Class 12 English: Lost Spring — Literature Question Set

Correct option: (b). His mother told him that many storms had swept away their fields and homes, which is why they left.

Correct option: (c). 'Hollow' means lacking real meaning — telling a boy with no school nearby to "go to school" is an empty suggestion.

Correct option: (b). Saheb replies plainly, "There is no school in my neighbourhood", making the advice impossible to act upon.

Correct option: (b). 'Gold' is used ironically, for it is in the garbage dumps that Saheb and his family earn their living.

Correct option: (c). His ready answer shows a genuine eagerness for education, blocked only by the absence of a school.

Correct option: (b). The author asks her question "glibly" and immediately realises how hollow it sounds, showing sympathy and honest self-awareness.

Correct option: (c). Seeing Saheb run up to ask "Is your school ready?", she felt embarrassed at having made a half-joking promise she never intended to keep.

Correct option: (b). Saheb said "Yes", smiling broadly, showing how seriously he took the idea.

Correct option: (d). 'Abound' means to be present in large numbers — the poor are surrounded by such empty promises.

Correct option: (b). 'Bleak' means cold and barren — the world of children like Saheb, barren of schools and real opportunity.

Correct option: (c). He has taken a casual adult promise completely seriously, revealing a child's trusting eagerness for schooling.

Correct option: (b). The author's own unmeant promise, multiplied across "every corner of his bleak world", shows how easily the poor are given false hopes.

Correct option: (a). The extract states that the meaning of his name is "lord of the universe".

Correct option: (b). A boy who scrounges garbage dumps is the very opposite of a 'lord of the universe' — hence the irony.

Correct option: (b). The boys are directly called an army, without 'like' or 'as', making it a metaphor.

Correct option: (c). The word 'like' makes the comparison a simile, suggesting their numbers and rootless routine.

Correct option: (b). The gulf between 'lord of the universe' and a barefoot ragpicker's life is too wide for him to believe.

Correct option: (b). Saheb 'roams the streets with his friends' — moves about aimlessly and freely.

Correct option: (b). The boy answers simply, "My mother did not bring them down from the shelf".

Correct option: (c). The extract says, "It is not lack of money but a tradition to stay barefoot, is one explanation".

Correct option: (d). 'Perpetual' means lasting forever — a constant state of poverty.

Correct option: (b). The second boy is "wearing shoes that do not match", and when the author comments on this, he shuffles his feet in embarrassment.

Correct option: (c). She "wonders if this is only an excuse to explain away a perpetual state of poverty".

Correct option: (b). The boy who "has never owned a pair all his life" states his want plainly, revealing an unfulfilled longing.

Correct option: (d). Going to school past the old temple, he would stop briefly and "pray for a pair of shoes".

Correct option: (c). "Thirty years later I visited his town and the temple".

Correct option: (b). The temple "was now drowned in an air of desolation".

Correct option: (c). The young boy "dressed in a grey uniform, wearing socks and shoes, arrived panting and threw his school bag on a folding bed".

Correct option: (c). 'Desolation' is a state of being bare, ruined and lifeless.

Correct option: (b). One boy prayed at a temple for shoes; a generation later a boy of the same family wears them casually and flings his school bag about.

Correct option: (c). The extract describes Seemapuri as "a place on the periphery of Delhi".

Correct option: (b). Physically close, its utter lack of basic facilities puts it in another world altogether.

Correct option: (b). Their ration cards "enable them to buy grain" and get their names on voters' lists.

Correct option: (b). "Those who live here are squatters who came from Bangladesh back in 1971."

Correct option: (b). Living without identity or permits, the squatters cling to ration cards because food for survival matters more to them.

Correct option: (c). 'Devoid of' means entirely lacking — the mud structures have no basic facilities.

Correct option: (b). They say that if they can feed their families and sleep without hunger, they prefer Seemapuri to the fields that gave them no grain.

Correct option: (b). The statement stresses that everything the ragpickers live on — food and shelter — comes from garbage.

Correct option: (b). The phrase is ironic: an entire community's 'artistry' consists of scrounging garbage to stay alive.

Correct option: (b). "Wherever they find food, they pitch their tents that become transit homes."

