Lost Spring (CH-2) Notes – Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 2

In this post we have given the Notes of Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 2 Lost Spring (by Anees Jung). These are useful for students preparing for their Class 12 board exams.

इस पोस्ट में कक्षा 12 अंग्रेज़ी (Flamingo) के पाठ 2 Lost Spring के नोट्स दिए गए हैं। यह उन सभी विद्यार्थियों के लिए उपयोगी है जो इस वर्ष कक्षा 12 की बोर्ड परीक्षा देने वाले हैं।

अध्याय का सार हिंदी में (Chapter Summary in Hindi)

“Lost Spring” लेखिका अनीस जंग (Anees Jung) की पुस्तक “Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood” का एक अंश है। इस पाठ में लेखिका ने दो गरीब बच्चों की सच्ची कहानियाँ बताई हैं, जिनका बचपन गरीबी और पुरानी परंपराओं के कारण छिन गया है। “Spring” यानी वसंत ऋतु को यहाँ बचपन का प्रतीक माना जा सकता है, और “Lost Spring” का अर्थ है खोया हुआ बचपन।

पहला भाग साहेब (Saheb-e-Alam) नाम के एक कूड़ा बीनने वाले (ragpicker) लड़के के बारे में है। उसका परिवार बांग्लादेश में ढाका के पास हरे-भरे खेतों के बीच रहता था, लेकिन बार-बार आए तूफ़ानों ने उनके खेत और घर बहा दिए। इसलिए वे दिल्ली आ गए और सीमापुरी नाम की बस्ती में बस गए। सीमापुरी में लगभग 10,000 कूड़ा बीनने वाले लोग मिट्टी के घरों में रहते हैं, जहाँ न सीवर है, न नाली, न नल का पानी। साहेब के नाम का अर्थ है “पूरी दुनिया का मालिक”, पर असल में उसके पास कुछ भी नहीं है। लेखिका उससे मज़ाक में स्कूल खोलने का वादा करती है, जो कभी पूरा नहीं होता। अंत में साहेब एक चाय की दुकान पर 800 रुपये और खाने के बदले नौकरी कर लेता है, लेकिन अब वह अपना मालिक खुद नहीं रहा। उसका प्लास्टिक का थैला उसका अपना था, पर स्टील का डिब्बा (canister) दुकान वाले का है।

दूसरा भाग मुकेश के बारे में है, जो फ़िरोज़ाबाद का रहने वाला है। फ़िरोज़ाबाद काँच की चूड़ियों के लिए प्रसिद्ध है। वहाँ लगभग 20,000 बच्चे गर्म भट्टियों (furnaces) में काम करते हैं और अक्सर बड़े होने से पहले ही अपनी आँखों की रोशनी खो देते हैं, जबकि बच्चों से यह काम कराना गैरकानूनी है। मुकेश का परिवार पीढ़ियों से चूड़ियाँ बनाता आया है। उसकी दादी इसे “करम” यानी भाग्य मानती हैं। साहूकार, बिचौलिये (middlemen), पुलिस, अफ़सर और नेता मिलकर एक दुष्चक्र (vicious circle) बनाते हैं, जिससे ये लोग कभी बाहर नहीं निकल पाते। फिर भी मुकेश हिम्मत दिखाता है और कहता है कि वह मोटर मैकेनिक बनेगा। पर हवाई जहाज़ उड़ाने का सपना वह नहीं देखता, क्योंकि फ़िरोज़ाबाद के ऊपर बहुत कम हवाई जहाज़ उड़ते हैं।

इस पाठ का संदेश यह है कि गरीबी, परंपरा और समाज की उदासीनता (callousness) मिलकर बच्चों से उनका बचपन, उनकी शिक्षा और उनके सपने छीन लेते हैं।

Anees Jung: A Short Introduction

Anees Jung was born in 1944 in Rourkela and spent her growing-up years in Hyderabad. Both of her parents were writers. She studied in Hyderabad and later in the United States. She started her writing career in India and has worked as an editor and columnist for leading newspapers, both in India and outside it.

“Lost Spring” is taken from her book Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood. In this book she looks closely at the crushing poverty and the old traditions that push children into a life of exploitation.

Remember: The writer is Anees Jung, and the chapter is an extract from her book Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood.

