Class 7 English Chapter 9: North, South, East, West

A girl, a country, and eleven postcards

Shaana lives on Rameswaram island, in the far south. She travels the length and breadth of India with her parents, and she writes home about it. Not to her family, who are with her, but to her class.

The first card: as far north as it goes

The Thajiwas glacier in Kashmir, where the ice is blue as well as white, and four layers of clothes are needed, and her parents throw snowballs at each other. She stops writing because her hands are shaking.

And a sentence to notice

Her parents say the snow was far deeper the year before. Shaana reports it and moves on. It is one of three remarks in the postcards that a reader understands better than the writer does.

Himachal, a bear, and the mistake put right

Mountains from the cabin, and birds that wake her at sunrise. She also thinks she hears bears growling in the west after dark, and Amma tells her it is Appa snoring. Then Arunachal, and the correction. She had believed all the Pradesh states were neighbours. Himachal is in the north and Arunachal is all the way east, and two trains and a long drive are what it takes to learn the difference.

The thickest forest in the book

So thick, she says, that one blink, or a pause over a shoelace, will get you lost. The exaggeration is a child’s, and it does the work of a paragraph of description.

The Sundarbans: a place she did not know existed

Wetlands, reached by a small boat. Mangroves grow there in seawater, which astonishes her. She sees crocodiles and one lonely snake, and hopes neither follows her home.

The second sentence to notice

Amma is sad about how much the place floods now. Again Shaana reports the sadness without explaining it, and again a reader can supply what she cannot.

Gujarat: a beach without the sea

Two and a half days from West Bengal, right across the country. Hot, dry, sand everywhere. She does not know why her parents brought her to the middle of a desert, and she loves the clothes.

The Narmada, and the third sentence

Six hours east from the desert to a river that runs to the centre of India. Rafting turns out to be wild and fast, not calm as she expected. Appa says the river once carried far more water than it does now.

Goa, at night, out of a window

The southwest. Plateaus that look nicer than she can believe, hills and beaches, and a great many tunnels. She used to be afraid of tunnels and is not any more.

Chennai and Puducherry

South, and nearly home. She learns to surf and falls twice, which she counts as success. The water is rougher and browner than her island’s, and she likes it anyway.

Two last stops

The Pamban bridge, with ocean on both sides, where a train crosses the sea. Then Olaikaadu beach, where there is no diving suit her size, so she floats and watches fish while her parents dive.

Why the order of the postcards matters

They are dated, so a reader can reconstruct the route without being told it. And the dates do something else: twelve days pass between Gujarat and Goa, and two between Chennai and the Pamban bridge. The pace of the journey is in the dates rather than in anything she says.

Her own units of distance

Two trains and a long drive. Two and a half days. Six hours. No time at all. Those are the measurements a child has, and together they do what a map could not: they make the country feel large.

The last postcard, and the first list

Written to Amma and Appa rather than the class. In it she names six landforms at once: mountains, wetlands, glaciers, plateaus, deserts and forests. She has met every one of them in a place first.

And what else she will miss

All those new languages, and all those different people. The landforms are the easy half of the journey to notice. The languages and the people are the half she puts last.

One thing she never mentions

Homesickness. She asks whether the class is missing her, which is a different question, and she looks forward to giving them pebbles. A child who was unhappy would have said so somewhere in eleven cards, and the absence is evidence.

Why postcards, and not a diary

A diary would have been for herself. A postcard is for somebody else, so every card asks after her class, promises them pebbles, or sends love to two teachers. The form carries the friendship.

Scenario:

Two pupils write up the same two-day school trip for the magazine. Anvi writes a single piece of nine hundred words, in order, with every meal and bus change in it. Bhoomika writes six short pieces, each dated and addressed to a different person. One goes to her grandmother about the food. One goes to her little brother about a monkey that stole a cap. One goes to a teacher about the rock formations, and three go to friends. The editor prints Bhoomika’s. Anvi’s is accurate, complete and longer, and three readers who tried it stopped halfway.

