NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 2 Somebody's Mother — Let us do these activities before we read

Book page 70 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Recall a time you helped someone. Write two words describing: 1. What were your feelings after you did so? Share your answers with your classmates and teacher.

Answer

Two words are enough — choose precise ones rather than big ones.

Content and useful — the two the poem itself suggests, since the boy goes back to his friends “happy and well content”.
Other honest choices: relieved, light, proud, warm, quiet, glad.

Sample answer: Quietly glad. I helped a small boy in our lane find his way home after the bus dropped him at the wrong stop. I did not tell anyone at home about it, and I still felt good about it that night — which is how I learnt that the good feeling does not depend on being praised.

Tip: avoid the word “nice”. It says nothing. “Relieved”, “proud”, “embarrassed”, “useful” each say something different, and the poem is exactly about that difference — the boy is proud, and the poet is careful to show that his pride is gratitude, not vanity.

Q2.

2. What might have been the feelings of the person whom you helped?

Answer

Again, two words — and try to imagine feelings that are not simply “happy”, because a person who needs help often feels several things at once.

Grateful and relieved — the obvious pair.
But also, honestly: embarrassed, shy, surprised, safe, blessed.

Sample answer: Relieved and shy. The little boy stopped crying as soon as he saw a familiar gate, but he did not say thank you — he was too shy. I think being helped in front of strangers is not always comfortable, even when you need it.

Why this matters for the poem: the old woman in the poem is “meek”, “timid” and “afraid to stir”. She never asks for help. Recognising that being helped can be awkward is exactly what makes the boy's behaviour so good — he offers rather than seizes: “I'll help you cross, if you wish to go.”

Q3.

Work in pairs. Read the words given below. Circle the words you would associate with an elderly person and underline the words you would associate with a school student. Share the reasons for your choices with your classmates and teacher. strong, worried, trembling, hastening, firm, bent, merry, grey, slow, guide, helpful

Answer

An elderly person (circle)	A school student (underline)
worried, trembling, bent, grey, slow	strong, hastening, firm, merry, guide, helpful

Reasons:

worried, trembling, bent, grey, slow — all describe the effect of age on the body and the mind: unsteady hands, a stooped back, white hair, careful steps and the anxiety that comes with feeling unsafe.
strong, firm, hastening, merry — describe energy and confidence: a body that can hurry and a mind not yet burdened.
guide and helpful — these are the interesting two. They belong to the student here not because the young are naturally kinder, but because in this poem it is the boy who does the guiding and the helping.

Why this activity comes before the poem: every one of these eleven words is in the poem, and the poem sets them against each other in pairs — trembling against firm and strong, slow against hastened, bent against the boy's upright walk. Sorting them now means you will hear the contrast when you read.

Worth discussing: is it fair to attach worried and slow to all elderly people? Many are neither. The poem describes one woman on one cold day — the sorting is about this poem, not about old age in general.

Q4.

Read the lines. “The woman was old and ragged and grey / And bent with the chill of the Winter's day.” Select the suitable meaning of ‘ragged’ as used in these lines. There are other four meanings given below. Discuss with your classmates and teacher. 1. (of clothes) old and torn; synonym: shabby — a ragged jacket 2. Having an outline, an edge, or a surface that is not straight or even — a ragged coastline 3. Not smooth or regular; not showing control or careful preparation — I could hear the sound of his ragged breathing. / Their performance was still very ragged. 4. (Informal) very tired, especially after physical effort — The elderly man was ragged after climbing the stairs.

Answer

The right meaning is 1 — (of clothes) old and torn; shabby.

How the line proves it: “old and ragged and grey” is a list of three, joined by and…and. The three words describe three visible things — her age, her clothes and her hair. Meanings 2, 3 and 4 are all about shape, sound or tiredness, none of which the eye can take in at a glance the way this line asks it to. Meaning 4 is the tempting one, because the woman is tired — but “ragged” in that sense goes with an event (“ragged after climbing the stairs”), and here there is no such event.

Why the poet needed this word: “ragged” is the poem's only direct hint that the woman is poor. That single word makes the boy's later line — “For all she's aged and poor and slow” — feel earned rather than sudden.

A word about the exercise itself: one word, four meanings, and only the surrounding line can tell you which is in play. This is what a dictionary entry is really for — not to give you “the” meaning, but to give you the choices.

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