TOPIC 3 OF 19
Lost Spring – Part 1
🎓 Class 12
English
CBSE
Theory
Ch 2 — Lost Spring
⏱ ~35 min
🌐 Language: [gtranslate]
📖 English Passage Assessment
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This CBSE English Passage Assessment will be based on: Lost Spring – Part 1
Assessment Format:
• 2 Short Answer Questions (2 marks each) = 4 marks
• 2 Fill in the Blanks Questions (1 mark each) = 2 marks
• 2 Short Answer Questions (1 mark each) = 2 marks
• 2 Multiple Choice Questions (1 mark each) = 2 marks
Total: 8 Questions, 10 Marks
📖 English Grammar Assessment
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This CBSE English Grammar Assessment will be based on: Lost Spring – Part 1
Assessment Format:
• 10 Randomized Grammar Questions (1 mark each)
• Question Types: Fill in the Blanks, MCQs, Error Identification, Reported Speech, Sentence Completion
Total: 10 Questions, 10 Marks
📖 English Vocabulary Assessment
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This English Vocabulary assessment will be based on: Lost Spring – Part 1
Targeting Vocabulary & Usage with Intermediate difficulty.
Before You Begin — Setting the Context
Lost Spring is a work of literary journalism — it blurs the line between reportage and literature. Anees Jung spent time with the poorest children of India and transformed their stories into art. Enter the text with these questions in mind.
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Vocabulary Warm-Up — "Notice these expressions":
scrounging for goldRummaging desperately through waste in the hope of finding something valuable.
perpetual state of povertyA condition of poverty that is constant, unending, and structural rather than temporary.
slog their daylight hoursTo toil exhaustingly through the entire day; to labour without rest from morning to evening.
dark hutmentsCramped, poorly lit temporary shelters — hovels where light and air barely penetrate.
roof over his headThe bare minimum of shelter; having somewhere to live, however basic.
imposed the baggage on the childThe weight of inherited poverty, caste, and tradition forced upon a child before they can resist or choose.
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Anticipation Guide: Anees Jung says she feels hollow when she glibly advises Saheb to "go to school." Why might giving advice feel hollow when the structural conditions for following that advice do not exist?
Advice without access to structural support is a form of privilege — it assumes that individual will is sufficient to overcome systemic obstacles. When there is no school in the neighbourhood, when a family depends on a child's labour for survival, when the social architecture offers no alternative pathway, advice such as "go to school" reproduces the existing power imbalance. It places the burden of change on the most vulnerable without offering any of the resources needed to effect that change. This is what the author recognises — and the recognition itself is a form of literary honesty.
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Predict: The chapter has two sections — one about Saheb, a ragpicker in Delhi, and another about Mukesh, a bangle-maker's son in Firozabad. What do you think they might have in common, despite living in different cities and different industries?
Both are children whose spring — their childhood, their capacity for play, learning, and dreaming freely — has been stolen by poverty and structural exploitation. Both are caught in systems (the garbage economy, the bangle industry) that perpetuate themselves by consuming children. And both carry within them flickers of a dream — however distant or impossible — that make their stories simultaneously heartbreaking and quietly inspiring.
About the Author
Section I — "Sometimes I find a Rupee in the Garbage" (Saheb's Story)
Saheb-e-Alam — Lord of the Universe Among the Garbage Dumps
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Each morning, the author encounters Saheb as he moves through the garbage dumps of her neighbourhood — scrounging methodically through the refuse, eyes scanning for anything of value. She asks him why he does this. "I have nothing else to do," he answers, turning away. She asks where his home is; he can barely describe it. Saheb left Dhaka long ago, swept out of his village by floods that erased the green fields his mother still speaks of with pain. Now he rummages among the city's discarded things, in search of what the city has thrown away. Irony
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The author tells him to go to school. She hears the hollowness in her own words the instant they are spoken. "There is no school in my neighbourhood," says Saheb simply. "When they build one, I will go." She half-jokes: "If I start a school, will you come?" He says yes, smiling broadly. A few days later he appears at her door, eyes bright: "Is your school ready?" She is embarrassed. Promises like hers, she reflects, are everywhere in his world — and none of them are kept. Irony
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After months of encounters, she finally asks his name. "Saheb-e-Alam," he announces, unaware that his name means Lord of the Universe. Irony The contrast between this magnificent title and his actual existence — a barefoot boy among garbage bags — is both heartbreaking and quietly comic. He roams the lanes with an army of similarly dispossessed children, appearing like morning birds and vanishing by noon. The author has learned to recognise each face over the months. One child wears no sandals; his mother has not brought them down from the shelf. Another wears mismatched shoes. A third has never owned a pair of shoes in his life. The author wonders: is it poverty, or has it become tradition to stay barefoot?