Correct option: (b). Their "beautiful land of green fields and rivers" failed to feed them, so hunger drove them out.

Correct option: (b). 'Tattered' means old and torn, hinting at their poverty.

Correct option: (b). Saheb says, "I sometimes find a rupee, even a ten-rupee note."

Correct option: (b). The extract says that for the elders garbage "is a means of survival".

Correct option: (b). Finding a coin once creates the hope of finding more, so the dumps are a place of surprises and excitement for children.

Correct option: (c). "When you can find a silver coin in a heap of garbage, you don't stop scrounging, for there is hope of finding more."

Correct option: (b). His shining eyes reveal the thrill and hope that the garbage heap holds for him.

Correct option: (b). Garbage is described as being covered in wonder, a metaphor for the excitement it holds for children.

Correct option: (c). He wears tennis shoes that "look strange over his discoloured shirt and shorts", discarded shoes of some rich boy.

Correct option: (b). The fenced gate of the club is the visible dividing line of class — the game, "out of his reach", belongs to the other world.

Correct option: (c). He admits, "I go inside when no one is around. The gatekeeper lets me use the swing."

Correct option: (b). That another boy's cast-offs with a hole count as a "dream come true" shows how deep his poverty is.

Correct option: (b). Poverty has so lowered his expectations that a hole in a gift shoe does not trouble him at all.

Correct option: (d). A discoloured shirt is one faded and stained by long wear — a detail of his poverty.

Correct option: (b). Saheb says, "I now work in a tea stall down the road"; the milk booth is where he goes to fetch milk.

Correct option: (a). He is paid "800 rupees and all my meals".

Correct option: (c). The bag was his own and was carried lightly; the canister belongs to another, and its weight is the weight of servitude.

Correct option: (b). "His face, I see, has lost the carefree look" of his ragpicking days.

Correct option: (b). The canister belongs to the man who owns the tea shop; wages and meals have come at the cost of his freedom.

Correct option: (c). The plastic ragpicking bag belonged to Saheb himself, unlike the canister.

Correct option: (a). He announces, "I will be a motor mechanic."

Correct option: (b). A mirage appears real but may not be reached — his dream may never come true for a boy born into bangle-making.

Correct option: (b). The dream is compared to a mirage using 'like', making it a simile.

Correct option: (b). The town is "famous for its bangles", where every other family makes them.

Correct option: (c). Looking the author straight in the eye, he speaks with quiet determination about learning.

Correct option: (b). The scale of the statement shows that almost the whole town is tied to the bangle trade.

Correct option: (b). The extract states it is "the centre of India's glass-blowing industry".

Correct option: (c). The law, if enforced, could get him "and all those 20,000 children out of the hot furnaces".

Correct option: (b). They work in the glass furnaces "with high temperatures, in dingy cells without air and light".

Correct option: (b). 'Slog' means to toil laboriously through their daylight hours.

Correct option: (b). Not only are the families ignorant of the law, it could have freed the children "if enforced".

Correct option: (c). They slog by the hot furnaces, "often losing the brightness of their eyes".

Correct option: (b). They "walk down stinking lanes choked with garbage".

Correct option: (c). "A frail young woman is cooking the evening meal for the whole family... She is the wife of Mukesh's elder brother."

Correct option: (d). 'Hovels' are wretched, crumbling living places — homes with "crumbling walls, wobbly doors, no windows".

Correct option: (b). Against generations of hovels, even a half-built shack is an achievement worth pride.

Correct option: (b). Cooking over a firewood stove in a smoky shack yet smiling, she shows the grace with which these women bear daily hardship.

Correct option: (b). 'Primeval' suggests a raw, undeveloped way of living — humans and animals crowded together in want.

Correct option: (c). "As custom demands, daughters-in-law must veil their faces before male elders."

Correct option: (a). She commands respect as the daughter-in-law, "already in charge of three men — her husband, Mukesh and their father".

Correct option: (b). Though he worked first as a tailor, then as a bangle maker, "he has failed to renovate a house, send his two sons to school".

Correct option: (b). 'Renovate' means to restore a building to good condition — the elder could not manage even that.

Correct option: (c). "All he has managed to do is teach them what he knows — the art of making bangles."

