My Childhood

Thinking about the Text

I. Answer these questions in one or two sentences each.

Question 1. Where was Abdul Kalam’s house?

Answer: Abdul Kalam’s house was on the Mosque Street in the island town of Rameswaram formerly known as Madras state.

Question 2. What do you think Dinamani is the name of? Give a reason for your answer.

Answer: I think Dinamani is the name of a newspaper because Kalam says that when his brother-in-law would tell him stories of the Second World War, he would later try to find them in the ‘headlines’ of Dinamani. This implies that Dinamani would have been a newspaper.

Question 3. Who were Abdul Kalam’s school friends? What did they later become?

Answer: Ramanadha Sastry, Aravindan and Sivaprakasan were Abdul Kalam’s school friends.

Ramanadha Sastry became the priest of the Rameswaram temple in place of his father; Aravindan started the business of arranging transport for visiting pilgrims; and Sivaprakasan became a catering contractor for Southern Railways.

Question 4. How did Abdul Kalam earn his first wages?

Answer: Abdul Kalam earned his first wages by catching bundles of newspapers thrown out from the moving train on the Rameswaram Road during Second World War when the train services were disrupted and distributing them to the readers.

Question 5. Had he earned any money before that? In what way?

Answer: Yes, he had earned money before that too. He used to collect tamarind seeds and sell them to a provision shop on Mosque Street. By selling those tamarind seeds, he would earn a handsome amount of anna.

II. Answer each of these questions in a short paragraph (about 30 words)

Question 1. How does the author describe: (i) his father (ii) his mother (iii) himself?

Answer: i) The author describes his father as honest and self-disciplined. His father used to avoid inessential comforts and luxuries. The author further says that his father had neither much formal education nor much wealth, but he was very wise and generous.

ii) The author describes his mother as an ideal helpmate to his father. She used to feed a lot of outsiders everyday, whose number was more than all the family members put together.

iii) The author describes himself as a short boy with rather undistinguished looks, born to tall and handsome parents.

Question 2. What characteristics does he say he inherited from his parents?

Answer: He says that he inherited honesty and self-discipline from his father; and faith in goodness and deep kindness from his mother.

III. Discuss these questions in class with your teacher, and then write down your answers in two or three paragraphs each.

Question 1: “On the whole, the small society of Rameswaram was very rigid in terms of the segregation of different social groups,” says the author.

(i) Which social groups does he mention? Were these groups easily identifiable (for example, by the way they dressed)?

(ii) Were they aware only of their differences or did they also naturally share friendships and experiences? (Think of the bedtime stories in Kalam’s house; of who his friends were; and of what used to take place in the pond near his house.)

(iii) The author speaks both of people who were very aware of the differences among them and those who tried to bridge these differences. Can you identify such people in the text?

(iv) Narrate two incidents that show how differences can be created, and also how they can be resolved. How can people change their attitudes?

Answer:

(i) The social groups that he mentions are Hindus and Muslims. Yes, these groups were easily identifiable by their dressing style. For instance, Kalam used to wear a cap on his head which marked him as a Muslim. Ramanadha Sastry wore a sacred thread.

(ii) They were not only aware of their differences but they also naturally shared friendships and experiences. Kalam’s mother and grandmother would tell hi stories from the Ramayana and from the life of the Prophet as bedtime stories. All his friends belonged to orthodox Hindu families. During the annual ceremony of Sita Rama Kalyanam, his family members would arrange boats with a special platform on which the idols of the Lord were placed and transported from the temple to the marriage site situated in the middle of the pond called Rama Tirtha.

(iii) Such people who were very aware of the differences among them were the new school teacher and Sivasubramania Iyer’s wife but those who tried to bridge these differences were Sivasubramania Iyer and Lakshmana Sastry.

(iv) Two incidents that show how differences can be created, and also how they can be resolved are as follows:

The new school teacher created the difference by making Kalam sit on the back bench. This difference was bridged by Lakshmana Sastry when he asked him to either apologise or quit the school and the island. The teacher regretted his behaviour and got completely changed after that.

Kalam’s science teacher invited Kalam to his home for a meal. His wife was horrified at the idea of a Muslim boy being invited to her pure kitchen. She refused to serve him food but Sivasubramania Iyer served Kalam food with his own hands and sat down beside him to eat his meal.

The next time when Kalam was invited to his home, Sivasubramania Iyer’s wife served him food with her own hands inside the kitchen.

Question 2: (i) Why did Abdul Kalam want to leave Rameswaram?

(ii) What did his father say to this?

(iii) What do you think his words mean? Why do you think he spoke those words?

Answer: (i) Abdul Kalam wanted to leave Rameswaram because he wanted to study at the district headquarters in Ramanathapuram, and be on par with the highly educated people of the cities.

(ii) His father said that he knew that had to go away to grow. By giving an example of the seagull, he said that the bird seagull flies all alone in the sky and doesn’t have even a nest.

(iii) His words meant he knew that Kalam had to leave his house and go to Ramanathapuram to get good education. He spoke these words because he knew all about challenges and hardships of life, and so he decided to send him away from home so that he could develop very well in his life.