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She recalls a story from Udipi — a man who, as a boy, used to pray at a temple for a pair of shoes. Thirty years later, when she visits the temple, the new priest's son arrives in a school uniform, socks and shoes intact. The prayer of another generation has been answered for him. But for the ragpickers of Seemapuri — the sprawling settlement on the periphery of Delhi — the answer has not yet come.
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Seemapuri is a strange geography: physically on the edge of Delhi, but metaphorically miles away from it. The inhabitants — squatters who arrived from Bangladesh in 1971 — have lived for over three decades in structures of mud with roofs of tin and tarpaulin, without drainage, sewage, or running water. Ten thousand ragpickers inhabit this place. They have no formal identity, no permits, but they have ration cards — proof enough to vote, sufficient to buy grain. Survival, the author observes, trumps identity. Irony
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For Saheb's community, garbage is not refuse — it is livelihood. Garbage to them is gold. Hyperbole It is their daily bread, their shelter's rent, their children's future. But for the children, garbage carries something extra — the possibility of wonder. "I sometimes find a rupee," Saheb says, his eyes alight, "even a ten-rupee note!" When you might find a silver coin in a heap of rubbish, you do not stop looking. For adults, the garbage heap is grim necessity; for children, it shimmers with the possibility of the unexpected. Contrast
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The author sees Saheb one morning watching two young men in white playing tennis at the neighbourhood club, his face pressed against the fence. "I like the game," he says, content to watch. He goes inside sometimes when the gatekeeper is absent and uses the swing. That morning he is wearing cast-off tennis shoes — discarded by some wealthy boy because of a small hole. Saheb does not mind. For someone who has walked barefoot his entire life, a shoe with a hole is still a dream realised. Irony Yet the game itself — the smooth, privileged world behind the fence — remains entirely out of his reach. Symbolism
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Then one morning Saheb appears with a steel canister, making his way to a tea stall down the road. He has a job now — 800 rupees a month and all his meals. But his face, the author notices, has lost its carefree light. The steel canister seems heavier than the plastic bag he used to carry. The bag had been his own — a ragpicker's freedom, however desperate. The canister belongs to the owner of the tea stall. Saheb, who had been his own master in the rubble, is now another person's employee. The loss is not material; it is existential. He is no longer his own master.
Read and Find Out — Saheb's Story
Q1. What is Saheb looking for in the garbage dumps? Where does he live, and where has he come from?
Saheb is searching through garbage dumps for anything of value — coins, notes, salvageable materials that can be sold. He lives in Seemapuri, a densely inhabited squatter settlement on the periphery of Delhi, without proper sanitation, running water, or legal status. He came originally from Dhaka (Bangladesh), his family having fled floods that destroyed their fields and home. He has no clear memory of his original home — it exists for him only through his mother's descriptions.
Q2. What explanations does the author offer for why the children do not wear footwear?
The author offers two possible explanations, both critically examined. First, the official explanation: in some communities it is a tradition to go barefoot. Second, the author's own scepticism: she wonders whether this "tradition" is simply a rationalisation — a way of explaining away what is actually a perpetual state of poverty. The children's own responses are telling: one child's mother has not brought the sandals down from the shelf; another has mismatched shoes; a third has never owned shoes in his life. The "tradition" explanation cannot account for these individual variations — what unites them is the inability to afford proper footwear.
Q3. Is Saheb happy working at the tea stall? Explain.
The author suggests, through telling observation rather than direct statement, that Saheb is not happy. His face has lost its carefree expression. The steel canister he carries for his employer seems heavier, symbolically and psychologically, than the plastic bag he used to carry for himself as a ragpicker. The distinction the author draws is profound: as a ragpicker, Saheb was poor but autonomous — the bag was his, his time was his, his finds were his. As a tea-stall worker, he belongs to someone else's schedule and economy. He has traded a desperate, childlike freedom for a marginal security — and the price, the story implies, is visible on his face.
