Class 6 English Chapter 13: Hamara Bharat — Incredible India!

A hall, and a question

A class is sitting in a big hall. Their teacher asks whether they are ready to meet friends from all over the country, and the answer comes back loudly. Yes, says the whole hall at once.

What they are there for

She asks which programme has brought them together. The whole class answers at once: Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat. They already know why they are there.

Renu explains it

Many hands go up, and the teacher picks Renu. She says it is about knowing that everybody belongs to one nation, and that this is the bond they share. She adds that unity in diversity is what makes the country wonderful, and those four words are the whole chapter in advance. She adds that unity in diversity is what makes the country so wonderful. Those four words are the whole chapter in advance.

The video begins

Bala points at the screen. It fills with little windows, and each one holds a smiling child with something to share. Four children, and four parts of the country.

The first greeting

Pranam, says Aakansha, who is from Uttarakhand. She has come to talk about Aipan, a folk art of her state. Her greeting is the first of four, and each is different.

What Aipan is

It is drawn in white rice flour paste on walls coloured brick-red with geru, which is a red clay. It goes on floors, on puja room walls and outside the main door. The women of the family make it, and the designs are mathematical as well as beautiful, drawn from tradition and from watching the natural world. The women of the family do. The designs are mathematical as well as beautiful, and they come from tradition and from watching the natural world.

The second greeting

Suprabhat, says Priyaranjan of Odisha. His tribe practises a metal craft called Dhokra, which is four thousand years old. That is the oldest thing in the chapter.

How Dhokra is made

A clay figure is dried and coated in wax, and the fine details are carved into the wax. Clay goes over the whole thing, and it is put in the fire. Four stages, and the important one is still to come.

The clever part

The wax melts and runs out through small openings. Melted brass is poured into the space it leaves, so the metal takes the shape the wax had. The wax is destroyed, and only its shape survives.

The third greeting

Suprabhaatam, says Chitra of Kerala, and her craft uses coconut shells. A brown shell is cleaned inside and out, then smoothed with sandpaper or a machine. Two stages before any shaping begins.

Finishing a shell

It is shaped, given a base so it will stand steady, and polished with wood polish until it shines. A round shell would roll without that base. Bowls and even jewellery are made this way.

And it wastes nothing

Chitra calls it a biodegradable craft, meaning it will not harm the environment. She is the only one of the four to say so. Nobody else claims anything about the environment.

The fourth greeting

Subhodayam, says Balamurali of Andhra Pradesh. His village, Kondapalli, has been making toys for four hundred years. Old, and not nearly as old as Dhokra.

How a toy is built

Soft wood comes from the nearby hills, and each part is carved separately. The pieces are joined with makku, which is sawdust and tamarind seed powder pounded together. Two things that might otherwise be thrown away.

Then colour

Details are added, and the toys are painted with oil and water colours, vegetable dyes or enamel. The subjects are folk stories, animals, birds, bullock carts and village life. Nothing grand, and nothing from anywhere else.

What the four have in common

Not the material, and not the age. Every one of them is a process explained in order, and every one begins with a greeting in a different language. That is the chapter's argument, made without argument.

Scenario:

A teacher asks the class to explain how a Dhokra figure is made. Vikas writes that a wax figure is carved with fine details. He says it is then covered in clay and fired. He ends by saying the finished figure is taken out and polished. Nandini writes that the wax is carved, covered in clay and fired. She says the wax then melts and runs out through small openings. She adds that brass is poured into the empty space before the outer clay is broken away. The teacher says Vikas has every stage right except one, and that the missing stage is the only reason the craft works.

Analysis:

One answer has all the actions and no explanation. The other has the moment where the material changes.

Activity:

Write out any process you know in five steps, then underline the one step that cannot be left out without the whole thing failing.

Title:

A craft from your own place

What You Notice:

Your stages will not resemble any of the four in the chapter, and yet the shape of your page will resemble all of them exactly. That is the point the chapter is making. The greeting at the top is the part worth keeping, because it is the only line on your page that could not have come from anybody else's district.

Dhokra is about four thousand years old, and the Kondapalli toys about four hundred, so the two crafts are separated by roughly thirty-six centuries.

Geru is a red clay used as a colour, and it is what gives the Aipan walls their brick-red background.

Makku, the paste that holds a Kondapalli toy together, is made from tamarind seed powder and sawdust.