Correct option: (b). Though in charge of three men, the young bahu must still withdraw behind a broken wall and bring her veil closer — custom subordinates women.

Correct option: (c). The words are said by "Mukesh's grandmother".

Correct option: (b). She "has watched her own husband go blind with the dust from polishing the glass of bangles".

Correct option: (d). Paired with 'destiny', 'karam' means the inescapable fate of being born to bangle-making.

Correct option: (b). The rhetorical question assumes the bangle-making lineage is 'god-given' — fate that cannot be broken.

Correct option: (c). 'Lineage' means the line of descent — the family's inherited place in the caste of bangle makers.

Correct option: (b). Bangles are "in the house, in the yard, in every other house, every other yard, every street in Firozabad" — the trade is their whole world.

Correct option: (b). Sitting in dark hutments next to flickering oil lamps, "their eyes are more adjusted to the dark than to the light outside".

Correct option: (b). The spirals of bangles are "sunny gold, paddy green, royal blue, pink, purple, every colour born out of the seven colours of the rainbow".

Correct option: (c). The festive beauty of the bangles is made in darkness, at the cost of the makers' eyesight — a bitter contrast.

Correct option: (d). 'Unkempt' means uncared-for — yards where mounds of bangles lie.

Correct option: (c). "In dark hutments, next to lines of flames of flickering oil lamps, sit boys and girls with their fathers and mothers."

Correct option: (b). 'That' points to the immediately preceding fact about their dark-adjusted eyes.

Correct option: (b). "Savita, a young girl in a drab pink dress, sits alongside an elderly woman, soldering pieces of glass."

Correct option: (b). Her hands are compared to machine tongs using 'like', making it a simile.

Correct option: (b). A child working like a machine part, without thought or play, underscores the deadening repetitiveness of the work.

Correct option: (c). The author says the bangle "symbolises an Indian woman's suhaag, auspiciousness in marriage".

Correct option: (d). "It will dawn on her suddenly one day" when the signs of her bridehood are upon her.

Correct option: (c). The quiet wondering reflects concern for a child who labours without knowing the meaning of what she makes.

Correct option: (b). "Ek waqt ser bhar khana bhi nahin khaya" — she has not enjoyed even one full meal in her lifetime.

Correct option: (b). The maker of symbols of good fortune wears them herself while her eyes hold no joy — the irony of her fate.

Correct option: (b). He says, "All I have done is make a house for the family to live in."

Correct option: (c). Her voice is emptied — exhausted — of all happiness.

Correct option: (a). Like Savita, she too became a bride many years ago — which makes her present misery the more telling.

Correct option: (b). Having made festive bangles all her life, she has reaped not even one full meal — the central irony of her fate.

Correct option: (d). The tone is ironic: a house to live in is the sole fruit of a lifetime of labour, a measure of how low the community's horizons have fallen.

Correct option: (b). The extract states that the toil "have killed all initiative and the ability to dream".

Correct option: (b). "The young men echo the lament of their elders" — the same cry rings in every home.

Correct option: (c). 'Mind-numbing' describes work so relentless that it numbs the mind and kills imagination.

Correct option: (b). Generations repeat the same poverty and the same lament; nothing changes with time.

Correct option: (d). "The cry of not having money to do anything except carry on the business of making bangles, not even enough to eat, rings in every home."

Correct option: (b). They reply that "if we get organised, we are the ones who will be hauled up by the police, beaten and dragged to jail".

Correct option: (b). The young men "have fallen into the vicious circle of middlemen who trapped their fathers and forefathers".

Correct option: (c). "There is no leader among them, no one who could help them see things differently."

Correct option: (d). 'Apathy' is indifference — the numbness bred by unchanging poverty.

Correct option: (b). Like a spiral, the talk circles endlessly from one trouble back to another, going nowhere.

Correct option: (b). The middlemen's vicious circle trapped the earlier generations and has now trapped the young men too.

Correct option: (b). The extract itself lists the two worlds — the family's web of poverty burdened by caste, and the circle of exploiters and authorities.

Correct option: (b). Together the two worlds "have imposed the baggage on the child that he cannot put down".

Correct option: (b). 'Stigma' is a mark of disgrace — here, the disgrace attached to their caste.

