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| The Blue Bead - Evergreen Publication |
COMPREHENSION (UNSOLVED PASSAGES
Passage 1
(1) During her childhood, Sibia had been husking corn, gathering sticks, putting dung to dry, cooking and weeding, fetching water and cutting grass for fodder.
(ii) She went with her mother and some other women to get paper grass from the cliff above the river.
(iii) The women toiled to collect the paper grass for the whole day and then brought it down by bullock cart to the railhead and then sold it to the agent. The agent despatched it to the paper mills.
(iv) Sibia carried with her sickle and homemade hayfork.
She could not skip on the way back because she had a great load to carry and ached with tiredness.
(v) Some of the women going along with Sibia and her mother were wearing necklaces made of lal-lal beeges, the shiny scarlet seeds, black at one end, which grew everywhere in jungle.
Passage 2
(1) The crocodile came to rest in the glassy shallows among logs. He balanced himself there on tiptoe on the rippled sand, with only his raised eyes out of water and raised nostrils.
(1) The big crocodile lay motionless in the river because he was waiting for food. His formidable body lay lapped by ripples a throb in his throat. His mouth was closed and fixed in an evil smile.
(ii) The big crocodile fed mostly on fish, but also on deer and monkeys who came to drink and on a duck or two. Sometimes, he fed on a pi-dog or a skeleton cow.
(iv) Sometimes the crocodile went down to the burning ghats and found the half-burned bodies of Indians thrown into the river.
(v) The blue bead was not a gem. It was only a sand worn glass that had been rolling about in the river for a long time. It was perforated right through the neck of a bottle perhaps.
Passage 3
(1) The women passed by a Gujar encampment of grass huts where the nomadic grazier lived when they went towards the river.
(ii) The Gujar women wore trousers, tight and wrinkled at the ankles and large silver rings made of melted rupees in their ears.
(ill) The Gujar men and boys were out of the camp. Perhaps they were with their herd or they had gone to the bazaar to sell their produce.
(iv) Sibia noticed that the buffaloes were standing about, creatures of great wet noses, and moving jaws and gaunt black bones.
(v) They were called junglis because they were born and bred in the forest. For centuries they had been getting their living from animals and from grass trees. They scratched their food together and stored their substances in large herds and silver jewellery.
Passage 4
(1) The Gujars had been getting their living from animals, from grass and trees. They used to scratch their food together and store their substance in large herds and silver jewellery.
(ii) The women laughed and bickered about as they approached the river in a noisy crowd. They girded up their skirts, and jumped from stone to stone, clanked their sickles and forks together as they crossed the river. They also shouted their quarrels above the gush of river.
(iii) They crossed the river in a happy mood. They laughed and bickered about. They shouted their quarrels above the gush of water.
(iv) Noise frightens the crocodiles. The big crocodile did not move because he was waiting till food came to him. His posture was to deceive other creatures.
(v) The women clanked their sickles and forks together above their shoulders and climbed the still hillside to get at the grass great turtles, mahseer and crocodiles in the river.
Passage 5
(1) When Sibia was halfway over, she put her load down on a boulder. She did so in order to take rest. A Gujar woman came there at the same moment.
(ii) A Gujar woman came with two gurrahs to the water on the other side of the bank to get good clean water. She knew she would get there water without sand.
(iil) When the Gujar woman came within a yard of the crocodile, the crocodile suddenly jumped out of the water and lunged at her.
(iv) The woman screamed, dropped both brass pots with a clatter on a boulder. She recoiled from the crocodile, but his jaws closed on her leg as she slipped and fell on the stone and clutched one of the timber logs to save herself.
(v) The crocodile pulled on the woman's leg thrashing his mighty tail to and fro and trying to drag her down in the deeps of the pool.
Passage 6
(1) With all the force of her little body, Sibia drove the hayfork at the crocodile's eyes and one prong went in-right in-while its pair scratched past on the horny cheek.
(il) Sibia aimed at the crocodile's eyes to harm him. She used her hayfork to attack the crocodile so that she could save the woman from him.
(iii) The crocodile was attacked and hit in the eye with hayfork by Sibia. The crocodile reared up in convulsion and then disappeared.
(iv) The crocodile would die soon, but his death would not be known for days. It would be known only when the crocodile's body filled with gas would float upside down above water among the logs at the timber boom.
(V) Sibia got her arms round the fainting woman, and somehow dragged her out from the water. She stopped her wounds with sand and bound them with rag and took her to her home.
Passage 7
(1) Sibia took the wounded Gujar woman to her home in Gujar encampment where the men made a litter to carry her to some doctor for treatment.
(ii) Sibia wanted to pick up the fork lying in the river. Luckily, it had not been carried away by the flowing water. She saw a blue bead in the water.
(iii) Sibia twisted the blue bead into the top of her skirt against her tummy so that she would know if the skirt burst and it fell down. Then she picked up her fork, sickle and the heavy load of grass and went home.
(iv) Sibia's mother was apprehensive. She feared something must have happened to Sibia that she had not arrived.
(v) Sibia told her mother that she had found a blue bead for her necklace. Very cleverly she did not tell her mother about the encounter with the crocodile.
LONG ANSWER QUESTIONS
ASSIGNMENT Develop the following hints into your own answers:
1. Hints
- Sibia, a girl of 12, lived in mud house
- went with mother to get paper grass
- on the way back, hung back to see clay cups
- a woman came with too pitchers
- attacked by the crocodile, screamed
- Sibia took hayfork, attacked crocodile
- left the woman, reared up in convulsion
- saved life of Gujar woman, did not tell anyone about it, told mother, found a blue bead
2. Hints
- Sibia, brave, self helpful
- rare courage, presence of mind, saving the Gujar woman bold, courageous, fearless, alive, alert
- attacks the crocodile with hayfork
- modest, does not tell her mother, about her brave act
3. Hints
- writer gives details about the crocodile
- to establish his formidable size and strength
- live in Indian rivers, twice the length of man
- blackish brown, ferocious, evil bony smile
- fed on fish, deer, monkeys, ducks
- details given to highlight Sibia's act of bravery