The four children and their crafts — AIPAN - DHOKRA - COCONUT - KONDAPALLI — Uttarakhand, Odisha, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh. A painting, a metal, a shell and a wooden toy.

What the greetings do — Four hellos, one hall — The unity in diversity is demonstrated in the first word of each speech, not argued for.

The small words that carry you

Read Priyaranjan's account of Dhokra again and watch the words at the start of his sentences. To begin. Then. After that. Next. Finally. Five words, and none of them a fact.

What they are doing

Not one of them adds a fact. They tell you where you are in the sequence, and that is a job of its own. It is the only job they have.

Why they matter so much

Take them out and the steps are still all there, in the right order. But nothing marks where one ends and the next begins, and following it becomes hard work. The reader has to do the sorting you should have done.

All four children use them

Chitra uses first, after that, then and at last. Balamurali uses after that, then, next and finally. They are describing processes, and this is what a process needs. Every one of them reached for the same set of words.

Now the exercise

You are given a set of these words and a short paragraph about getting ready for school, with five gaps to fill. Five gaps, and more words than gaps.

The condition

There is one rule, and it is the whole exercise. You may use each word only once. Repeating one word makes every step sound identical, so the reader stops noticing the joins, and variety is what keeps five steps feeling like five.

Why that is the difficulty

Without it, almost everybody writes then, then, then, then. It is the first word anybody reaches for. With it, you have to reach for a different signpost each time. Repeating one word makes every step sound identical, so the reader stops noticing the joins. Variety is what keeps five steps feeling like five.

The two fixed ones

Notice that to begin can only stand at the start, and at last only at the end. The others can move about. Two fixed points, and a movable middle.

Now a different thing

Look at how the four children say what they do. We make a figure with clay. We clean the shell. We take soft wood from the hills. Three speakers, and the same shape of sentence.

The first form

They use the plain form of the verb, with no ending added and nothing put in front. That is the present tense. The plainest form a verb has.

What it shows

Something that happens regularly. Not one afternoon's work, but what is done in that place, over and over, year after year. That is what a tradition is.

Why that suits a craft

A tradition is not an event. Priyaranjan is not telling you about a figure he made last Tuesday, and the tense he chooses says so. The work was going on before he spoke and will go on after.

The rule about endings

With he, she and it, the verb takes an -s. He speaks very loudly. She draws beautiful flowers. It works every time. Three subjects, and one extra letter each.

And with everybody else

I speak. You speak. We speak. They speak. No ending at all, and this is where most mistakes happen. Four subjects out of seven take nothing.

Sometimes -es

After certain endings the -s becomes -es. He goes, she teaches, it passes. Say the word aloud and you will hear which one it needs. Your ear settles this one without a rule.

One letter, endlessly

It is a single letter and it decides whether a sentence is right. She practise is wrong, and she practises is right, and nothing else in the sentence changes. One letter, carrying the whole thing.

Scenario:

A teacher sets the class a paragraph about how they get ready for school, using the order words from the box. Rehana writes that first she gets up and showers. Then she wears her uniform, then she eats, then she puts on her shoes, and then she picks up her bag. Dinesh writes that to begin he gets up and showers. After that he wears his uniform, next he eats, then he puts on his shoes, and at last he picks up his bag. Both have five steps in the same order, and both are correct English. The teacher reads them aloud and asks the class what the difference is.

Analysis:

One pupil used one signpost five times. The other used five different ones, and the steps stayed separate.

Activity:

Write your own five-step morning, then read it aloud and count how many times you used the same order word.

Title:

Strip the signposts

What You Notice:

Your partner will manage the stripped version, because nothing has been taken away except the signposts. What changes is how hard they have to work, and how confident they sound when they read it back. Order words do not carry information, which is precisely why it is so easy to think they can be spared.

The -es form is used after certain endings, which is why it is he goes and she teaches rather than he gos and she teachs.

English is unusual in having an ending for he, she and it and for nothing else. Many languages change the verb for every person.

Which subjects take the -s — HE, SHE, IT - and nobody else — He speaks. She draws. It works. But I speak, you speak, we speak, they speak.

Using order words well — One word, one step, once each — Every step gets its own signpost, and no signpost is used twice in the same paragraph.

