NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 4 The Cherry Tree (Ruskin Bond)

Q1.

I. Did you know that the banyan tree is the National Tree of India? Our country has age-old banyan trees. Some of them are: 1. The Great Banyan, located in Shibpur, Howrah, near Kolkata. 2. Dodda Aalada Mara, located in Kethohalli village, near Bengaluru. 3. Thimmamma Marrimanu, in Anantapur District in Andhra Pradesh. It was recorded as the largest tree specimen in the world in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1989.

Answer

This is a reading-and-finding-out task. Here is what each of the three trees is, so that you can add to it from your own research.

Tree	Where	What makes it remarkable
The Great Banyan	Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, Shibpur, Howrah, near Kolkata	Over 250 years old. Its main trunk decayed and was removed, yet the tree lives on through thousands of aerial roots — it now covers several acres and looks like a small forest, though it is one tree.
Dodda Aalada Mara ('big banyan tree')	Kethohalli village, near Bengaluru, Karnataka	Estimated at about 400 years old, spreading over roughly three hectares. Here too the original trunk is gone and the prop roots hold the canopy up.
Thimmamma Marrimanu	Anantapur District, Andhra Pradesh	Entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 1989 as the largest tree specimen in the world by canopy spread.

Why the banyan is the National Tree: A banyan drops aerial roots that reach the ground and thicken into new trunks, so a single tree spreads outward almost indefinitely and can outlive its own original trunk. That image — one root system supporting an ever-widening whole — is why it was chosen as a symbol of the country. It is also why a banyan is the traditional village meeting place; there is shade for everybody. The old woman in Waiting for the Rain is sheltering under exactly such a tree when Velu meets her.

Try this: Find the oldest tree in your own town or village. Ask an elder or the local municipal office how old it is, measure the distance around its trunk with a piece of string, and photograph it. A class set of these makes an excellent notice-board display.

Q2.

II. Kailash Sankhala, 'The Tiger Man of India', was an Indian biologist and conservationist. He carried out a census of the tigers in India in 1971. Later, because of his studies, he was appointed the first director of Project Tiger—an initiative to prevent the extinction of the Indian Tiger. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1992. Now, find more information about such Indian environmentalists and share with your classmates.

Answer

Method: For each environmentalist, find four things and no more — that keeps the presentation short and comparable: (1) who they are and where they worked, (2) the single problem they took on, (3) what they actually did, (4) what changed because of it. Use the school library, government websites such as those of the Ministry of Environment or the Padma Awards portal, and reliable news archives; note your source beside each fact.

Some Indians you could research:

Name	Known for
Sunderlal Bahuguna and Gaura Devi	Leaders of the Chipko Movement in Uttarakhand — villagers, mostly women, hugged trees to stop them from being felled.
Pandurang Hegde	Led the Appiko Movement in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, which grew directly out of Chipko.
Saalumarada Thimmakka	Planted and reared more than 8,000 trees along Karnataka's roads, beginning in 1948; Padma Shri.
Jadav Payeng	The Forest Man of India — turned about a thousand acres of barren sandbar in Assam into forest over thirty years; Padma Shri.
Salim Ali	The Birdman of India; his surveys and writing built Indian ornithology and saved wetlands such as Bharatpur.
Medha Patkar	Led the Narmada Bachao Andolan for people displaced by large dams.
Rajendra Singh	The Waterman of India — revived dried rivers in Rajasthan by building traditional johads (check dams).
Vandana Shiva	Work on seed conservation, biodiversity and farmers' rights.

Sample answer (one entry, in the form your classmates can copy):
Rajendra Singh, the ‘Waterman of India’. He works in the Alwar district of Rajasthan. The problem: wells had run dry and rivers such as the Arvari had stopped flowing, so villages were emptying. What he did: instead of importing new technology, he revived the old johad — a simple earthen check dam that traps monsoon runoff and lets it soak into the ground. Villagers built thousands of them with their own hands. What changed: the groundwater rose, several seasonal rivers began flowing through the year again, and farming returned to the region. He received the Stockholm Water Prize in 2015.

What ties them together: Not one of these people began with money or authority. They began with a place they knew well and a refusal to accept that it had to be lost — which is the same small, stubborn instinct with which Rakesh circled his four-inch sapling with pebbles.

NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 4 The Cherry Tree (Ruskin Bond) — Let us explore