How the Chapter Is Built

The chapter is not one continuous story. It is made of two separate true-life sketches. The author narrates both in the first person, based on her own meetings and conversations with poor children. The two portraits are linked by a single idea: childhood that is lost to poverty.

1. “Sometimes I Find a Rupee in the Garbage” – the story of Saheb, a ragpicker boy living in Seemapuri, at the edge of Delhi, who searches garbage heaps for anything that can be sold.
2. “I Want to Drive a Car” – the story of Mukesh, a boy from a family of bangle makers in Firozabad, who wants to become a motor mechanic instead.

What the title suggests

The book does not explain the title directly, but a common way to read it is this: “spring” is the season of growth, freshness and hope, so it can stand for childhood. The subtitle, “Stories of Stolen Childhood”, supports this reading. The title therefore suggests that the childhood of boys like Saheb and Mukesh is taken away by poverty and exploitation before it can bloom.

Part I: Saheb, the Ragpicker of Seemapuri

A boy “scrounging for gold”

Every morning the author sees a boy named Saheb searching through the garbage dumps in her area. She describes him as “scrounging for gold”. He tells her that sometimes he finds a rupee, even a ten-rupee note. When she asks why he does this work, his answer is simple: he has nothing else to do.

Saheb’s family once lived among green fields near Dhaka in Bangladesh. Storm after storm destroyed their fields and houses, so they left and came to the big city of Delhi, “looking for gold”. The phrase shows that for people this poor, even garbage can seem as valuable as gold.

The irony of his name

The boy proudly gives his full name as Saheb-e-Alam, which means “lord of the universe”. He does not know its meaning, and he would find it hard to believe if he did. The book’s own exercise points out that the name is the opposite of what Saheb really is. This is irony: a boy with a grand name owns almost nothing and has no control over his future.

A promise that was not meant

Half in jest, the author asks Saheb whether he would come if she opened a school. He happily says yes. A few days later he runs up to her to ask whether the school is ready. She has to tell him that building a school takes longer. She feels embarrassed, because she made a promise she never meant to keep. She also admits that such promises are found everywhere in his bleak world.

Be careful: The chapter never shows Saheb going to school. Do not write that he studies; the promised school is never built.

Why so many children go barefoot

The author notices that many of Saheb’s friends walk around without shoes; she calls them an “army of barefoot boys”. When she asks why, she gets different answers:

• One boy says his mother did not bring his shoes down from the shelf.
• Another boy says that even if she did, the first boy would throw them off.
• A third boy, who has never owned shoes, simply says that he wants a pair.

Having travelled across India, the author has seen barefoot children in cities and on village roads alike. Someone tells her that it is not a lack of money but a tradition to stay barefoot. She is not convinced. She wonders whether “tradition” is just an excuse to explain away a perpetual state of poverty.

The story from Udipi

She recalls a man from Udipi who told her that as a boy, on his way to school, he would stop at an old temple where his father was the priest and pray to the goddess for a pair of shoes. Thirty years later, the author visited his town. The temple now seemed lonely and deserted (“drowned in an air of desolation”). A young boy in a school uniform, wearing socks and shoes, arrived at the priest’s house. Seeing him, she remembered another boy’s prayer on finally getting shoes: “Let me never lose them.” The goddess had heard such prayers, and boys like the priest’s son now wore shoes. But many others, like the ragpickers of her neighbourhood, still had none.

Seemapuri: on the edge of Delhi, yet far away

Saheb’s family lives in Seemapuri, a settlement on the outskirts of Delhi. The author says it is miles away from the city “metaphorically”, meaning that although it lies close to Delhi, it is cut off from the city’s comforts and opportunities. Its people are squatters who came from Bangladesh in 1971. Wherever they find food, they pitch tents that become temporary homes, and their children grow up as partners in the struggle to survive.

Garbage: wonder for children, survival for adults

Rag-picking means sorting through waste to collect things that can be sold again, such as paper, plastic, glass or metal. In Seemapuri, the author says, it has “acquired the proportions of a fine art” – the people have become experts at it out of sheer need. For the grown-ups, garbage is their means of survival, their daily bread and the roof over their heads. For the children, it is “wrapped in wonder”, because there is always a chance of finding a coin or a note. The same heap of garbage means two very different things to a child and to an adult.