Listening twice, for two things

You hear one recording, and then you hear it again. The two tasks that go with it are not the same task at all. One set of words, and two quite different jobs.

The first listening

You fill in notes. Five lines, each wanting a single fact that stands on its own: a name, a town, a state, the name of a dish, the vegetables used. Each answer is separate, and none depends on any other, so missing the town still leaves you the state. Each answer is a separate thing, and none depends on any other. If you miss the town you can still get the state.

The second listening

Now you fill in a flowchart, and a flowchart is different. It is a process drawn rather than written, with each numbered box holding one stage. The arrows do the work that order words do in a paragraph, and nobody writes next inside a flowchart because the shape already says it. They do the work that order words do in a paragraph. Nobody writes next inside a flowchart, because the shape already says it.

Why that is a different kind of listening

You are no longer catching separate facts. You are following a sequence, and if you lose the order the boxes cannot be filled at all. One slip costs you everything after it.

Who is speaking

Sushil, from Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. He says his listeners must be tired and hungry after so many speeches, which is a fair guess. He is the last voice in the chapter.

His dish

Gakkad bharta, which he calls unique to his district. It comes in two halves, and each half is made separately. Neither half is cooked with the other.

Making the gakkad

Wheat dough, made into balls, and roasted on high heat. Three steps, and no oil anywhere in them. The roasting is what gives it its name.

Making the bharta

Brinjals and tomatoes are roasted. Then the bharta is garnished with chopped onions, coriander, green chillies and salt. Four things in the garnish, and all of them raw.

The detail people miss

He mentions that the dish is made without any frying. It is a single sentence, it belongs to no stage, and it is exactly the kind of thing a notes task asks for. No box in a flowchart could hold it.

Eating it

You crumble the gakkad, drizzle bharta over it, and add a spoonful of ghee. Three actions, and the first one destroys the shape. The round shape it was roasted in never reaches the plate.

A fifth speaker

Notice that Sushil uses the same order words as the four children on the screen: first, then, to make, and so on. Five speakers, one way of explaining. The grammar topic was not bolted on to this chapter.

Then you speak

Now it is your turn, about a local art form of your own region. It can be a painting or a rangoli, a metal craft or an embroidery, or music, dance and drama. Seven kinds offered, and your own region decides.

Three things to cover

The name of the art form. What is needed for it. How it is made or performed. The same three the children on the screen gave you. You have four worked examples already.

Then you write

Five sentences about the art form you liked best, giving your reasons. Read that instruction again, because it is easy to misread. Reasons is the word that matters.

Reasons, not description

Five sentences describing Dhokra is the easy task and the wrong one. Every sentence has to say why it appealed to you, which nobody else could write. The chapter supplied the descriptions and none of the reasons.

And finally colour

The chapter ends with Madhubani, a traditional art of Bihar, and shows you how to make natural colours: haldi for yellow, leaves for green, indigo for blue. Red comes from geru, sindoor or red flowers.

Scenario:

A teacher sets the class five sentences on the art form they liked best. Kavya chooses Aipan. She writes that it is a folk art of Uttarakhand. She says it uses white rice flour paste. She adds that the walls are reddened with geru. Her last two sentences say the women make it, and that the designs come from nature. Imran chooses the Kondapalli toys. He says his own grandfather carved wood. He says the toys show bullock carts he has seen. He notes that the joining paste uses things that would be thrown away. He ends by saying a toy about village life is made in a village.

Analysis:

Both wrote exactly five correct sentences. Only one of them answered the question that was asked.

Activity:

Write five sentences about an art form, then underline every word that could have been copied from the chapter and see what survives.

Title:

Turn a paragraph into a flowchart

What You Notice:

Your partner will put the order words back in without being asked, because a spoken process needs them and a drawn one does not. That is the clearest way to see what those words are actually for. You will also find that one or two facts from the speech refuse to fit into any box, and those are exactly the ones a notes task would want.

Sushil says his dish is made without any frying at all, which is the kind of detail a notes task loves and a flowchart has no room for.

Madhubani painters of Bihar use natural colours, taking yellow from haldi, green from leaves, red from geru or sindoor, and blue from indigo.

The two listenings — FACTS first, STAGES second — Notes want things that stand alone. A flowchart wants the order they happen in.

Speaking about a craft — NAME - NEEDS - HOW — What it is called, what it takes, and the way it is made. The same three the four children used.