Class 5 English Chapter 10: Glass Bangles

A room full of small sounds

Stand at the door of Ravi's workshop and close your eyes. You will hear glass touching glass, again and again, in a light clinking. Under that, voices, because the workers talk while their hands keep moving. It is one of the busiest quiet rooms you will ever meet.

The town of glass

The workshop is in Firozabad, a town in Uttar Pradesh. People all over India know it for glass, and above all for glass bangles. Ask anybody in the town about bangles and they will have an uncle or a neighbour who makes them.

Ravi and his family

Ravi is an artisan. An artisan is a skilled worker who makes beautiful things by hand. His family has been shaping bangles for generations, and he learnt the skill from them. Every bangle he finishes carries a little of the town in it.

Glass must be softened first

Cold glass snaps. So the work begins at a furnace, a very hot oven, where the glass is heated until it can bend. Only then can a pair of steady hands curve it into a ring. Heat, sharp edges and glass that breaks easily are why this takes years of practice.

Colour, pattern, and then patience

After the shaping comes the colour, and then the pattern. The last step is the slowest. The bangles must be cooled gently, because glass that cools too fast will crack. Hurrying at the end ruins a whole tray.

Deep reds and soft pastels

Open his tray and you will see colours at both ends of the range. Deep reds and deep blues sit beside pale, soft shades called pastels. Over the colour go patterns, many of them the old designs of the region.

Diwali changes everything

Then comes Diwali, the festival of lights. Everybody wants new bangles, so the orders pile up. The workshop runs late into the night and starts again early. A month of the year carries much of the year's work.

Ananya comes home

Ravi's daughter Ananya finished her schooling and wanted to join the workshop. She had an eye for design. She could look at a tray of bangles and say at once which one your eye would go to first.

An idea, and a worry

Her idea was to bring modern shapes into the old patterns. Her father liked her keenness. He was also worried. Change a craft too much, he thought, and the thing that made it worth keeping may quietly disappear.

Old and new on one bangle

Ananya went ahead and tried. She drew fine flowers and neat geometric shapes, and set them beside the traditional work. Ravi looked at the result for a long time. Then he agreed, and together they planned a special collection for Diwali.

The night it paid off

On Diwali night the streets glittered with lamps. Women and girls walked past the shop wearing the new bangles, and father and daughter watched with pride. The orders kept coming after the festival too.

One workshop, a whole town

The good news did not stop at their door. More orders meant more work for other artisans nearby. People were needed to pack the bangles, and to carry them to other cities. One good idea had widened into many jobs.

Scenario:

Nisha says Ananya changed her family's trade. Imran says she kept it, and changed only the designs. Their teacher asks how bangles are made at all. The class learns that glass must be heated until it is soft enough to shape. That takes a furnace, and a furnace takes fuel all day. The children work one thing out. A worker who makes forty bangles an hour makes three hundred and twenty in an eight hour day. Then Nisha asks a harder question. What does a hot furnace do to the people beside it? Imran says the new designs matter, but the working conditions matter more.

Analysis:

The trade and the designs are two different things, and so is the heat. A count of bangles per hour says nothing about the hours themselves.

Activity:

Find out about one craft made near your home. Write three sentences about who makes it and what they need in order to make it.

Firozabad is in Uttar Pradesh and its glass work is known across the country.

Cooling glass too quickly cracks it, so bangles are brought down in heat slowly.

How a bangle is made — Heat, Shape, Colour, Cool — Soften the glass in the furnace. Shape the ring. Add colour and pattern. Cool it slowly so it does not crack.

The two designers — Father keeps, daughter adds — Ravi guards the old patterns. Ananya brings flowers and shapes. The collection holds both together.

A line with nothing to hold it up

Read this aloud: the tray was full of red green and blue bangles did you count them. Where do you stop? Is the second half a question? Two capital letters, two marks and one comma would fix the whole thing. Punctuation is what holds a sentence upright.

Where a capital letter belongs

Every sentence opens with one. So does the name of a person: Ravi, Ananya, Meera. So does the word I, wherever it appears. Miss any of these and a reader notices at once.

Capitals for places and days

Names of towns and states take a capital too: Firozabad, Uttar Pradesh. So do festivals, such as Diwali or Pongal. So do days and months: Monday, October. Ordinary words such as town, festival and month do not.

Two ways to close a sentence

A telling sentence closes with a full stop. An asking sentence closes with a question mark. The mark is not decoration. It tells your reader whether you were telling or asking.

The comma in a list

When you list things, a comma stands between them. We bought bangles, ribbons, a lamp and two candles. Notice the last pair. They are joined by and, so no comma is needed there.

A comma after an opening phrase

A comma also follows a phrase that opens a sentence. On the morning of the festival, the shop opened early. The comma marks the short breath a reader takes before the main part arrives.

Two things in the past

Now for a different tool. Very often two things both happened in the past, and one of them happened first. English has a neat way of showing which.

The word had does the job

Put had in front of the action that came first. The workers had packed the trays when the truck arrived. Packing came first. The arriving came second, and it stays in the ordinary past.

