NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 4 Waiting for the Rain (Kamakshi Balasubramanian) — Let us do these activities before we read

Book page 185 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

I. Have you ever waited for the rains? Why?

Answer

Answer from your own life, and give the reason — that is what the 'Why?' is for.

Sample answer: Yes. Last May our city had water supply for only an hour a day and the tank on our terrace was always empty by evening. All through those weeks everyone kept looking at the sky, and my mother would say the same thing every morning: ‘Not a cloud.’ When the first rain finally came, our whole street came out to stand in it.

Why the book asks this first: The story is about waiting, not about rain. Before you meet Velu, it wants you to remember what waiting for something you cannot hurry actually feels like — because that feeling is the whole first half of the story.

Q2.

II. How do you feel when it rains after a long time?

Answer

Name the feeling and one physical detail — the detail is what makes the answer real.

Sample answer: Relieved, and suddenly light. The first thing that changes is the smell — the dry ground gives off that damp, earthy smell before you have even felt a drop. Then the heat breaks, the dust settles, and everything that was grey turns green again within two days.

How the writer uses this feeling: Kamakshi Balasubramanian ends the story on it and spends only four lines doing so: a cool breeze on Velu's back, a tiny drop on his shoulder, clouds gathering, and then 'Velu ran home, laughing and happy.' She does not describe his joy at all — she lets a man run, and the reader supplies the rest.

Q3.

III. Why do you think the farmers wait for the rains?

Answer

Because for a farmer without irrigation, rain is not weather — it is the beginning of the whole year's work. Velu says it himself, in the plainest possible chain of reasoning:

'Without the rains I can't till the land.
If I don't till the land no crop will grow.
What will happen to me? How shall I feed my family?'

Hard earth cannot be ploughed. The story shows exactly this — 'the earth hardened, crusted and cracked', and 'the fields lay untended'.
Seeds cannot germinate without moisture, and a standing crop cannot survive without water.
No crop means no food and no income. There is no wage at the end of a failed season.
Most Indian farming is rain-fed. A farmer with no canal or borewell has only the monsoon.

Link to the poem: This is exactly why the men in Harvest Hymn call Varuna's rain a 'mercy' rather than a bounty. Sunlight is certain; rain is not.

Q4.

IV. Discuss in groups what happens when you wait for something or someone for a long period of time. 1. How do you spend the waiting period? 2. What do you think about? 3. How do you feel?

Answer

These three questions are best answered as one connected reflection, because waiting has a shape — you do something, you think something, and the feeling changes as it goes on.

Question	What usually happens	What Velu does
1. How do you spend the waiting period?	You keep busy to stop yourself checking; you try whatever might speed things up; eventually you stop and rest.	He goes on waking early — 'Rain or no rain, a farmer wakes up early.' He refuses the astrologers, travels all the way to the city weather office, and finally sits down under a tree because he is tired and thirsty.
2. What do you think about?	Whether it will ever come; whether you have done something wrong; what you will do if it does not.	'I wonder what I have done to deserve this. I have worked hard and honestly. Yet I am being punished.'
3. How do you feel?	Hopeful at first, then restless, then dejected — and, if it ends, a relief far bigger than the thing you were waiting for.	'The farmers lived entirely on hope'; then he walks back 'tired, and dejected'; then he 'ran home, laughing and happy'.

Sample answer: When I waited for my board results I could not settle to anything, so I cleaned my whole shelf twice. I kept thinking about what I would do if the marks were bad, which was useless, because thinking about it did not change a single number. What I remember most is how tiring the waiting itself was — and how quickly the whole month of worry vanished the moment the result was out.

What the story adds to this: The old woman gives Velu an idea most of us never reach on our own — that a pause is not the same as a punishment. 'The land lies undisturbed, staring at the sky, resting… And when the rains come, it will spring back into activity, fresh and ready for your crop.' Waiting, in her account, is not empty time. It is time in which something is being repaired.

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