Class 12 English Book 1 Chapter 2 Lost Spring Important Questions with Answers

Q. What does the title ‘Lost Spring’ mean?

Answer: The book’s subtitle, ‘Stories of Stolen Childhood’, points to the childhood of these children (‘spring’, on one reading) being lost to poverty and tradition.

Q. What is Saheb’s name, and what does it mean?

Answer: His name is Saheb-e-Alam, which means “lord of the universe”; he does not know what it means.

Q. Where did Saheb’s family live before coming to Delhi?

Answer: They lived amid the green fields near Dhaka, in Bangladesh, before storms swept away their fields and homes.

Q. What is Mukesh’s ambition?

Answer: Mukesh wants to be a motor mechanic and learn to drive a car, instead of becoming a bangle maker like his family.

Q. Name the two parts (sketches) that make up the chapter Lost Spring.

Answer: “Sometimes I Find a Rupee in the Garbage” (about Saheb) and “I Want to Drive a Car” (about Mukesh).

Q. What does the word ‘suhaag’ mean in the context of this chapter?

Answer: It refers to the auspiciousness of marriage that glass bangles symbolise for an Indian woman.

Q. Why does Saheb leave his home and come to Delhi?

Answer: Many storms swept away the fields and homes of Saheb’s family near Dhaka. So they left, “looking for gold” in the big city where he now lives; the family is among the squatters of Seemapuri, on the periphery of Delhi.

Q. What does the author mean when she says Saheb “is no longer his own master” at the tea stall?

Answer: As a ragpicker, Saheb carried a plastic bag that “was his”, “so lightly over his shoulder”. At the tea stall he is paid 800 rupees and all his meals, but the steel canister “belongs to the man who owns the tea shop” and “seems heavier”. He now works for someone else, and his face “has lost the carefree look”.

Q. What explanations does the chapter give for why so many children in India go barefoot?

Answer: One boy says his mother did not bring his chappals down from the shelf; another says he would throw off his shoes even if given some; a third simply wants shoes and has never owned any. One general explanation offered is that going barefoot is “a tradition,” not a lack of money, though the author doubts this and wonders if it is only an excuse for a “perpetual state of poverty.”

Q. What are the living conditions in Seemapuri?

Answer: Seemapuri has structures of mud with roofs of tin and tarpaulin. It has no sewage, no drainage and no running water. About 10,000 ragpickers have lived here for more than thirty years without any identity or permits, though ration cards let them buy grain and get their names on voters’ lists.

Q. Why does Mukesh’s family fail to improve their circumstances despite years of hard work?

Answer: Mukesh’s father worked long years first as a tailor and then as a bangle maker, yet he could not renovate the house or send his two sons to school. All he had to pass on was the only skill he knew, bangle making, so the cycle of poverty repeats with each generation.

Q. Why do the young bangle makers of Firozabad not organise themselves into a cooperative?

Answer: When asked, they say that if they tried to organise, they would be the ones “hauled up by the police, beaten and dragged to jail for doing something illegal.” There is no leader among them to guide them, and “Their fathers are as tired as they are.”

Q. What does the steel canister versus the plastic bag symbolise in Saheb’s story?

Answer: The plastic bag was Saheb’s own, carried “so lightly” over his shoulder; one reading is that it stands for his freedom as a ragpicker. The steel canister belongs to the tea-stall owner and “seems heavier”; it can be read as standing for the loss of that freedom now that Saheb works for someone else’s wage. The book’s own line: “Saheb is no longer his own master!”

Q. What does Mukesh’s grandmother’s statement “Can a god-given lineage ever be broken?” reveal about the family?

Answer: It reveals how deeply the family has come to accept poverty and their caste-based trade as unchangeable fate rather than as an injustice that could be fixed. This resigned attitude, passed down through generations, is one of the forces that keeps them trapped.

