NCERT Solutions for Class 5th English Chapter 9 A. Answer the following questions — Let us Think

Book page 108 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.

Who is the speaker in the poem?

Answer

The speaker is a school-going child.

We know this from three things the child himself tells us in the poem:

“When the gong sounds ten in the morning and I walk to school by our lane” — so he goes to school.
“When at four in the afternoon I come back from the school” — so he returns home in the afternoon.
“Just as it gets dark in the evening and my mother sends me to bed” — so he is still young enough to be sent to bed by his mother.

The whole poem is spoken in the child’s own voice. Every stanza ends with his wish: “I wish I were a hawker …”, “I wish I were a gardener …”, “I wish I were a watchman …”

Q2.

Why does the speaker want to be a hawker?

Answer

The speaker wants to be a hawker because the hawker seems free, and the child is not.

The poem says it plainly: “There is nothing to hurry him on, there is no road he must take, no place he must go to, no time when he must come home.” Nobody rushes the hawker. He may walk down any street he likes and go home whenever he likes.

The child’s own morning is the opposite. The gong sounds ten, and he must walk to school — by our lane, the same one every day. He has a road he must take, a place he must reach and a time by which he must reach it.

Why this matters: The child is not saying that selling bangles is easy. He is saying that the hawker’s day looks like it has no fences round it. What he really wishes for is a day of his own choosing.

Q3.

What does he like about the gardener?

Answer

He likes that the gardener can do as he pleases, get as dirty as he likes, and nobody scolds him for it.

The poem gives three reasons, one after another:

“He does what he likes with his spade” — nobody tells the gardener how to dig.
“He soils his clothes with dust” — he may get muddy, and that is fine.
“Nobody takes him to task if he gets baked in the sun or gets wet” — takes him to task means scolds him. Nobody scolds him for standing in the hot sun or in the rain.

That is why the stanza ends, “I wish I were a gardener digging away at the garden with nobody to stop me from digging.” The child is thinking of all the times he is told to keep his clothes clean and come out of the sun.

Q4.

What does the speaker compare the street lamp to?

Answer

The speaker compares the street-lamp to a giant with one red eye in its head.

The line is: “The lane is dark and lonely, and the street-lamp stands like a giant with one red eye in its head.”

Why the picture fits: A street-lamp is very tall and stands still, like a huge person. It has just one lamp burning at the top — one glowing eye, high up in its head. In the dark, lonely lane, that is exactly what a sleepy child at a window would see.

Name the device: This is a simile. A simile compares two different things using the word like or as. Here the street-lamp is compared to a giant, and the word that joins them is like.

Q5.

On the basis of the poem that you have read, share the daily schedule of the speaker.

Answer

The poem tells us three fixed points in the child’s day. Here is his schedule, taken straight from the poem.

Time	What the speaker does	Whom he sees	The line in the poem
Ten in the morning	The gong sounds. He walks to school by his lane.	The hawker, calling “Bangles, crystal bangles!”	“When the gong sounds ten in the morning and I walk to school by our lane”
Through the day	He is at school.	—	Understood from “I come back from the school”
Four in the afternoon	He comes back home from school.	The gardener, digging the ground	“When at four in the afternoon I come back from the school.”
Evening, as it gets dark	His mother sends him to bed. He looks out of his open window.	The watchman, walking up and down with his lantern	“Just as it gets dark in the evening and my mother sends me to bed”

What the schedule shows us: Every one of these three moments is decided by somebody else — the gong, the school, his mother. That is the whole point of the poem. The child’s day is neatly fenced in, and the people he watches seem to have no fences at all.

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