Correct option: (b). The child takes on the burden so early and so unquestioningly that it feels natural, just as it did to his father.

Correct option: (b). "To do anything else would mean to dare. And daring is not part of his growing up."

Correct option: (d). The language of 'webs', 'stigma' and 'baggage' criticises the system while pitying the child crushed under it.

Correct option: (c). In a town where "daring is not part of his growing up", Mukesh's insistence on his own path gladdens the author.

Correct option: (a). The author is cheered when Mukesh repeats, "I want to be a motor mechanic".

Correct option: (b). "The garage is a long way from his home. 'I will walk,' he insists."

Correct option: (c). His readiness to walk a long distance reveals how determined he is to learn at the garage.

Correct option: (b). In his "small murmur there is an embarrassment that has not yet turned into regret"; he dreams only of the cars he sees, for "few airplanes fly over Firozabad".

Correct option: (b). 'Hurtling' means rushing at high speed — the cars that are the limit of Mukesh's dreams.

Saheb is 'scrounging for gold' in the garbage dumps of the author's neighbourhood — he is a ragpicker looking for anything that can be sold or used, and sometimes, with luck, a rupee or even a ten-rupee note. He has come from Dhaka in Bangladesh, where storms swept away his family's fields and homes; he now lives in Seemapuri on the outskirts of Delhi.

One boy says his mother did not bring the chappals down from the shelf; another wears shoes that do not match and shuffles in embarrassment; a third says he wants shoes, having never owned a pair. The author adds that 'it is not lack of money but a tradition to stay barefoot' is one common explanation — though she wonders if this is only an excuse to explain away a perpetual state of poverty.

No. Though he earns 800 rupees and all his meals, his face has lost its carefree look. The steel canister he carries seems heavier than the plastic bag of his ragpicking days, because the bag was his own while the canister belongs to the tea-stall owner. As the author puts it, "Saheb is no longer his own master!"

The name means 'lord of the universe'. It is ironic because the boy who bears it is a barefoot ragpicker who scrounges garbage dumps for a living — the very opposite of a lord. Saheb himself does not know what his name means, and if he did, he would have a hard time believing it.

She spoke glibly, without thinking of his circumstances. There was no school in Saheb's neighbourhood, and when she half-jokingly offered to start one, she could not keep even that promise. Advice that ignores the reality of a poor child's life is empty, however well-meant.

She means that the poor are constantly given false hopes — casual, well-meaning promises of schools, help and change that are never fulfilled. Saheb ran up to her days later asking, "Is your school ready?", showing how completely he had trusted her, and how easily such trust is betrayed.

Seemapuri is a settlement of squatters on the periphery of Delhi, yet 'miles away from it, metaphorically'. Those who live there came from Bangladesh in 1971; Saheb's family is among them. About 10,000 ragpickers live in structures of mud with roofs of tin and tarpaulin, in conditions devoid of sewage, drainage and running water, surviving on ration cards.

Their beautiful land of green fields and rivers in Bangladesh gave them no grain; storms had swept away their fields and homes. As the women say, if at the end of the day they can feed their families and go to bed without an aching stomach, they would rather live in Seemapuri — because food is more important for survival than an identity.

For the ragpickers of Seemapuri, garbage is their entire means of survival — their daily bread and a roof over their heads, even if a leaking one. The hyperbole bitterly stresses that everything the community has depends on the city's waste.

For the elders garbage is only survival, but for the children it holds surprises and hope. Saheb's eyes light up as he says, "I sometimes find a rupee, even a ten-rupee note", and having found a silver coin once, he does not stop scrounging, for there is hope of finding more.

Firozabad is famous for its bangles. It is the centre of India's glass-blowing industry, where families have spent generations working around furnaces, welding glass and making bangles for all the women in the land. Every other family in the town is engaged in the trade.

Children work in glass furnaces at high temperatures, in dingy cells without air and light, and often lose the brightness of their eyes. In dark hutments, sitting next to flickering oil-lamp flames, their eyes become more adjusted to the dark than to the light outside, so they often end up losing their eyesight before they become adults; the dust from polishing glass can even blind the elders.