Q. Is Saheb happy working at the tea stall? Explain with reference to the chapter.

Answer: No, Saheb is not truly happy, even though the tea-stall job pays him a fixed wage of ₹800 and all his meals. As a ragpicker, Saheb worked for himself; the plastic bag he carried was his own, and he would carry it “so lightly over his shoulder”. At the tea stall, he carries a steel canister that belongs to the shop owner, and the chapter says this canister “seems heavier” than the bag ever was; one reading is that this is not about actual weight but a loss of independence. His face, the author notices, “has lost the carefree look.” The chapter’s own conclusion is blunt: “Saheb is no longer his own master!” So while the job may look like an improvement on paper, one reading is that it has cost Saheb the freedom he had as a ragpicker.

Q. Mention the hazards of working in the glass bangle industry of Firozabad.

Answer: Workers in Firozabad’s glass bangle industry face serious hazards. Children work “in the glass furnaces with high temperatures, in dingy cells without air and light”. Workers can go blind from the dust created while polishing bangle glass; Mukesh’s grandmother’s husband is one example. Children like Mukesh work here too, though it is illegal for children like him to work in the glass furnaces; the law, “if enforced”, could get “all those 20,000 children out of the hot furnaces”, where they slog their daylight hours, “often losing the brightness of their eyes”. In dark hutments lit by flickering oil lamps, their eyes are “more adjusted to the dark than to the light outside”, so “they often end up losing their eyesight before they become adults”. On top of the physical dangers, the workers are economically trapped: despite years of hard labour, Mukesh’s father has failed to renovate the house or send his sons to school, and the young men fear they would be “hauled up by the police” if they organised.

Q. What forces conspire to keep the workers in the bangle industry of Firozabad in poverty?

Answer: Several forces work together, forming what the chapter calls a “vicious circle”, to keep Firozabad’s bangle makers poor. First, the sahukars and middlemen are part of the vicious circle that traps the workers; the young men “have fallen into the vicious circle of middlemen who trapped their fathers and forefathers”. Second, the policemen and the keepers of law are part of the same circle: if the young men formed a cooperative, they say, they would be “hauled up by the police, beaten and dragged to jail for doing something illegal”. Third, the bureaucrats and politicians are named in the same circle; the chapter does not say what they do. Finally, tradition and caste play their part: the grandmother says, “It is his karam, his destiny”, and “Born in the caste of bangle makers, they have seen nothing but bangles”. With no leader among them, “no one who could help them see things differently”, the workers of Firozabad see no way out.

Q. Describe Mukesh’s family as the author finds it during her visit.

Answer: When Mukesh takes the author home through lanes choked with garbage, past crumbling, windowless homes, she finds a family caught entirely inside the bangle trade. His father has worked for years, first as a tailor and then as a bangle maker, but has failed to renovate the house or educate his two sons. His grandmother says, “It is his karam, his destiny,” having watched her own husband go blind from the dust of polishing bangle glass. Mukesh’s sister-in-law, the wife of his elder brother, has already begun to command respect as the bahu, in charge of three men, her husband, Mukesh and their father, and must veil her face before the older man of the house by custom. Around them, other workers live the same way: Savita, a young girl in a drab pink dress, sits beside an elderly woman soldering pieces of glass, and the author wonders whether she knows the sanctity of the bangles she helps make. The family’s whole world, in short, is built around one trade that has held the generations before Mukesh.

Q. How does the chapter use the literary devices of hyperbole, metaphor and simile to strengthen its message?

Answer: The chapter transforms real events of poverty into a powerful piece of writing by using hyperbole, metaphor and simile throughout. Hyperbole appears in lines like “garbage to them is gold” and rag-picking having “acquired the proportions of a fine art,” which exaggerate to stress how precious even scrap becomes to the very poor. Metaphors run through the whole chapter: “web of poverty,” “scrounging for gold,” and Seemapuri being “metaphorically” miles from Delhi all describe abstract ideas, exploitation, and distance in opportunity, in vivid physical terms. Similes appear too, as when Savita’s hands move “mechanically like the tongs of a machine,” comparing her practised labour to something inhuman and repetitive. Together, these devices do not decorate the facts, they sharpen the reader’s sense of how deeply and permanently poverty and tradition have trapped these children.

