverished: made poor
• lineage: ancestry
• shanty town: a town full of, crudely-built huts without sanitation
• dark hutments: dimly lit huts
• welding: joining together by heating the surface to the point of melting
• soldering: joining
• tongs: movable arms of an instrument, used for holding and picking up things
• lament: complaint, passionate expression of grief
• mind-numbing: so extreme or intense as to prevent normal thought
• stigma: a mark of disgrace; shame
• sahukars: moneylenders
• hurtling: moving at high speed

Important Themes of the Chapter

• Poverty and Exploitation: The prominent theme of the stories presented in ‘Lost Spring’ is the prevalence of harsh realities faced by underprivileged children in India. Due to poverty and lack of proper resources, children are forced into child labour to support their families, continuing the cycle of poverty.
• Denied Childhood: Another theme evident in the stories is the denial of the joys and innocence of childhood to the underprivileged. Children are robbed of their childhood by being forced to work in hazardous conditions instead of enjoying their formative years in school and play.
• Callousness of Society: A subtheme of the story is the selfish and ignorant nature of powerful political people and the society. Powerful people suppress the marginalised, offer incentives and make promises to maintain their power. However, in the end no promises are fulfilled which further increases the hardships of the poor.