Section II — "I want to drive a car" (Mukesh's Story)
Mukesh — A Dream in the Dust of Firozabad
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Mukesh is different. He insists — quietly, persistently — that he wants to be his own master. "I will be a motor mechanic," he announces to the author with a certainty that surprises her. Does he know anything about cars? "I will learn to drive a car," he says, looking directly into her eyes. His dream floats like a mirage above the dust of Firozabad — a city defined by bangles. Simile Every other family in this town is engaged in the making of glass bangles. Firozabad is the beating heart of India's glass-blowing industry, where families have spent generations bent over furnaces, welding rings of coloured glass for the women of the nation.
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Mukesh's family is part of this industry. None of them know — or pretend not to know — that it is illegal for children to work in the furnaces. The temperatures are extreme; the workspace is a dingy, airless cell; the work destroys vision over time. Twenty thousand children, the author estimates, are slogging their daylight hours in these conditions, slowly losing the brightness of their eyes in the darkness. Imagery
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Mukesh leads the author through the lanes of Firozabad to his home — past hovels with crumbling walls and crowded rooms where human beings and animals share space, past stinking lanes choked with refuse. His house is half-built, roofed with dead grass. His sister-in-law, barely older than a girl herself, is cooking the evening meal for the whole family. She withdraws behind a broken wall and draws her veil closer to her face when the elder men enter — this is the custom. Symbolism The patriarch of the family — a bangle-maker through decades of toil — has managed to build a house, but has not been able to send his sons to school. He has taught them only what he knows: the making of bangles.
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Mukesh's grandmother accepts their fate with the language of caste determinism. "Can a god-given lineage ever be broken?" she implies. Born into the bangle-maker's caste, they see nothing but bangles. The colour of bangles fills the lanes — sunny gold, paddy green, royal blue, pink, purple — spiralling in heaps in yards, piled on handcarts, pushed by young men along the narrow alleys of the shanty town. Imagery And in the dark hutments, by the light of flickering oil lamps, boys and girls sit alongside their parents, welding glass into circles. Their eyes adjust to the dark. That, the author notes, is exactly the problem — and the tragedy.
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Savita, a young girl in a drab pink dress, solders glass pieces, her hands moving like the tongs of a machine. Simile The author wonders if she understands the cultural significance of what she is making — the bangle symbolises a married woman's auspiciousness in Indian tradition. One day, Savita will become a bride; red bangles will be rolled onto her wrists. She will then understand what she has been making all these years. But the old woman beside her — who has had bangles on her wrists her whole life — says with a voice drained of joy: "Ek waqt ser bhar khana bhi nahin khaya" — not even one full meal in a lifetime. She has made bangles for all the women of the land; she herself has had neither beauty nor sustenance from that labour. Irony
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The author asks the young men why they do not organise themselves into a cooperative. The answer reveals the full weight of the system that traps them: "If we organise, the police will come, beat us, and drag us to jail for doing something illegal." There is no leader, no one who can help them see differently. The conversation moves in a spiral — from poverty to apathy, from apathy to exploitation, from exploitation back to poverty. The author sees two distinct worlds: one of the family, trapped in poverty and the stigma of caste; the other of the sahukars, middlemen, police, and politicians who have collectively imposed the baggage on the child that he cannot put down.
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But Mukesh still dares to dream. "I want to be a motor mechanic." The garage is far from his home — he will walk. "Do you also dream of flying a plane?" she asks. He falls silent. "No," he says finally, staring at the ground, with an embarrassment that has not yet become regret. He dreams of cars — the ones he sees on the roads of Firozabad. Very few aeroplanes fly over Firozabad. Symbolism His dream is bounded by what he can see. But within those bounds, it is real, and it is his — and that, perhaps, is where the story finds its fragile note of hope.
Read and Find Out — Mukesh's Story
Q4. What makes Firozabad famous? What are the hazards of working in its glass bangle industry?