Q. “Promises made to poor children are rarely kept.” Discuss with reference to the chapter.

Answer: This statement is true and is shown clearly through Saheb’s story. The author half-jokingly promises Saheb, “If I start a school, will you come?” and he agrees, delighted. Days later, he comes running to ask if the school is ready, and she has to admit, embarrassed, that “it takes longer to build a school.” The chapter states that “promises like mine abound in every corner of his bleak world,” meaning such promises are common in his bleak world; her own was “a promise that was not meant”. This happens partly because the people making the promises, like the author herself, do not always mean them seriously, and partly because real change (like building an actual school) needs resources and effort that never arrive for children like Saheb. The result is that children like Saheb grow up learning not to expect promises to be kept, which is its own quiet tragedy.

Q. What could be some of the reasons for the migration of people from villages to cities, based on the chapter?

Answer: The chapter suggests, through Saheb’s story, that migration often happens because of the collapse of rural livelihoods. Saheb’s family left their fields near Dhaka after storms swept away their fields and homes, leaving them with no way to survive there. They came to the city “looking for gold,” meaning any way to earn a living, even something as uncertain as rag-picking. For Saheb’s family, migration followed storms that swept away their fields and homes; the chapter does not generalise this to all migration. Once in the city, migrants like Saheb’s family end up in settlements like Seemapuri, “without an identity, without permits”, where survival “means rag-picking”, which suggests the city does not necessarily offer them the better life they hoped for.

Q. Compare the dreams and disappointments of Saheb and Mukesh.

Answer: Both boys dream of a life different from the one poverty has given them, but their paths diverge in an important way. Saheb, early in the chapter, is hopeful: he believes the author’s promise of a school, and later he watches tennis at the club fence, allowing himself to imagine, however briefly, being part of a different world. But by the end of Part I, his hope has narrowed into a job, and even that job costs him his freedom, “Saheb is no longer his own master!” Mukesh, by contrast, actively refuses his family’s fate: he insists on becoming a motor mechanic and is even willing to walk a long way to the garage to learn. Yet his dream, too, is limited by his surroundings. He does not dream of flying a plane: “He is content to dream of cars that he sees hurtling down the streets of his town. Few airplanes fly over Firozabad.” One reading is that both boys’ dreams are shaped, and shrunk, by the same forces of poverty.

Q. Write a detailed character sketch of Saheb, based on the chapter.

Answer: Saheb is introduced as a ragpicker boy the author meets every morning, scrounging in the garbage dumps of her neighbourhood. His name, Saheb-e-Alam, means “lord of the universe,” which is “directly in contrast to what Saheb is in reality”: a boy with little and little power. Saheb’s family left their fields near Dhaka after storms swept them away, coming to Delhi “looking for gold,” and eventually settling as squatters in Seemapuri. Through the chapter, Saheb shows both hope and quiet endurance. He is delighted by the author’s half-joking promise of a school and comes running back days later to ask if it is ready, showing how easily hope survives even in a bleak world, and how easily it is disappointed. He and his friends go barefoot, an army of boys who “appear like the morning birds” each day; whether from tradition or poverty, this detail marks how little they have. Saheb finds a strange kind of wonder in the garbage, sometimes discovering a rupee or even a ten-rupee note, and later stands outside a club fence, wearing discarded tennis shoes with a hole in one of them, watching a game of tennis that is “out of his reach”. By the end of the chapter, Saheb takes up steady work at a tea stall for ₹800 and all his meals, but the change is not the happy ending it appears to be: the heavy steel canister he now carries belongs to his employer, not to him, unlike the light plastic bag of his ragpicking days. The chapter’s closing judgement on him, “Saheb is no longer his own master,” sums up his character arc: a boy who moves from having nothing but freedom, to having a wage but no freedom at all.

