NCERT Solutions for Class 5th The World Around Us Chapter 10 The closing questions of the chapter and of the book — Let us reflect

Choose one idea from the chapter, imagine one person carrying it, and follow that person on the journey. A story needs a person, a place and a change — not a list of facts.

What your story must contain:

1. The idea you have chosen, named in the first few lines.
2. A person who carries it — a sailor, a trader, a cook, a teacher, a farmer.
3. The journey — how far, how long, and how hard it was.
4. The moment somebody in the new land tries it for the first time.
5. The change — what people did differently afterwards. This is the part the question really asks for, so do not leave it out.

Sample answer — The Little Red Fire

Diogo was a cook on a Portuguese ship, and he was tired of the sea. For four months the ship had crossed water, then more water. Now, at last, the low green coast of India was in front of them and the air smelt of wet earth and smoke.

In his pocket Diogo carried a small cloth bag. In it were dried red pods he had picked up in a market in South America, on the other side of the world. The people there had crushed them into their food and it had set his mouth on fire. He had laughed and coughed and asked for more.

On the shore he found a cook called Meenakshi grinding black pepper on a stone. She was making a pot of curry for the traders. Diogo pointed at his little bag and then at her pot. She frowned. She broke one pod, touched a seed to her tongue — and her eyes went wide.

She used half a pod in the pot that day. The traders emptied it. The next week she planted four seeds behind her kitchen, in the loose red soil at the edge of the coconut trees. It rained. The plants grew fast; they liked this land better than they had liked their own.

Her neighbour asked for seeds. Her neighbour's cousin, who was going inland, carried a handful in a knot at the end of his dhoti. Within a hundred years the little red fire had reached every kitchen from the coast to the mountains — Andhra, Kashmir, Nagaland, Rajasthan.

And it changed things. Food could now be made hot cheaply, because chilli grew in every backyard, while pepper had to be bought. Pickles kept longer. Whole dishes were invented that could not have existed before. Today a child in India tastes chilli in almost the first solid food she is given — and not one person in a thousand knows that it sailed here in a Portuguese sailor's pocket.

Other ideas you could write about instead

One clear way: “I will close the tap while I brush my teeth and while I soap my hands.” Say it as one sentence, in the first person, about something you will really do — not “we should save water”, but “I will do this”.

A choice of real actions — pick one and write it your way

Sample answer: One way I can care for the Earth is by carrying a cloth bag and a steel bottle every day. My family used to bring home four or five plastic bags from the market every week, and I used to buy water in plastic bottles on school trips. Since I started carrying my own bag and bottle, we hardly bring any plastic home. I have also made one cloth bag for my grandmother, so she does not take the shopkeeper's plastic bag either.

Choose one Indian thing, and then answer four questions about it: what it is, where in India it comes from, why other countries would want it, and what it would change for them. That turns a name into a real answer.

Sample answer — Millets (bajra, jowar and ragi)

The item I would send from India to the world is millets — bajra, jowar and ragi. These are old Indian grains. They have been grown in Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka and many other dry parts of India for thousands of years, long before wheat and rice became the main foods everywhere.

Millets have one quality the world badly needs: they grow with very little water. Rice needs a field standing in water. Bajra grows in sandy soil in a place where it rains only a few times a year. Many countries are now short of water, and their summers are getting hotter. A grain that needs so little water is exactly what such places need.

They are also very good for health. Ragi has a lot of calcium, which is good for bones. Bajra and jowar have plenty of iron and fibre. They fill you for a long time. In a world where many people fall ill from eating too much refined food, this matters.

Millets would travel the way sugar travelled from India long ago — through trade, and through people cooking them and others liking the taste. Farmers in dry countries would grow them and use less water. Families would get a cheaper, healthier grain. And Indian farmers who grow millets would earn more from them, so those old seeds would be looked after instead of being forgotten.

Other things you could write about