Firozabad is famous as the centre of India's glass-blowing and bangle-making industry. It supplies bangles to women across the country. The hazards of working in the industry include: working in extreme heat near glass furnaces; operating in cramped, dark, airless cells without ventilation; prolonged exposure to glass dust which causes progressive deterioration of eyesight; and child labour under conditions that are illegal but unregulated in practice. Workers — including children — frequently lose their vision before reaching adulthood. The contrast between the delicate beauty of the bangles and the brutal conditions of their production is one of the essay's central paradoxes.
Q5. How is Mukesh's attitude to his situation different from that of his family?
His family — father, grandmother, sister-in-law — have accepted their situation as fate, destiny, and the will of the caste into which they were born. The grandmother asks rhetorically whether a "god-given lineage" can ever be broken — implying the answer is no. The father has transmitted only what he knows: bangle-making. The sister-in-law maintains the customs of veiling and deference without question. Mukesh, by contrast, asserts a specific, personal dream: to be a motor mechanic. His refusal to accept the caste-determined script of his life, however modest and potentially unrealisable his dream may be, represents a quiet act of individual resistance against the collective resignation that surrounds him. The author is "cheered" by this flash of daring.
Vocabulary — Word Power from Both Sections
Key Words and Expressions
scrounging
verb (present participle)
Searching through discarded materials or begging for food and resources; rummaging desperately through waste.
"Scrounging for gold in the garbage dumps of my neighbourhood."
periphery
noun
The outer edge or boundary of an area; the margins, as opposed to the centre.
"Seemapuri, a place on the periphery of Delhi yet miles away from it, metaphorically."
squatters
noun (plural)
People who occupy unused or abandoned land/buildings without legal permission or ownership rights.
"Those who live here are squatters who came from Bangladesh in 1971."
apathy
noun
Lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern; indifference to one's own situation, often born of exhaustion and hopelessness.
"Their talk moves in a spiral from poverty to apathy to greed and injustice."
mirage
noun
An optical illusion in a desert; figuratively, something that appears to exist but is illusory or unattainable.
"His dream looms like a mirage amidst the dust of streets."
hutments
noun (plural)
A group of huts or temporary shelters; a settlement of makeshift housing structures.
"In dark hutments, next to lines of flames of flickering oil lamps, sit boys and girls welding glass."
desolation
noun
A state of complete emptiness, abandonment, and bleakness; profound sadness and loneliness.
"The temple was now drowned in an air of desolation."
stigma
noun
A mark of social disgrace or disapproval associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.
"Caught in a web of poverty, burdened by the stigma of caste in which they are born."
cooperative
noun
A collectively owned and democratically managed business or organisation, where members share profits and decision-making.
"Why not organise yourselves into a cooperative?" the author asks the young men of Firozabad.
Thematic Web — Lost Spring
The Stolen Childhood — Core Themes
Click any theme node to explore its significance across both stories.
Grinding Poverty — Structural, Not Individual: Both Saheb and Mukesh are not poor because of individual failing — they are poor because the systems around them are designed to keep them that way. Saheb's community in Seemapuri has no legal identity, no running water, no educational institution. Mukesh's family is trapped in an industry where middlemen, moneylenders, and corrupt officials form a closed circuit that extracts maximum labour for minimum reward. Jung's essay is careful to distinguish between poverty as individual misfortune and poverty as a structural condition produced by specific social, political, and economic arrangements. The repeated phrase "perpetual state of poverty" indicates something systemic, not incidental.
Child Labour — Illegal, Invisible, and Sustained: Jung notes explicitly that it is illegal for children to work in the glass furnaces of Firozabad — yet twenty thousand children do so, daily, in conditions that permanently damage their health and vision. This legal invisibility is itself a form of systemic violence: the law exists, but it is not enforced because the perpetuation of the bangle industry depends on cheap child labour. The illegality is known but unpunished because the enforcers of the law — police — are themselves part of the system of exploitation. This is why the young men of Firozabad cannot organise: the very act of asserting their legal rights would expose them to police violence.
Lost Childhood — The Title's Central Image: The title's word "spring" carries multiple layers: the season of youth and blossoming, the wellspring of possibility, and the physical act of springing forward into the future. All of this is "lost" for the children the author profiles. Saheb's childhood in Dhaka was erased by floods; his Delhi childhood is erased by the necessity of survival. Mukesh's childhood is erased by the furnace. Neither child has known the luxury of unstructured play, formal education, or the freedom to dream without constraint. The essay mourns this as both a personal loss and a societal crime.
