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NCERT Solutions for Class 5th The World Around Us Chapter 10 Story 3: Chilli—A Spice that Changed our Lives! — Activity 3

Book page 168 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.
1. Using a coloured string, trace the journey of chillies from South America to India on the globe.
Answer

Fix one end of the string on South America and bring it across the Atlantic Ocean to Portugal, then down round the bottom of Africa and across the Indian Ocean to India's west coast. When you have finished you will see that the chilli travelled more than half way round the world.

How to trace it, step by step:

  1. Take a bright red piece of wool, about 60 cm long — red, so that it is easy to tell apart from the bird's string.
  2. Find South America on the globe. Fix one end there.
  3. Carry the string north-east across the Atlantic Ocean to Portugal, on the western edge of Europe. This is where the travellers who carried the chilli came from.
  4. Now bring it south along the west coast of Africa, right round the southern tip of Africa.
  5. Turn north-east across the Indian Ocean and fix the other end on India's west coast.
  6. Stand back and look at how much water the string crossed and how little land.
Stage of the journeyWhat it tells you
South America → PortugalThe chilli first went to Europe. It did not come straight to India
Portugal → round AfricaThere was no short cut then. Ships had to sail all the way round the southern tip of Africa
Across the Indian Ocean → India's west coastShips arrived on the west coast, which is why chilli spread inland from there
The whole routeAlmost entirely over water, and it took months. This was 400 to 500 years ago, in sailing ships
Why the route matters: The chilli did not walk to India and it did not blow here on the wind. People carried it — in a sack, on a wooden ship, for months. That is the difference between Story 1 and Story 3. The bird travels by itself; the chilli travelled because human beings moved, traded and settled. Both are journeys, but only one of them needed a boat.
Keep the strings up: Leave the bird's string and the chilli's string on the globe together. One comes in from the north, one comes in from the west. When you add the marigold from Mexico and the cows going out to Brazil, the globe itself becomes your answer to Activity 5.
Q2.
2. Potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, cashews, and many other foods have similar stories. They all travelled a long way to reach India and now we enjoy these every day in our food. Find out and write the story of any one of them.
Answer

Pick one, find out three things about it — where it came from, who brought it, and what it changed — and write a short story in your own words. Below is a full sample for the potato, and short notes on the other three so you can choose.

Sample answer — The Story of the Potato

The potato did not begin in a field in Punjab or Bihar. It began high up in the cold mountains of South America, in the lands we now call Peru and Bolivia. Farmers there grew potatoes thousands of years ago, in hundreds of different colours and shapes — purple, red, yellow and blue. The potato grew well where hardly anything else would, and it kept whole villages fed.

About five hundred years ago, sailors from Spain and Portugal reached South America and took the potato back with them across the sea to Europe. At first Europeans did not trust it and would not eat it. Slowly they discovered that it grew easily, stored well and filled the stomach, and it became one of Europe's most important foods.

Then the Portuguese brought it to the west coast of India, about four hundred years ago. Its Portuguese name, batata, is still the name we use — batata, aloo. It was planted in the hills first, where the cool weather suited it, and then it spread across the plains.

Today it is everywhere. There is no samosa without potato, no aloo paratha, no aloo gobi, no dum aloo, no chaat, no packet of chips. India now grows an enormous quantity of potatoes every year. And yet, if you had gone into an Indian kitchen five hundred years ago and asked for aloo, nobody would have known what you meant.

Short notes on the other three

FoodWhere it came fromWho brought itWhat it changed in India
TomatoSouth America and MexicoPortuguese travellers, about 400–500 years agoBefore it, we got sourness from tamarind, amchur, kokum and curd. Now tomato is in nearly every gravy
Peanut (groundnut, moongphali)South AmericaPortuguese tradersBecame a big crop in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. Gave us groundnut oil, chikki and winter evening snacks
Cashew (kaju)BrazilPortuguese, planted along the Konkan and Goa coastThe trees held the loose coastal soil together. Gave us kaju katli and a whole industry in Goa, Kerala and Konkan
What all four stories have in common: Every one of them came across the sea from the Americas, at about the same time, on Portuguese ships. Within a few generations they had become so ordinary that people forgot they were ever new. That is how a culture grows — not by keeping everything out, but by taking in what is useful and making it its own.
How to find out more: Ask the oldest person you know whether their grandparents ate potatoes and tomatoes daily. Look at old recipes in your family. And check the name — many of these foods still carry a foreign name inside an Indian word, like batata, and the name itself is a clue to where the food came from.
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