My Mother at Sixty-Six
1. What did the poet realise looking at her mother in the car?
A. When the poet saw her mother’s face ashen like that of a corpse in the car she realised with pain that her mother has grown old and would die soon.

2.How was the scene outside the moving car different from the inside one?
A. Inside the car the scene was inert and lifeless. The poet’s old mother has dozed off. With her mouth slightly opened she was looking like a corpse. In contrast the scene outside was full of life and energy with trees sprinting and children spilling out of their homes.

3.How does the poet describe her mother?
A. The poet compares her sixty-six years old mother with late winter’s moon. In her old age she has become pale, wan and dim like the late winter’s moon whose journey of life will be over soon.

4. What is the old familiar ache the poet felt?
A. The childhood fear and pain about the aging and inevitability of death gripped the poet seeing her mother’s failing health. She realised soon her mother would die and she would be separated from her forever

An Elementary Classroom In a Slum
1.How do the children of the elementary school in a slum look?
A. They look grim. Their faces are pale and lifeless. The torn hair around their pale faces look like rootless weeds. They look ill, weak, exhausted and depressed due to malnutrition. Their eyes shine like the rat’s eyes in their diseased body.


2.How has the poet expressed his despair and hope?
A. The poet has expressed his despair through the paper-thin boy who has inherited his father’s gnarling disease and his hope through the unnoted boy who sits on the last seat and dreams of squirrel’s game out side the class room in the tree- trunk.


3. Why don’t the maps and pictures have any relevance to the children of the slum?
A. The maps and pictures that decorate the classroom walls belong to the world of rich. There is a big gap between the world in which the slum children live and the world of the rich. The beautiful wall hangings cannot cheer them as they are diseased and suffer from malnutrition and their future full of uncertainties.

4.What does the poet want for the children of the slum?
A. The poet does not want the children to be cramped in classrooms with pictures donated by the rich that have no relevance to their living; rather they should be allowed to explore the world, get strength from the Sun and fight the social injustice.

Keeping Quiet
1.Why does the poet want us to keep quiet?
A. The poet wants us to keep quiet to feel the strangeness of being quiet. When we all will keep quiet it will be an exotic moment which will allow us to establish communion with our fellow beings and all other living beings at spiritual level.

2. Does the poet advocate total inactivity and death by suggesting being quiet?
A. No, the poet does not advocate it. He wants no truck with death. In fact he wants to live life full bloodedly. But by advocating quietness he wants mixing of physical and spiritual aspect of life.

3.Why does not the poet want us to speak in any language?
A. The poet wants us not to speak in any language to introspect and know what we are about- know the meaning of our existence. He wants every body to know his spirit and have spiritual contact with others for sometime for which no language is required.

Thing of Beauty
1. How is a thing of beauty a joy forever?
A. A thing of beauty is a joy forever as its loveliness increases through recollection and contemplation. It is a perennial source of pleasure that ensures good health and quiet breathing; that brings relief in our painful existence.

2.What makes human beings love life in spite of troubles and sufferings?
A. In spite of troubles and sufferings human beings love life because there are some beautiful things that move away the gloom from the depressed minds. The beautiful things in nature like the moon, the sun, the trees, the ferns and the daffodils bring happiness and reduce human’s sufferings.

3.What is lovelier than the lovely tales heard by us?
A. Our earth which is the source of all beauty; the fountain of immortal drink from heaven is lovelier than all lovely tales heard by us.

4. Why is grandeur associated with mighty dead?
A. The sad things become a source of beauty and pleasure when they assume the status of art. The poet says that the contemplation of the reminiscences of the mighty person who are dead gives us same pleasure as we experience in contemplating beautiful things of nature.

5.What becomes of all lovely tales we have heard or read?
A. All lovely tales that we have heard or read become a source of pleasure. They become an endless fountain of nectar and give us heavenly pleasure.

Roadside Stand
1.Why did the rural people set up the roadside stand? Was it successful? Give reasons.
A. The rural people set up the roadside stand in front of their old house at the edge of the road to sell various country produce to have some income. But their effort remained unsuccessful as no motorist from the city bothered to stop and buy their things.

2.How did the village folk mar the landscape?
A. They marred the landscape by putting their pathetically pliable stand at the edge of the road, by putting signboards with words and letters written wrongly.

3.What do they keep for sale in their shed?
A. They keep for sale wild berries in wooden measurements and crooked necked golden squash with silver warts on their external side.

4.Why do some motorist stop at the stand?
A. Some motorists stop at the roadside stand to inquire about the produce; some to ask the route; some for taking a back turn; some even stop to inquire if they would sell gas. But unfortunately no one would purchase the farm produce.

5.What would happen to the village folks if they were made live near to the theatre?
A. In the name of their economic upliftment if theatre and multiplexes are opened near their house; they will only lose their sleep; but the real beneficiary would be the owner of the theatres and multiplexes.

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
1.Describe Aunt Jennifer’s tigers. How are they different from her?
A. Aunt Jennifer’s embroidered tigers prance across a green screen. They are fearless. They are not afraid of the man beneath the tree. They move elegantly with brave style and confidence which is opposite to Aunt Jennifer’s character who is meek and finds difficult to pull the ivory needle from the wool and on whom the responsibility of married life weighs heavily.

2.Explain ‘massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band’.
A. Aunt Jennifer is tied down by the constraints of married life. The wedding band symbolizes the ordeals of married life.

3.Why do you think Aunt made the tigers that were proud and unafraid?
A. Aunt Jennifer wanted to be chivalric like the tigers; but was stifled by the institution of marriage. To give an expression of freedom to her subdued self she embroidered the prancing tigers that were proud and unafraid.