Dreams and Hope — Fragile but Humanising: Despite everything, both boys dream. Saheb dreams of school (when it is offered). He is drawn to the tennis game, to the swing, to anything that represents a world larger than garbage. Mukesh dreams, with specific and stubborn precision, of being a motor mechanic. The author is moved precisely because these dreams survive in conditions designed to crush them. The essay does not sentimentalise hope — it recognises how bounded these dreams are (Mukesh will walk to the distant garage; aeroplanes are unimaginable to him). But it insists that the capacity to dream at all, in conditions of such deprivation, represents a form of human resilience that the reader must take seriously.
Caste, Destiny, and the Baggage Children Cannot Put Down: The most chilling dimension of Mukesh's story is the grandmother's acceptance — "Can a god-given lineage ever be broken?" — which encapsulates the internalisation of caste determinism. This is not merely fatalism but a survival mechanism: if your suffering is divinely ordained, resistance is not only futile but sacrilegious. The essay identifies this internalised caste ideology as one of the most powerful mechanisms of social reproduction — it persuades the exploited to collaborate in their own exploitation. The "baggage imposed on the child" metaphor captures how caste destiny is not merely an external constraint but a psychological burden that the child absorbs before he is old enough to question it.
Literature — Extract-Based Questions (Board Exam Format)
Extract 1 — Saheb's Section
"Saheb-e-Alam, which means the lord of the universe, is directly in contrast to what Saheb is in reality. Unaware of what his name represents, he roams the streets with his friends, an army of barefoot boys who appear like the morning birds and disappear at noon."
— Anees Jung, Lost Spring, Flamingo (Class XII)
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What literary device is used when Saheb-e-Alam's name is juxtaposed with his actual condition? Explain its effect. L4 Analyse2 marksThe literary device at work is irony — specifically situational irony combined with naming as symbolism. "Saheb-e-Alam" means "Lord of the Universe," a title of magnificent cosmic grandeur. Yet the person who bears it is a barefoot ragpicker in Delhi's garbage dumps, without legal identity, proper nutrition, or educational access. The gap between the name and the reality is the measure of what society has stolen from him. Jung uses this irony not for comic effect but for moral indictment — the name becomes a permanent accusation against a society that has produced such a gap between what a human being is called and what they are actually permitted to become.
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The boys are described as appearing "like the morning birds" and disappearing "at noon." What does this simile suggest about their lives? L4 Analyse2 marksThe simile compares the ragpicker children to morning birds — creatures of early light who are present, active, and visible in the cool hours but who vanish as the day grows hot and demanding. This suggests several things simultaneously: the children's pattern of early-morning scavenging before the heat of the day forces them to rest; their freedom of movement which, like birds, gives an illusion of liberty even within conditions of deprivation; and their invisibility to the urban world — they exist at the margins, briefly glimpsed and then gone. The simile also carries a note of beauty — morning birds are a pleasant image — and this is part of Jung's technique: she finds grace in the lives of those society discards.
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Examine the paradox in the statement: "Garbage to them is gold." How does Jung use paradox to illuminate the lives of the ragpickers? L5 Evaluate3 marksThe statement "Garbage to them is gold" is a compressed paradox that captures the economic and existential reality of Seemapuri's ragpickers with devastating efficiency. Garbage — by definition, what society has discarded as worthless — becomes, for these families, the source of all value: income, shelter, food, survival. The paradox works on two levels. First, it is literally true: salvageable materials in garbage can be sold, and what one person throws away has monetary value to another. Second, it is an indictment: that the waste of the wealthy is the resource of the poor is not a natural law but a product of radical economic inequality. Jung extends the paradox further by showing that for the children, garbage has yet another dimension — wonder, the possibility of finding something unexpected. This three-layered paradox — garbage as survival, garbage as injustice, garbage as possibility — encapsulates the complexity of lived poverty more economically than any sociological analysis could.
Extract 2 — Mukesh's Section
"The steel canister seems heavier than the plastic bag he would carry so lightly over his shoulder. The bag was his. The canister belongs to the man who owns the tea shop. Saheb is no longer his own master!"
