Chapter 2

Lost spring summary in English

I. "Sometimes I find a rupee in the garbage" the author comes across saheb every morning, saheb left his home in Dhaka long time ago. He is trying to sponge gold in the heaps of garbage in the neighbourhood. The author asks saheb why he does that. Saheb mutters that he has nothing else to do. There is no school in his neighbourhood. He is poor and works barefooted.

There are 10000 other shoeless reg pickers like saheb . They live in seemapuri on the outer edge of Delhi. Structures of mud. With roofs of tin and tarpaulin but devoid of sewage , drainage or running water. They are squatters who came from Bangladesh back in 1971. They have lived here for more than thirty years without identity cards or permit . They have right to vote. With ration cards they get grains. Food is more important for survival than identity . Wherever they find food , they pitch their tents that become transit homes. Children grow up them.and become partners in survival. In seemapuri survival means rag picking. Through the years rag pickers has acquired the proportions of a fine art. Garbage to them is gold . It is their daily bread and a roof over their heads.

Sometimes saheb finds a rupee or even a ten-rupee note in the garbage - heap . Then there is hope of finding more Garbage has a meaning different from what it means to their patents. For children it is wrapped in wonder , for the elders it is a means of survival.

One winter morning the author finds saheb standing by the fenced gate of a neighbourhood club. He is watching too young man playing tennis. They are dressed in white. Saheb like the game but he is content to watch it. Standing behind the fence. Saheb is wearing discarded tennis shoes that look strange over his discoloured shirts and shorts. For one who has blocked barefoot. Even shoes with the hole is a dream come true. But tennis is out of his reach.

This morning saheb is on his way to the milk booth. In his hand is steel canister. He works in a tea stall he is paid 800 rupees and all his meals.Saheb is no longer his master. His face has lost the carefree look. He doesn't seem happy working at that stall.

II. I want to drive a car the author comes across Mukesh in firozabad. His family is engaged in a bangle making but mukesh insists on being his own master," i will be a motor mechanic" he announces. " I will learn to drive a car." He says.

Firozabad is famous for its bangles. Every other family in firozabad is engaged in making bangles. Families have spent generations working around furnaces welding glass making bangles for women. None of them no that is illegal for children like Mukesh to work in the glass furnaces high temperature, in dingy cells without air and light. This log daylight hours often losing the brightness of their eyes. If the law is enforced, it could get Mukesh and 20,000 children out of the hot furnaces.

The walk down stinking lanes choked with garbage past homes that remain hovals with crumbling walls wobbly doors and no windows. Humans and animals co-exist there. They enter a half built shack. One part of it is thatched with dead grass. A frail young woman is cooking evening meal

Over a firewood stove.she is the wife of Mukesh's elder brother and already incharge of three men her husband

Mukesh and their father. The father is a poor Bengal maker despite long years of hard labours, first as a tailor and then as a bangle maker he has failed to renovate house and send his two sons to school. all he has managed to do is teach. Them what he knows the art of making bangles.

Mukesh's grandmother has watched her own husband go blind with the dust from polishing the glass of bangles, she says that it is his destiny. She implies that god given line age can never be broken. They have been born in the caste of bangle makers and have seen nothing but bangles of various colours. Boys and girls sit with fathers and mothers belding pieces of coloured glass into circles of bangles. Deep work in dark hutments. Next two lines of plains of flickering oil lamps. Their eyes are more adjusted to the dark then to the light outside. The often end up losing their eyesight before they become adults.

Savita young girl in drab pink dress, sits alongside an elderly woman. She is soldering pieces of glass. Her hands were move mechanically like the tonges of machine. Perhaps she does not know the sanctity of the bangles she helps make. Old woman beside her has not enjoyed even one full meal and her entire life time. Her husband is an old man with flowing beard. He knows nothing except bangles. He has made a house for the family to live in. He has a roof over his head.

Little has moved with time in firozabad. Families do not have enough to eat.they do not have money to do anything except carry on the business of making bangles. The young man Eco the lament of their elders. We have fallen into the vicious circle of the middleman to protect their father and forefathers. Years of my number in toil have killed all initiative and the ability to dream. They are unwilling to get organised into a cooperative. DP that they will be hauled up by the police beaten and dragged to jail for doing something illegal. There is no leader among them no one helps them to see things differently. All of them appear tired. Day talk of poverty ,apathy, greed and injustice.

Two distinct worlds are visible one , families hot in poverty and burdened with the stigma of caste in which day are born; the other, a vicious circle of money lenders the middleman , The police man the keepers of law and politicians. Together they have imposed the baggage on the child that he cannot put it down. He accept it as naturally as his father. to do anything else would mean to dear. And daring is not part of his growing up. The author is cheered when she senses a flash of it in Mukesh who wants to be a motor Mechanic .

We hope CBSE/MP Board Class 12th English "Flamingo" Chapter 2 "Lost Spring" will help you.

Written By - Himanshu Sharma