Analysis:

Anvi wrote a record and Bhoomika wrote letters, and the difference is not length. A record has to include everything, because leaving an item out makes it incomplete; so the bus changes get the same weight as the monkey. A letter only has to interest one named person, so each of Bhoomika’s pieces could keep the one thing that reader would want and drop the rest. Addressing somebody also forces a tone: you ask after them, you remember what they like, you promise to tell them more. That is exactly what the postcards in this chapter do. Shaana writes to her class and so every card turns back to them at the end, with a question or a promise of pebbles. Choosing the form chose the content, and a reader who thinks postcards were merely convenient has the thing the wrong way round.

Activity:

Take a day you remember well. Write two accounts of it: one complete record of about three hundred words, and three short notes to three different people. Ask somebody which they would rather read, and why.

Title:

Map the route, then count the time

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

The arrows cross and recross the country rather than going round it, which is why two and a half days turns up in the middle of the journey rather than at the start. And your landform list will match her six almost exactly, because she built the list out of the stops rather than choosing the stops to fill a list.

The Pamban bridge carries a railway line across the sea to Rameswaram island, which is why Shaana can say that a train travels across the sea.

Mangroves are among the few trees that can live in salt water. They filter most of the salt out at the root, and the Sundarbans is one of the largest mangrove forests anywhere.

A plateau is high ground that is flat on top, which is why Goa can have hills and plateaus and beaches all at once.

The six landforms — Forests, glaciers, deserts, wetlands, plateaus, mountains — She names all six in the last postcard, and nowhere else. Learning them as a set from the ending means you can place each earlier card against it as you read.

The route, in four moves — North, then east, then west, then home south — Kashmir and Himachal in the north, Arunachal and the Sundarbans in the east, Gujarat in the west, then the Narmada, Goa, Chennai and home.

Who is telling us, and how old she is

A twelve-year-old, writing postcards to her class. Everything in the chapter arrives in her words, which means two things are available to a reader: what she says, and what she gives away without meaning to.

The comparison that gives away her home

She calls the Gujarat desert a beach without the sea. Nobody from inland reaches for a beach to describe a desert. The comparison places her on an island before the chapter has to tell us.

How she conveys excitement

Never with the word. She writes that you will not believe where she is, and later that you will not believe how nice the plateaus look. Daring the reader to disbelieve is a child’s way of saying it, and it is livelier than the adjective.

How she conveys curiosity, and fear

Curiosity arrives as surprise at a fact. She had never known that a place like the Sundarbans existed, or that trees could grow in seawater. The astonishment is in the construction rather than in any adjective. Fear arrives sideways. She hopes the crocodiles and the lonely snake do not follow her home, which is both funnier and more frightening than saying she was scared. The bears in Himachal work the same way, and turn out to be Appa.

A fear that goes away

There are a great many tunnels in Goa. She used to be afraid of them and is not any more, and she reports the change without any surprise. That is how a fear actually wears off: by repetition, unnoticed.

One thing she never says

That she is homesick. She asks whether the class is missing her, which is a different question, and she looks forward to handing over pebbles. Eleven cards is a great deal of space in which to complain, and she uses none of it, so the absence is itself evidence about how the journey went.

Her parents, behaving badly

They throw snowballs at each other in Kashmir. They splash each other at Puducherry and behave like children. Shaana observes that it was a good thing she was there to control them.

Which is the chapter’s steadiest joke

The child is the responsible one. She reports it without any sense that it is funny, and the reader supplies that. A narrator who found her own jokes funny would be a different and worse narrator.

Her arithmetic

She fell over twice while learning to surf, and concludes that she is good at it now. Two falls as evidence of skill is a child’s sum, and the confidence behind it is perfectly real.

Now the three remarks

Her parents say the snow was far deeper the year before. Amma is sad about how much the Sundarbans floods now. Appa says the Narmada used to have a lot more water in it.

What Shaana does with them

Nothing. She writes each one down as a thing a grown-up said, and moves on to the crocodiles or the rafting. To her they are facts about her parents rather than about the places.

What a reader can do with them

Put the three side by side. Less ice at the glacier, more flood in the delta, less water in the river, all in one country in one summer. The chapter never states the conclusion.

And why that silence is right

A conclusion handed to a reader is forgotten. A conclusion a reader assembles is kept. By declining to explain, the chapter makes the reader do the one piece of work that matters.

What she says she will miss

The mountains, wetlands, glaciers, plateaus, deserts and forests, and then all those new languages and all those different people. She puts the landforms first and the people second.