Mukesh insists on being his own master and announces, "I will be a motor mechanic," looking straight into the author's eyes. His family, in contrast, accepts bangle-making as karam, destiny — his grandmother believes a god-given lineage can never be broken, and his father has taught his sons only the art he knows. Mukesh dares to dream; the others have stopped dreaming.

She means that the family's life of bangle-making is fated, divinely ordained — it cannot be changed or escaped. Having watched her own husband go blind polishing glass, she asks, "Can a god-given lineage ever be broken?" Her fatalism has been shaped by generations of unbroken, hereditary poverty.

Bangles symbolise an Indian woman's suhaag — auspiciousness in marriage. Their sanctity dawns on a girl suddenly on her wedding day, when her head is draped with a red veil, her hands are dyed red with henna, and red bangles are rolled onto her wrists, making her a bride.

Savita is a young girl in a drab pink dress who sits alongside an elderly woman, soldering pieces of glass, her hands moving mechanically like the tongs of a machine. The author wonders if the child knows the sanctity of the bangles she helps make — that they symbolise an Indian woman's suhaag, the auspiciousness of marriage.

She still has bangles on her wrist, but no light in her eyes. In a voice drained of joy she says, "Ek waqt ser bhar khana bhi nahin khaya" — she has not enjoyed even one full meal in her entire lifetime. That is all her years of toil have brought her.

They fear the consequences: "Even if we get organised, we are the ones who will be hauled up by the police, beaten and dragged to jail for doing something illegal." There is no leader among them to help them see things differently, and their fathers are as tired as they are.

Asked whether he dreams of flying a plane, Mukesh falls silent and says no, staring at the ground; he is content to dream of the cars he sees hurtling down the streets. The line symbolises the narrow horizon of the bangle makers' children — their very sky holds few dreams, for circumstances have clipped their imagination.

One is the world of the family, caught in a web of poverty and burdened by the stigma of the caste in which they are born. The other is the vicious circle of the sahukars, the middlemen, the policemen, the keepers of law, the bureaucrats and the politicians. Together, the two worlds impose on every child a baggage that he cannot put down.

Seemapuri, on the periphery of Delhi, is home to about 10,000 ragpickers who came as squatters from Bangladesh in 1971 — Saheb's family among them. They live in structures of mud with roofs of tin and tarpaulin, without sewage, drainage or running water, and have stayed for over thirty years without identity or permits, holding only ration cards that enable them to buy grain. Survival in Seemapuri means rag-picking, which over the years has acquired the proportions of a fine art; garbage is their gold — their daily bread and their leaking roof. The children, barefoot partners in survival, grow up scrounging the dumps, where for them garbage is 'wrapped in wonder'.

The central paradox of the chapter is that garbage — the filth the city throws away — is treasure to the poor: their daily bread, their roof, their hope of an occasional rupee. Saheb's grand name, 'lord of the universe', is ironically set against his life of scrounging. In Firozabad, bangles of every colour of the rainbow — symbols of a bride's auspiciousness — are made by children in dark hutments who lose their eyesight before adulthood. The old woman who makes symbols of prosperity has never eaten one full meal. Through such contrasts between beauty and misery, the author exposes how the prosperity of some is built on the deprivation of others.

When we first meet Saheb, he is a carefree barefoot ragpicker, 'scrounging for gold' in the garbage dumps, eager to go to school if one is built, and happy in the small wonder of finding a rupee. He appears next at the fenced gate of the neighbourhood club, watching tennis he can never play, wearing the discarded tennis shoes of a rich boy — a dream come true for one who has walked barefoot. Finally, he takes a job at a tea stall for 800 rupees and all his meals. The steel canister he carries seems heavier than his old plastic bag, because the bag was his own and the canister belongs to his employer. With the job, his carefree look is gone: 'Saheb is no longer his own master!'

Mukesh is a boy of Firozabad, born into a family of bangle makers that has known the trade for generations. Unlike the others around him, he insists on being his own master and announces firmly, "I will be a motor mechanic," looking straight into the author's eyes. His eyes beam with pride as he shows her his half-rebuilt house, and he offers to walk the long way to a garage to learn — a determination rare in his town. He is realistic rather than fanciful: asked if he dreams of flying a plane, he says no, content to dream of the cars he sees hurtling down the streets of his town. In a community where 'daring is not part of his growing up', Mukesh's flash of daring makes him the one hope in the narrative.