— Anees Jung, Lost Spring, Flamingo (Class XII)
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What does the contrast between the plastic bag and the steel canister represent? What is Jung saying about the nature of freedom and employment? L4 Analyse3 marksThe contrast between the plastic bag and the steel canister is one of the essay's most carefully crafted symbolic oppositions. The plastic bag was Saheb's own — light, freely carried, the instrument of his own autonomous labour. As a ragpicker, he was answerable to no one; his time, his route, and his finds were his. The steel canister, by contrast, belongs to the tea-shop owner; it is heavier not because it weighs more but because it represents subordination. Saheb's labour now belongs to another person, and with it goes the last vestige of his freedom. Jung is making a subtle but important argument: that wage labour, even when it provides more material security than scavenging, can represent a qualitative loss of autonomy. This is not an argument against employment but a recognition that for a child like Saheb, the distinction between "my bag" and "his canister" is the distinction between being a subject and being an object in someone else's economic story.
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Write a critical appreciation of Jung's writing style in Lost Spring, focusing on how she uses literary devices to transform social reporting into literature. (150 words) L6 Create5 marksAnees Jung's Lost Spring occupies a rare and difficult literary space — between journalism and art, between reportage and elegy. Her greatest technical achievement is the use of concrete, specific, sensory detail — the steel canister, the cast-off tennis shoe with a hole, the frail young woman cooking through smoke-filled eyes — to carry the full weight of systemic analysis without ever becoming abstract or didactic. Where a sociologist would discuss child poverty in statistics, Jung gives us Saheb's eyes lighting up over a ten-rupee note found in garbage; where an economist would calculate the exploitative structure of the bangle industry, Jung gives us Savita's mechanical hands "moving like the tongs of a machine" beside a woman who has never eaten a full meal. Her literary devices are never merely decorative. The irony of Saheb-e-Alam's name is a moral argument. The simile of the morning birds is an act of beauty that insists on the children's humanity. The paradox of garbage as gold is an economic critique. Through the marriage of feeling and form, Jung achieves what pure reportage cannot: she makes the reader's conscience ache.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the central theme of 'Lost Spring' by Anees Jung?
'Lost Spring' explores the exploitation of child labour in India and the systemic poverty that robs children of their childhood. Through Saheb (a ragpicker in Delhi) and Mukesh (a bangle-maker in Firozabad), Anees Jung reveals how poverty, caste, social inertia, and family tradition trap generations of children in hazardous labour, denying them education, dreams, and what the title calls 'spring' — the joy and promise of childhood.
Who are Saheb and Mukesh in 'Lost Spring' and what do they represent?
Saheb-e-Alam is a young ragpicker from Bangladesh living in Delhi's Seemapuri slum. Despite his grand name meaning 'lord of the universe', he scavenges garbage — representing urban migrant poverty and the irony of aspirations crushed by circumstance. Mukesh is a bangle-maker from Firozabad who dreams of being a motor mechanic — representing rural caste-based exploitation and the rare spark of ambition that survives oppressive tradition.
What does the title 'Lost Spring' mean in Class 12 English?
'Spring' symbolises childhood — a season of growth, joy, play, and hope. 'Lost Spring' means the childhood that is taken from these young workers. Children like Saheb and Mukesh never experience the carefree wonder of growing up because poverty forces them into labour. The title is Anees Jung's lament for an entire generation whose spring — childhood — is permanently lost.
What literary devices are used in 'Lost Spring'?
Key literary devices include: irony (Saheb's name 'lord of the universe' vs. his ragpicker reality), symbolism ('gold' in garbage = false hope; bangles = beauty built on suffering), imagery (colourful yet deadly bangle furnaces), metaphor ('marriage catches them in a web of poverty'), and contrast (the brightness of bangles vs. the darkness of children's lives). These are frequently tested in CBSE board extracts.
What are the most important CBSE exam questions from 'Lost Spring' for Class 12?
Critical CBSE questions: (1) What is the irony in Saheb's name and condition? (2) Explain the 'web of poverty' that traps Mukesh's family. (3) Reference-to-Context: extract on the bangle-makers of Firozabad — analyse tone and literary device. (4) What does the story suggest about society's responsibility towards child labourers? (5) Compare and contrast Saheb and Mukesh as representatives of India's child labour problem.
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Class 12 English — Flamingo
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