Watching from behind the fence

Saheb likes to stand behind the fence of a neighbourhood club and watch two young men playing tennis. He admits that he goes inside when nobody is around, and the gatekeeper lets him use the swing. He is wearing tennis shoes that once belonged to some rich boy, who perhaps threw them away because of a hole in one shoe. For a boy who has always gone barefoot, even torn shoes are a dream come true. The game he watches so closely, however, remains out of his reach.

A job, and the loss of freedom

Towards the end of this sketch, Saheb is working at a tea stall. He carries a steel canister and earns 800 rupees along with all his meals. This looks like an improvement, but the author notices that his face has lost its carefree look. The steel canister seems heavier than the plastic bag he used to carry lightly over his shoulder. The bag was his own; the canister belongs to the tea-shop owner. The sketch closes with the line: “Saheb is no longer his own master!”

Exam point: If asked whether Saheb is happy at the tea stall, the answer is no. A fixed wage has cost him the independence he enjoyed as a ragpicker.

Part II: Mukesh and the Bangle Makers of Firozabad

A boy who wants to be his own master

Mukesh comes from a family that has known nothing but bangle making, yet he declares that he will be a motor mechanic. When the author asks whether he knows anything about cars, he looks straight into her eyes and says that he will learn to drive a car. Against the dusty streets of his town, his dream “looms like a mirage” – it seems as distant and unreal as the water a thirsty traveller imagines in a desert.

Firozabad and its furnaces

Firozabad is the centre of India’s glass-blowing industry and is known for its bangles. Almost every other family there makes bangles, and families have worked around the furnaces for generations. Mukesh’s family is one of them.

Children here work in glass furnaces at very high temperatures, in dingy cells without air or light, and spend all their daylight hours at hard labour, often losing the brightness of their eyes. In dark hutments lit by flickering oil lamps, families weld pieces of glass into bangles. Because their eyes get used to darkness rather than daylight, many of them lose their eyesight even before they grow up.

Important fact: Child labour in these furnaces is illegal. The chapter says that the law, if enforced, could free Mukesh and about 20,000 other children from the hot furnaces. In other words, a law exists but is not being enforced. Do not write that there is no law against it.

Inside Mukesh’s home

Mukesh proudly leads the author to his house, which he says is being rebuilt. They walk through lanes choked with garbage, past houses with crumbling walls and no windows. The people she meets show how poverty passes from one generation to the next:

• Mukesh’s father has worked hard for years, first as a tailor and then as a bangle maker. Still, he has not been able to repair the house or send his two sons to school. The only thing he could teach them was how to make bangles.
• Mukesh’s grandmother calls this life “his karam, his destiny”. Her own husband went blind because of the dust from polishing bangle glass. She seems to believe that a god-given lineage can never be broken – the family accepts its lot as fate, not as injustice.
• Mukesh’s sister-in-law, the young wife of his elder brother, is already in charge of three men – her husband, Mukesh and their father. Following custom, she covers her face with her veil when the elder man of the house comes in.

Savita and the old couple

Elsewhere, the author sees Savita, a young girl in a drab pink dress, sitting beside an elderly woman and soldering pieces of glass. Her hands move “mechanically like the tongs of a machine”. The author wonders whether Savita knows how sacred these bangles are. Bangles stand for suhaag, the auspicious state of marriage for an Indian woman. The author feels Savita will realise this suddenly one day, when she becomes a bride, with henna on her hands and red bangles on her wrists.

The old woman beside her became a bride long ago. She still wears bangles, but there is no light in her eyes. In a voice without joy, she says that she has not eaten even one full meal in her whole life (“Ek waqt ser bhar khana bhi nahin khaya”). Her husband, an old man with a flowing beard, says he knows nothing except bangles, and that all he has done is make a house for his family. The author wonders whether he has achieved something many people never manage in a lifetime: he has a roof over his head.

The vicious circle

The author asks a group of young bangle makers why they do not form a cooperative. These young men are caught in the same trap of middlemen that held their fathers and grandfathers. They reply that if they organise, they are the ones who will be picked up by the police, beaten and put in jail for doing something illegal. They have no leader and nobody to help them see things in a different way. Their fathers are just as tired as they are.