The title refers to the stolen childhoods of children like Saheb and Mukesh. Spring stands for the best years of life — carefree, playful, full of learning and hope. But the children in the chapter lose this spring early: Saheb spends his mornings scrounging garbage dumps, watches tennis from behind a fence, and finally drags a milk canister to a tea stall, losing the freedom that was his even in poverty. In Firozabad, boys and girls sit in dark hutments welding glass into bangles, losing their eyesight before they become adults. Their youth is consumed by hunger, hereditary labour and exploitation. Anees Jung's title, taken from her book 'Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood', mourns this waste of childhood and silently indicts the society that allows it.

The bangle makers live in stinking lanes choked with garbage, in hovels with crumbling walls, wobbly doors and no windows, where families of humans and animals coexist in a primeval state. Their houses are half-built shacks, one part thatched with dead grass, where a frail young woman cooks on a firewood stove with her eyes filled with smoke. The work itself is carried on in dark hutments, next to lines of flames of flickering oil lamps, where boys and girls sit with their fathers and mothers welding pieces of coloured glass into circles of bangles. The furnaces run at high temperatures in dingy cells without air and light. The consequence is cruel: their eyes, adjusted more to the dark than to the light outside, often fail before they become adults, and the dust from polishing glass blinds the elders.

The author sees two worlds working together against them. Within the family, there is the web of poverty and the stigma of the caste in which they are born — the 'god-given lineage' that no one dares to break. Around them runs the vicious circle of the sahukars, the middlemen, the policemen, the keepers of law, the bureaucrats and the politicians. Years of mind-numbing toil have killed all initiative and the ability to dream; there is no leader among the young men, and their fathers are as tired as they are. Any attempt to organise is met with the fear of being hauled up by the police and dragged to jail. Together these forces impose on every child a baggage that he cannot put down.

The author shows that promises made to poor children are rarely kept — like her own school promise to Saheb, such promises 'abound in every corner of his bleak world'. The law forbidding child labour in the glass furnaces exists only on paper: 'the law, if enforced, could get him and all those 20,000 children out of the hot furnaces', but no one enforces it. When the young men think of organising a cooperative, they fear being beaten and dragged to jail, while the sahukars, middlemen, policemen, bureaucrats and politicians who exploit them remain untouched. Schools are not built in colonies like Saheb's. In all this, society's indifference — including the author's own glib advice — emerges as the deepest failure of all.

Women occupy a position of hard work and quiet subordination. The young bahu, not much older in years, cooks the evening meal for the whole family with her eyes filled with smoke, yet gently withdraws behind the broken wall and veils her face before male elders, as custom demands, though she is already in charge of three men. Savita, a young girl in a drab pink dress, solders pieces of glass, her hands moving mechanically like the tongs of a machine, unaware of the sanctity of the bangles she makes. The old woman beside her, a bride many years ago, still has bangles on her wrist but no light in her eyes — she has not enjoyed even one full meal in her entire lifetime. Their lives are bound by custom, smoke and hunger.

The story of the man from Udipi, told as a young boy who prayed at the temple for a pair of shoes as he went to school, serves as a measure of change and of what has not changed. Thirty years later, when the author visits the town, the new priest's son arrives from school in socks and shoes and throws his bag on a folding bed — footwear, once a prayer, is now taken for granted. But many others, like the ragpickers in the author's neighbourhood, remain shoeless. The episode shows that while some sections of society have prospered across a generation, the poorest — the ragpicker children — continue to live in a barefoot world of want.

The author presents child labour through living images rather than statistics: Saheb scrounging garbage dumps at an age when he should be in school; barefoot boys who roam the streets 'like the morning birds'; 20,000 children in Firozabad slogging their daylight hours around hot furnaces in dingy cells, often losing the brightness of their eyes. The law makes such work illegal, but it is not enforced; families themselves teach children nothing but the hereditary trade. In my view, child labour can end only when schooling is genuinely available and attractive to the poor, when laws against employing children are enforced strictly, and when families are freed from the debt and middlemen that make a child's earnings necessary.