Which is also a child’s order

A glacier can be photographed and a language met in passing cannot. The second half of the list is the harder thing to have noticed, and she notices it anyway.

What she has learnt

That her country is larger and more various than she had thought, and that she was wrong about the Pradesh states. Also that rivers are not calm, and that tunnels are survivable.

And one more thing the form does

It hides the author. A chapter of continuous prose would have a narrator describing a child; a chapter of postcards has only the child. There is nobody standing behind her to explain the snow or the flooding, which is exactly why the reader has to do it.

Why postcards, in three words

Short, dated, addressed. Short means nothing is padded. Dated means the journey can be measured. Addressed means every card turns back to her class, and that is where the warmth of the chapter comes from.

Scenario:

A school asks two pupils to report on the state of its garden. Priyanka writes that the roses are doing well, the bench needs paint and the tap at the north end drips. Qadir writes the same three facts and adds three more that he does not comment on. The gardener now waters at six in the morning instead of eight. Two of the five beds have been given over to cactus. And the water tank is refilled twice a week where it used to be once. The committee reads both. Priyanka’s report produces a painter. Qadir’s produces a meeting about water.

Analysis:

Both reports were accurate and Priyanka’s was easier to act on. The difference is that Qadir recorded three facts whose meaning he had not worked out, and a committee that knew more than he did could put them together: an earlier watering time, cactus replacing flowers, and a tank filled twice as often all point at one thing, which is that water has become harder to get. Qadir never wrote the word, and the meeting happened anyway. That is exactly what Shaana does with the snow, the flooding and the river. She reports each as something a parent said and connects none of them, and a reader who puts the three together arrives at a conclusion she never states. The lesson for a writer is worth keeping: recording a fact you cannot explain is not a failure, and it is often the most useful thing in a report.

Activity:

Write six sentences about a place you know well. Make three of them facts you can explain and three facts you cannot. Give the six to somebody else and ask which three they found most interesting.

Title:

Two columns, and the gap between them

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

The right column is rarely empty, and reading it straight through gives you a second chapter: an island childhood, a confident child, two playful parents, and a country where the ice and the rivers are shrinking. None of that is stated anywhere. The rows where the right column IS empty are usually the ones about trains, which is a fair indication of what the author was not interested in.

A narrator who understands less than the reader is called an unreliable or naive narrator. The device is as old as storytelling and it is used here for warmth rather than for mystery.

Glaciers in the Himalaya have been losing ice for decades, which is the fact behind the parents’ remark about less snow than last year.

Mangrove wetlands reduce the force of a storm surge, so a flooding Sundarbans is both a symptom and a warning. Amma’s sadness has a reason Shaana does not record.

Reading a child narrator — What does she state, and what can I assemble? — Two different questions. The first gives you the plot. The second gives you where she is from, how she feels, and what the grown-ups are worried about.

The three observations — Less ice, more flood, less river — Learn them as a set of three. Separately each is a passing remark; together they are the one thing in the chapter the narrator cannot see.

Ten rules, or one question

The book gives ten rules for choosing a verb. Nine of them turn out to answer a single question, which is: which word in this sentence is the subject? Find that word and the verb follows almost without thought.

Where the question comes from

Shaana writes that Amma and Appa are fast asleep. Two people, joined by and, so a plural subject and a plural verb. She also writes that it is hot and there is sand everywhere, and both of those have their own rule.

The and rule

Two or more nouns or pronouns joined by and make a plural subject. Amma and Appa are asleep. The glacier and the desert were both a surprise. Nothing about the individual nouns matters once and has joined them.

The it rule

When the subject is it, the verb is "is" or "was", depending on the tense. It is hot. It was dry. The rule looks trivial and it saves a reader from hunting for a noun that is not there.

The there rule, and the first real trap

A sentence that begins with there puts its verb before its subject. There are so many hills here. The subject is hills, which comes afterwards, so the verb is are rather than is. That order is the first real trap in the block, because the eye reaches the verb before it has found the subject. The cure is the same as everywhere: read on, find the subject, then choose. There is one hill, there are many hills.

The interruption rule

Words standing between a subject and its verb change nothing at all. The formation of paragraphs is important. The subject is formation, and paragraphs is simply the nearest noun. The words in between may be a phrase or a whole clause, and they are allowed to be as long as they like. They still change nothing about the verb.