The trap, called a vicious circle, is made up of the sahukars (moneylenders), the middlemen, the policemen, the keepers of law, the bureaucrats and the politicians. Together they place a burden on the child that he can never put down. The child accepts it just as naturally as his father did. To do anything different would mean to dare, and daring is not part of his upbringing.

A small dream

The author is cheered when she sees a flash of that daring in Mukesh. He repeats that he wants to be a motor mechanic, even though the garage is far from his home – he says he will walk there. But when she asks whether he would like to fly a plane, he goes quiet, looks down at the ground and says no. His embarrassment has not yet turned into regret. He is happy to dream of the cars he sees speeding through the streets of his town, because few aeroplanes fly over Firozabad. Even his dream, it seems, is limited by how little of the world he has seen.

Character Sketches

Saheb

• A ragpicker boy whose family left the fields near Dhaka after storms destroyed their homes.
• His name, Saheb-e-Alam (“lord of the universe”), is the opposite of his real, powerless condition.
• Hopeful and eager at first – he gladly agrees to attend a school that never gets built.
• Mostly an onlooker: he watches tennis from behind the club fence and enters only when nobody is around, to use the swing.
• Finally exchanges his freedom for a wage at the tea stall and is “no longer his own master”.

Mukesh

• Born into a family of bangle makers in Firozabad, a trade followed for generations.
• Refuses to accept bangle making as his fate and wants to be a motor mechanic.
• Shows self-belief by looking the author straight in the eye as he speaks.
• Ready to walk a long distance to the garage to learn a new skill.
• His dream is limited to cars; he does not dream of flying, as few planes fly over Firozabad.

Tip: Support a character sketch with lines from the chapter, such as “Saheb is no longer his own master!” for Saheb, and his wish to be a motor mechanic for Mukesh.

Theme and Message

• Theme (as stated in the book’s unit note): the plight of street children forced into labour early in life and denied the opportunity of schooling.
• Sub-theme: the callousness of society and the political class towards the sufferings of the poor.
• A possible reading of the message: poverty survives because of a combination of broken promises, blind acceptance of tradition and the vicious circle of moneylenders, middlemen, police, law-keepers, bureaucrats and politicians.

Self-check before the exam

• Can you explain why Saheb’s new job makes him less happy, not more?
• Can you name all the members of the vicious circle in Firozabad?
• Can you explain how the title fits both Saheb’s and Mukesh’s stories?

Figures of Speech in the Chapter

The writer uses figures of speech to turn plain facts about poverty into powerful writing. The textbook defines three of them:

• Hyperbole – speaking or writing in a way that makes something sound bigger, better or more exciting than it really is. Book’s example: “Garbage to them is gold.”
• Metaphor – a comparison between two things that are not very alike, in which a quality of one is carried over to the other, without using “like” or “as”. Book’s example: “The road was a ribbon of light.”
• Simile – a comparison of one thing with another using “like” or “as”. Book’s example: “As white as snow.”

Word Meanings

Quick Revision

• “Lost Spring” by Anees Jung is an extract from Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood; the title suggests a childhood lost to poverty.
• Part I, “Sometimes I Find a Rupee in the Garbage”, is about Saheb, a ragpicker of Seemapuri.
• Saheb’s family left their fields near Dhaka after storms and came to Delhi “looking for gold”.
• Seemapuri: about 10,000 ragpickers, squatters from Bangladesh since 1971, no sewage, drainage or running water, no identity but ration cards.
• Saheb’s tea-stall job gives him 800 rupees and meals but takes away his freedom: “Saheb is no longer his own master!”
• Part II, “I Want to Drive a Car”, is about Mukesh, from a bangle-making family of Firozabad, who wants to be a motor mechanic.
• Firozabad is the centre of glass-blowing; about 20,000 children work in its furnaces even though it is illegal, and many lose their eyesight.
• Mukesh’s father, grandmother and sister-in-law, along with Savita and the old couple, show poverty and tradition repeating across generations.
• The vicious circle: sahukars, middlemen, policemen, keepers of law, bureaucrats and politicians.
• Mukesh dreams only of cars, not planes, because few aeroplanes fly over Firozabad.