The squatters of Seemapuri have lived on the edge of Delhi for more than thirty years without an identity and without permits, holding only ration cards — because those cards get their names on voters' lists and enable them to buy grain. The women explain that if at the end of the day they can feed their families and go to bed without an aching stomach, they would rather live there than in the fields that gave them no grain. For people living on the edge of hunger, legal identity, civic rights and dignity are luxuries; the daily meal is everything. The statement exposes a tragic ordering of priorities that no citizen of a welfare state should be forced to make.

Among the ragpickers, the elders treat garbage strictly as a means of survival, while for the children it is 'wrapped in wonder' — the chance of finding a rupee or a ten-rupee note keeps the young ones scrounging hopefully. Yet the adult world presses in on childhood at every step. Saheb's carefree look disappears when he takes the tea-stall job; the bag that was his own is replaced by the master's canister. In Firozabad, the children sit beside their parents in dark hutments welding glass, becoming 'partners in survival' in Seemapuri's transit homes. The children's capacity for hope and wonder survives precariously inside a world of hunger that slowly crushes it.

Mukesh's family lives in a half-built shack reached through stinking lanes choked with garbage — a hovel with crumbling walls and a wobbly iron door. His father, an impoverished bangle maker who earlier worked as a tailor, has failed despite long years of hard labour to renovate the house or send his two sons to school; all he has managed is to teach them the art of making bangles. His grandmother accepts the trade as karam, destiny, having watched her own husband go blind polishing glass. The wife of Mukesh's elder brother cooks for the whole family through smoke-filled eyes and veils her face before the male elders. The family is thus caught in the hereditary trade, unable to dream of anything beyond it — except Mukesh.

Firozabad's bangles are described in dazzling images — spirals of sunny gold, paddy green, royal blue, pink and purple, every colour born out of the seven colours of the rainbow, heaped in mounds and piled on handcarts. These are ornaments of joy, made for all the women in the land and symbolising a bride's suhaag, the auspiciousness of marriage. Yet the hands that make them belong to children and their parents sitting in dark hutments by flickering oil lamps, their eyes more adjusted to the dark than to the light outside. The makers lose their eyesight before they become adults; the old woman who makes symbols of marital fortune has never eaten one full meal in her life. The paradox — beauty for the buyer, blindness and hunger for the maker — is the sharpest indictment in the chapter.

Saheb — full name Saheb-e-Alam, meaning 'lord of the universe', of which he is unaware — is a young ragpicker whom the author encounters every morning 'scrounging for gold' in the garbage dumps of her neighbourhood. His family fled the storms that destroyed their fields in Dhaka and now lives in Seemapuri on the edge of Delhi. Saheb is innocent and trusting: he takes the author's half-joking school promise seriously and runs up asking, "Is your school ready?" He is cheerful and full of wonder — a found rupee makes his eyes light up — and roams the streets with his friends, one of an army of barefoot boys who appear like morning birds and disappear at noon. He watches tennis from behind the club fence and treasures the discarded shoes of a rich boy as 'a dream come true'. Yet his story darkens: he takes a job at a tea stall for 800 rupees and all his meals, and loses his carefree look, for the steel canister he carries belongs to his employer. Saheb is no longer his own master — a child whose spring is lost to hunger and labour.

Mukesh is a boy of Firozabad, born into a family that has made bangles for generations — the centre of India's glass-blowing industry. He is proud of small things: his eyes beam as he volunteers to take the author home, which he proudly says is being rebuilt. What marks him out is his daring. In a town where 'daring is not part of his growing up', Mukesh insists on being his own master and announces, "I will be a motor mechanic," looking straight into the author's eyes. He knows nothing about cars, but he will go to a garage and learn — and when told the garage is a long way from his home, he says simply, "I will walk." His dreams are modest and realistic: asked if he dreams of flying a plane, he says no, content to dream of the cars he sees hurtling down the streets of his town, for few airplanes fly over Firozabad. In his quiet determination, Mukesh stands out as the single flash of hope in a community whose ability to dream has been killed by mind-numbing toil.