Why that trap is the worst of them

The nearest noun is almost always the wrong one, and it is the one the eye lands on. Crossing out everything between the subject and the verb is the quickest way to be sure.

Subjects considered one by one

Every singer and dancer has a turn on stage. Two nouns, joined by and, and yet the verb is singular, because every makes them individual. The rule about and has been overruled by the word in front.

Collective nouns, which go either way

A class, a committee, an audience, a team. When the group acts as one unit the noun is singular: the committee decides tomorrow. When the members act separately it can be plural: the committee are still arguing.

And the context chooses

Not the word. That is why no list of collective nouns can tell you the answer, and why this is the one rule in the block that needs a judgement rather than a look-up.

The pronouns that are always singular

Each, either, every, much, neither. Each of the cousins was handed a prize. There are many children, and the subject is each, so the verb is singular. These five never vary.

Plural-looking singulars

Mathematics is an interesting subject. News travels fast. The s on the end belongs to the word rather than to a plural, because each of them names one thing, so the verb is singular.

The pair of rule

This pair of scissors is sharp. Scissors is plural, and pair is the subject, and a pair is one thing. The same goes for a pair of trousers, a pair of binoculars and a pair of tongs.

Now the rule that is different

Or and nor do not care which subject is which. They care which one is NEARER to the verb. Neither the porters nor the guide knows this path.

And the other way round

Either the guide or the porters know this path. The nearer subject is employees, so the verb is plural. Swap the two nouns and the verb would have to change with them.

Which gives a writer a choice

If a sentence sounds awkward, reorder the subjects and put the one that reads better nearer the verb. Neither the teacher nor the students want to cancel it is easier to read than the other order. That is not a trick; it is the rule used deliberately, and knowing it is what the choice depends on.

A leave application, and why it is here

Because this is where the habit gets used. An application has a fixed order: your address, the date, the Principal’s address, a subject line, the days and dates of leave, the reason, an assurance about your work, and a signing-off.

What examiners mark in it

The order as well as the words. A letter with every sentence right and the parts in the wrong places loses marks, which is why the format is worth learning as a list rather than as a feeling.

Scenario:

A school sports notice goes up and is corrected three times in one morning. The first version reads: the list of events are on the board. A teacher changes are to is. The second version reads: neither the referees nor the coach have arrived. Another teacher changes have to has. The third version reads: each of the four teams are to bring their own water. A third teacher changes are to is. By lunchtime a pupil asks why three different teachers each found a different mistake, and whether there is one thing to learn rather than three.

Analysis:

There is one thing, and the pupil has asked the right question. All three errors come from agreeing the verb with the wrong word. In the first, the eye landed on events and the subject was list. In the second, the writer used the first subject rather than the nearer one, which is the one rule in the block about position: coach sits beside the verb, so the verb is has. In the third, the subject was each, not teams, and each is always singular. Three different-looking mistakes, one cure: find the subject before choosing the verb, and cross out whatever lies between the two. That also explains why the corrections came from three teachers. Each had a different rule in mind, and none of them needed one. A writer who asks which word is the subject gets all three right without knowing the rules by name.

Activity:

Find three sentences on notices around your school that have a noun between the subject and the verb. Cross out the middle and check the verb. Write down any that are wrong.

Title:

Cross out the middle

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

Almost every disagreement is about a collective noun, because that is the one rule where the context decides and two readers can honestly differ. The interruption cases are never disputed: once the middle is crossed out, the right verb is obvious to both of you, which is a good demonstration that the rule is really about finding the subject rather than about memory.

British and American usage differ on collective nouns. The team are playing well is normal in Britain and the team is playing well is normal in America, and both are correct in their own place.

Scissors, trousers and binoculars are plural because each names a thing made of two matching parts. Putting pair of in front makes pair the subject, and a pair is one thing.

A leave application is one of the few pieces of writing with a fixed order of parts. Examiners mark the order as well as the words, which is why the format is worth learning as a list.

The whole block, in one question — Find the subject first — Nine of the ten rules are that instruction wearing a different disguise. Once the subject is named, the verb is rarely in doubt.

Or and nor — The nearer one wins — Only this rule cares about position. Whichever subject sits closer to the verb decides whether the verb is singular or plural.