Q1.
Let us Read — Fit Body, Fit Mind, Fit Nation. Read the poem aloud and enjoy it.
Answer
Here is the whole poem. Read it aloud once slowly. Then read it again, and clap softly on the last word of every stanza.
Active boy Anant,
plays the game of hockey,
even when the ground is rocky.
Graceful girl Geeta,
practices on her skates,
and learns daily from her mistakes.
Little boy Lhamo,
proudly plays a guitar,
while his friend joins him with a sitar.
Swift girl Shabana,
after winning a cycle race,
happily celebrates her fastest pace.
And then there is me,
musical Meena,
singing in rhythm.
Cheerful children everywhere,
playing is a joy!
for every girl and boy.
plays the game of hockey,
even when the ground is rocky.
Graceful girl Geeta,
practices on her skates,
and learns daily from her mistakes.
Little boy Lhamo,
proudly plays a guitar,
while his friend joins him with a sitar.
Swift girl Shabana,
after winning a cycle race,
happily celebrates her fastest pace.
And then there is me,
musical Meena,
singing in rhythm.
Cheerful children everywhere,
playing is a joy!
for every girl and boy.
What each stanza says:
- Anant. He is active. He plays hockey. The ground is rocky, which means it is stony and bumpy, but he still plays.
- Geeta. She is graceful. She practises on her roller skates every day. When she makes a mistake, she learns from it.
- Lhamo. He is little. He plays the guitar, and he is proud of it. His friend plays the sitar along with him.
- Shabana. She is swift, which means very fast. She wins a cycle race. Then she happily celebrates her fastest pace.
- Meena. She is musical. She sings in rhythm — that means she keeps time with the beat. Meena is the one telling us the poem, because she says “And then there is me”.
- The last stanza. Cheerful children are playing everywhere. Playing is a joy for every girl and boy.
Why the lines sound nice: The last two lines of each stanza rhyme — their end words sound the same. hockey / rocky, skates / mistakes, guitar / sitar, race / pace, joy / boy. Rhyme makes a poem easy to remember and fun to say.
Why every child is named this way: Each name begins with the same letter as the quality beside it — Active Anant, Graceful Geeta, Little Lhamo, Swift Shabana, musical Meena. This makes the line roll off the tongue. You will use this idea yourself in Let us Think, part A.
What the title means: A fit body comes from playing and moving. A fit mind comes from learning from mistakes and staying cheerful. When all the children of a country are fit in body and mind, we get a fit nation.
Look at the pictures on pages 67–68: Anant is running with a hockey stick, Geeta is roller-skating on a path, Lhamo is sitting and playing a green guitar, Shabana is racing on a blue cycle, and Meena is singing in a field of flowers with a butterfly beside her. On page 68 all the children are together — one with a medal, one with a cycle, one with a hockey stick and one with a guitar.
A printing slip to notice: The poem prints “practices on her skates”. In Indian and British English the doing word is spelt practises, and practice with a c is the naming word. Also, the last stanza begins a new line with a small letter — “playing is a joy! / for every girl and boy.” Read them as the book prints them, but write practises and a capital F in your own work.