NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 1 The Wit that Won Hearts (prose) — Discuss in pairs
Book page 2 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
1. Why are qualities like humour and wit important in a person?
Answer
Because they let a person say a difficult thing without starting a fight. Humour lowers the temperature of a situation; wit finds the shortest way to the truth inside it. Together they make criticism bearable, so the listener can change his mind without losing face.
They also matter for the person himself. Someone who can laugh at a setback recovers from it faster, keeps his judgement clear under pressure, and is easier to work with. In this story the whole palace is “quiet and forlorn” for weeks because nobody has the wit to say the one obvious sentence — everybody yawns — in a way the king can hear.
Why it works: A direct correction attacks the person; a joke attacks the mistake and leaves the person free to walk away from it. That is the difference Tenali Rama uses.
Q2.
2. Why do you think kings and queens preferred to have witty people among their courtiers?
Answer
For three reasons, and only one of them is entertainment.
They could tell the ruler the truth. A courtier who contradicts a king risks his position. A witty courtier can wrap the same truth in a joke, so the king corrects himself and nobody has been defied.
They solved problems others called impossible. The text says Rama’s “clever solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems made him a beloved figure”. A quick mind is useful in negotiation, in disputes and in emergencies, not only at a feast.
They kept the court alive. A ruler surrounded only by flatterers hears nothing new. Wit brings surprise, and surprise brings fresh thinking.
Q3.
3. If you were asked to solve a disagreement between two people, what approach would you take?
Answer
I would first hear both sides separately, because people speak more honestly when the other person is not in the room. Then I would try to find the single fact both of them agree on, and start from there rather than from the accusation.
Most quarrels turn out to rest on a misreading, not a wrong. So I would look for the misreading first — as Rama did, when he saw that the quarrel was not about a poem at all but about one yawn. Finally I would avoid deciding who was right in front of an audience; a person who is proved wrong publicly usually digs in instead of apologising.
Check it yourself: Notice what Rama does not do — he never tells the king he was wrong. He supplies the evidence and lets the king pass his own verdict. That is why it works.
Q4.
4. Have you ever been in a situation where a small misunderstanding led to a big problem? How was it resolved?
Answer
This asks for your own experience, so answer it in your own words. A good answer needs four things: the small trigger, how it grew, what finally cleared it up, and what you learnt.
Sample answer: Last term I did not reply to a friend’s message because my phone was with my mother all evening. He thought I was annoyed with him about a cricket match, and by the next morning he had stopped sitting with me. Two more days passed and other friends began taking sides. It ended only when our class teacher made us pair up for a project and he finally asked me straight out why I was angry. I was not angry at all. Three days of silence had grown out of one unanswered message. I learnt that the cheapest way to end a misunderstanding is to ask the question early, while it is still small enough to be embarrassing.