The central theme of the chapter is the plight of street children forced into labour early in life and denied the opportunity of schooling. The sub-theme is the callousness of society and the political class to the sufferings of the poor. Anees Jung conveys this through two lives. Saheb, a ragpicker of Seemapuri, should be in school; instead he scrounges garbage dumps, waits for a school that is never built, and finally takes a tea-stall job that costs him his freedom. Mukesh, born into Firozabad's bangle trade, must fight the 'baggage' of caste and poverty that his fathers carried. Around them stand the 20,000 children in hot furnaces losing the brightness of their eyes, the barefoot armies on city roads, and women who have never eaten one full meal. The author uses irony and paradox — garbage as gold, bangles of every rainbow colour made in dark hutments — to show how the beauty and prosperity of the land rest on stolen childhoods.

The author identifies two worlds that together crush the children of Firozabad. The first is the world of the family, caught in a web of poverty and burdened by the stigma of the caste in which they are born; the grandmother's fatalism — "Can a god-given lineage ever be broken?" — and the father's inability to teach his sons anything but bangle-making keep the trade hereditary. The second is the vicious circle of the sahukars, the middlemen, the policemen, the keepers of law, the bureaucrats and the politicians, who profit from the status quo. Years of mind-numbing toil have killed initiative; the young men fear that if they organise a cooperative, they alone will be beaten and jailed; there is no leader among them. The child accepts the baggage before he is aware of it, as naturally as his father did. They can be freed only if the laws against child labour are enforced, schooling is made real and reachable, cooperatives are protected rather than prosecuted, and credit is made available so that the makers, not the middlemen, keep the fruit of their labour.

The chapter confronts us with children whose childhood is being stolen before our eyes — Saheb scrounging garbage dumps in the morning of his life, and Mukesh fated for the dark, blinding hutments of the bangle trade. As citizens, our first duty is to stop turning poverty into a spectacle: the author shows how casual, hollow promises — including her own glib advice — only deepen the betrayal of such children. We must demand that the laws which already exist be enforced: no child belongs in a glass furnace, and 20,000 children of Firozabad could be freed 'if the law' were applied. We must support real schooling near colonies like Seemapuri, so that a Saheb who says "When they build one, I will go" actually finds one built. Above all, we must respect the dignity of the poor and not explain away their barefootedness as tradition. A just society is one in which every child's spring — play, learning and hope — is protected, not sold for 800 rupees and all his meals.

Saheb and Mukesh are both poor boys robbed of schooling, but their circumstances differ. Saheb is a migrant ragpicker living in Seemapuri near Delhi, his family driven from Dhaka by storms that destroyed their fields; Mukesh belongs to a hereditary bangle-making family in Firozabad, bound by caste and karam. Saheb has no school in his neighbourhood and no trade to inherit — his survival is rag-picking, 'wrapped in wonder' when a coin turns up. Mukesh, by contrast, is born into a fixed occupation that has already claimed his family's eyes and his father's hopes. Their attitudes differ too: Saheb is trusting and carefree until the tea-stall job takes away his freedom, making him 'no longer his own master'. Mukesh shows a rarer quality — daring: he insists on becoming a motor mechanic and will walk the long way to a garage to learn. Saheb drifts with circumstances; Mukesh, the only one in his town to do so, resists them. Together they represent the two faces of lost childhood — one without opportunity, one with opportunity denied.

Anees Jung converts reportage into literature by clothing facts in poetic images. She uses hyperbole — 'Garbage to them is gold' — to make the ragpickers' dependence on waste visible. She uses irony in Saheb's name, 'lord of the universe', carried by a boy who owns nothing. Similes humanise the children: the barefoot boys 'appear like the morning birds and disappear at noon', and Savita's hands move 'mechanically like the tongs of a machine', turning child labour into the image of a machine. Metaphors structure the whole argument: the 'web of poverty', the 'vicious circle' of middlemen, Mukesh's dream that 'looms like a mirage', the 'baggage' a child cannot put down, and the sky of which 'few airplanes fly over Firozabad'. Most striking is the paradox of colour — rainbow-bright bangles made in dark hutments by children losing their eyesight. Through these devices, the chapter makes us not merely read about stolen childhoods but see and mourn them, which is literature's way of demanding change.