Lost Spring — Class 12 MCQs with Answers

Lost Spring — important questions & MCQs with answers (Class 12 English)

2 solved questions from this chapter's difficulty levels, each with its answer and explanation. Tap an option to check yourself.

0 of 2 answered

1. Q1 of 2Medium

   What does Mukesh want to become?

   AA pilotBA bangle maker like his fatherCA tea-stall ownerDA motor mechanic
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   Answer: A motor mechanic

   Explanation: 'I want to be a motor mechanic,' he repeats. He will go to a garage and learn, walking there if he must.

2. Q2 of 2Medium

   Why can the young men not organise into a cooperative?

   AThey earn too much alreadyBThey lack the moneyCThey are forbidden by their casteDThey fear being hauled up by the police, beaten and jailed — and there is no leader among them
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   Answer: They fear being hauled up by the police, beaten and jailed — and there is no leader among them

   Explanation: 'There is no leader among them, no one who could help them see things differently. Their fathers are as tired as they are.'

Lost Spring notes: key concepts (Class 12 English)

An excerpt from Anees Jung's 'Lost Spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood', in two parts. The first follows Saheb, a ragpicker in Seemapuri; the second follows Mukesh, born into Firozabad's bangle-making caste. Both show how poverty and tradition together steal a childhood — and how one boy still dares to want something else.

Anees Jung

Born in Rourkela in 1944, she spent her childhood and adolescence in Hyderabad and was educated there and in the United States. An editor and columnist, she analyses 'the grinding poverty and traditions which condemn these children to a life of exploitation'.

Saheb-e-Alam

His name means 'lord of the universe' — which he does not know, and 'would have a hard time believing'. He roams with 'an army of barefoot boys who appear like the morning birds and disappear at noon'.

Why they left Dhaka

'There were many storms that swept away their fields and homes.' They came to the big city 'looking for gold' in the garbage.

The barefoot question

One boy says his mother 'did not bring them down from the shelf'; another wears mismatched shoes; a third has never owned a pair. The author doubts the standard explanation: 'It is not lack of money but a tradition to stay barefoot' may be 'only an excuse to explain away a perpetual state of poverty'.

Seemapuri

'On the periphery of Delhi yet miles away from it, metaphorically'. Squatters who came from Bangladesh in 1971 — 10,000 ragpickers in mud structures with tin and tarpaulin roofs, 'devoid of sewage, drainage or running water', living thirty years without permits but with ration cards.

Garbage as gold

'Garbage to them is gold. It is their daily bread, a roof over their heads.' For the children it is 'wrapped in wonder'; for the elders it is 'a means of survival'.

Saheb at the tea stall

Paid 800 rupees and all his meals. But 'his face has lost the carefree look'. The plastic bag was his; the steel canister belongs to the shop owner. 'Saheb is no longer his own master!'

Mukesh

'Mukesh insists on being his own master.' He announces, 'I will be a motor mechanic', and will walk the long way to the garage to learn.

Firozabad

Famous for bangles and the centre of India's glass-blowing industry, where families 'have spent generations working around furnaces, welding glass'. 20,000 children work illegally in 'dingy cells without air and light'.

The hazards

Working by flickering oil lamps in dark hutments, their eyes 'more adjusted to the dark than to the light outside', they 'often end up losing their eyesight before they become adults'. Mukesh's grandfather went blind from the dust of polishing glass.

Karam and caste

'It is his karam, his destiny,' says Mukesh's grandmother. 'Can a god-given lineage ever be broken?' The old bangle maker says, 'I know nothing except bangles. All I have done is make a house for the family to live in.'

The two vicious circles

One of the family caught in poverty and the stigma of caste; the other of 'the sahukars, the middlemen, the policemen, the keepers of law, the bureaucrats and the politicians'. Together 'they have imposed the baggage on the child that he cannot put down.'