Q. Write a detailed character sketch of Mukesh, based on the chapter.

Answer: Mukesh belongs to a family of bangle makers in Firozabad who have worked around glass furnaces for generations, yet he refuses to accept this as his own fate. Unlike his father, who could teach his sons only “the art of making bangles,” Mukesh insists, “I will be a motor mechanic,” and says he will learn to drive a car, looking straight into the author’s eyes as he says it, a small but telling sign of quiet self-belief. His dream “looms like a mirage” against the dust of Firozabad’s streets, meaning it feels almost unreachable, yet he does not let that stop him from stating it plainly. Mukesh proudly takes the author to his home, still being rebuilt, showing a mixture of hope and ordinary family pride even amid poverty. Inside, his family embodies everything he wants to escape: a father who failed, despite years of labour, to renovate the house or educate his sons; a grandmother who says, “It is his karam, his destiny”; and a sister-in-law bound by custom to veil her face before male elders. Around them, Savita solders pieces of glass beside an elderly woman; the author wonders whether she knows the sanctity of the bangles. Yet Mukesh’s daring has limits too. When asked if he also dreams of flying a plane, he falls silent, staring at the ground, an embarrassment that “has not yet turned into regret.” “He is content to dream of cars that he sees hurtling down the streets of his town. Few airplanes fly over Firozabad.” Mukesh, then, can be read as a character of real but bounded courage: brave enough to reject his family’s trade, but still shaped by how little of the wider world Firozabad has ever shown him.

Q. “Together they have imposed the baggage on the child that he cannot put down.” Explain this statement with reference to the chapter, and discuss how it applies to both Saheb and Mukesh.

Answer: This line refers to the combined weight of family poverty, caste tradition, and a system of sahukars, middlemen, policemen, keepers of law, bureaucrats and politicians that the chapter calls a vicious circle, all of which the chapter says work together to trap a child in poverty before he is even aware of it. The chapter states the child “accepts it as naturally as his father,” meaning the burden is passed on so early and so completely that questioning it, “to dare,” is not even part of growing up. In Mukesh’s case, this baggage is very direct: his family’s caste-based trade, his grandmother’s belief that their “lineage” cannot be broken, and the young men’s fear that the police would jail them if they organised, all combine to keep every generation of bangle makers exactly where the last one was. Mukesh’s small act of “daring”, wanting to be a motor mechanic instead, is presented as rare: “daring is not part of his growing up”, and the author is “cheered” when she senses “a flash of it in Mukesh”. In Saheb’s case, the baggage takes a different shape: instead of an inherited trade, it is the trap of needing to survive at all costs. His family’s displacement from Dhaka, the life in Seemapuri “without an identity, without permits”, and finally the loss of his freedom at the tea stall are all forms of the same baggage, forces outside his control that steadily narrow his choices. One reading of both stories is that individual effort or dreaming, however admirable, cannot on its own lift a child out of the vicious circle around him.

Q. Discuss the theme and sub-theme of the chapter Lost Spring, as stated in the book’s own summary of the chapter, and show how both parts of the chapter support them.

Answer: The chapter’s own “About the Unit” note names its theme as “the plight of street children forced into labour early in life and denied the opportunity of schooling,” and its sub-theme as “the callousness of society and the political class to the sufferings of the poor.” Both sketches in the chapter support these ideas directly. In Part I, Saheb does not get, in the chapter, the schooling the author half-jokingly promises him; instead, he ends up doing physical labour, first as a ragpicker and then at a tea stall, forced by his family’s poverty into work rather than a classroom. The “callousness of society” appears in how easily the promise of a school is made and forgotten, and in a system that gives Seemapuri’s residents ration cards but no real dignity, sewage, or security. In Part II, Mukesh and thousands of other children in Firozabad work in dangerous glass furnaces instead of attending school, exactly the “labour early in life” the theme names, and this illegal labour, which the chapter says would end “if enforced”, is a clear example of the sub-theme, a political and administrative system that looks away from the suffering it could stop. Together, the two sketches show the same theme playing out in two different cities and two different trades.