Order in the sentence does not decide it

Here is the trap. When the bell rang, Asha had already left. Ringing is named first, but leaving happened first. Meaning decides, never position. Look for had.

Two shapes to recognise

Both of these shapes are common. He had finished his homework when the lights went out. When the lights went out, he had finished his homework. They mean exactly the same thing.

Check the word after had

After had, the verb takes its own special form. Had gone, not had went. Had eaten, not had ate. Had seen, not had saw. These three catch people out again and again.

Why the two tools go together

Punctuation shows a reader where to pause. The word had shows a reader the order of events. Both of them do the same job, in the end. They keep a reader from having to guess.

Scenario:

Ananya writes an order note for the Diwali bangles. Her first note carries no punctuation at all. red bangles green bangles and gold ones send fifty of each. The shopkeeper cannot tell how many colours are wanted. She writes it again. Red bangles, green bangles and gold ones: send fifty of each. Now the commas separate the three colours cleanly. She adds one more line to the note. When the cart arrived, the packers had already left. The word had shows which action came first. Her father reads it and understands at once. Fifty of each colour makes one hundred and fifty bangles in all.

Analysis:

Commas separate the list and had orders the events. Between them the note answers what, how many and in what order.

Activity:

Write an order note for five things you need. Use commas to separate them, and write one sentence using had.

Title:

Mend a page with no marks

What You Notice:

Your ear puts most of the marks back in the right places, but commas in a list are the ones most often missed.

The oldest writing had no gaps between words and no marks at all.

A comma in the wrong place can change who is being spoken to in a sentence.

Where capitals go — Start, names, places, days — The start of a sentence, the names of people, the names of places and festivals, and the days and months.

Which action first — Had happened before — Whichever action carries had is the one that had already happened when the other took place.

Three words for one word

Say bangle. Now say the first three words that arrive. Glass, colour, festival, perhaps. Somebody else would say wrist, gift, sound. Neither list is wrong. A word carries a small crowd of other words with it, and pulling them out is a useful habit.

What a word web is for

Draw the word in the middle and the three around it. That is a word web. It helps in two ways. It shows you what you already know, and it hands you words to use when you write about that thing later.

Building your own

Try it with market, river and grandmother. Do not stop to judge your answers. Anything genuinely linked is allowed. Compare your web with a friend's afterwards, because the differences are the interesting part.

Lines that trip the tongue

Now for something noisier. Six slim silver bangles slipped. Brave Bina baked brown bread. A line packed with one sound is a tongue twister, and your mouth has to work hard to get through it.

How to beat a twister

Do not start fast. Say it slowly and cleanly three times. Then a little quicker. Then quicker still. The moment it goes wrong, slow down again. Speed without clearness is no use at all.

Listening to a set of steps

Somebody is about to read you a process. This is different from listening to a story. What you must catch is the order. Miss one step and the whole thing will not work.

A process to try

Here is one. Rani makes clay lamps. She kneads the clay until it is smooth. She shapes a small bowl on her wheel. The bowl is dried in the shade, never in the sun. Then it is baked in the kiln. Last, she paints the rim.

The signal words

Did you notice the little words? First, then, after that, last. Those are signal words, and in a spoken process they carry the order for you. Listen for them the way you would listen for your own name.

Putting the steps back in order

Given a jumbled list afterwards, look for what depends on what. Clay must be kneaded before it can be shaped. A lamp must be dry before it is baked. Each step leans on the one before it.

Writing about a festival

A festival paragraph is easy once you have a frame. Name the special food. Name who came. Say how your family got ready. Then finish with one thing you will remember. Four sentences make a good paragraph.

Crafts and their homes

Many crafts belong to one place. Pattachitra painting comes from Odisha. Chikankari embroidery comes from Lucknow. Channapatna in Karnataka makes wooden toys. Kantha stitching comes from West Bengal. Glass bangles, as we know, come from Firozabad.

Why the three go together

You speak to find out about a craft. You listen carefully to how it is done. Then you write it down, so that somebody who has never been there can still follow it.

Scenario:

In a toy making town in Karnataka, forty families turn and colour wooden toys. Most of their selling happens in two months of the year. For the rest of the year, money is short, and many borrowed at high rates to buy wood. Three years ago a women's group opened savings accounts at a nearby bank. Each member put away fifty rupees a week in the busy season. The bank added a little interest every year. By the second season, twenty one families could buy their own wood without borrowing. A Class 5 teacher helped the group with the forms. Her pupils made a chart showing what fifty rupees a week becomes in a year, and pinned it up in the workshop.

Analysis:

Speaking to a bank, listening to its rules and writing the numbers down changed how a whole craft cluster paid for its materials.

Activity:

Find out from an adult what interest a savings account pays. Make a chart showing what ten rupees a week would become in one year.

Channapatna in Karnataka is known for wooden toys coloured with plant dyes.

Kantha embroidery of West Bengal was first made by stitching old saris together.

The festival paragraph — Food, People, Getting ready, Memory — Name the food, name who came, say how you prepared, and finish with one thing you will remember.

Saying a twister — Slow, clear, then quick — Say it slowly and cleanly three times. Only after that should you try for speed.