JNTUK R 20 ENGLISH MATERIAL

A Drawer Full Of Happiness

Author:

Aanchal Jagnani is a contributing writer to The Hindu. She is a content writer for
industries such as IT, Pharmaceuticals and Health Care. Her writings optimize communication
between client and product thereby increasing sale. She is a communications professional in
Digital Marketing and works on Planning strategies and Business Writing.

Summary:

Aanchal describes a revelation that had occurred to her two weeks ago on opening a drawer
from the old dressing table. Her married sister came home with her little daughter. The two
sisters requested their father to open the drawer that had no key available. He opened the lock
with a hammer and they found in it some cosmetics, hair pins and bindi powders that belonged to
the 1990s. The products looked fresh though they were prepared 25 years ago. She affirmed that
the companies which gave us quality products in the past still thrive in the modern market
because of the high standards they maintained.

The contents of the drawer made her nostalgic. As today’s Young India comprised of people
born in 1990s, she attaches great importance to the last decade of 20 th Century. She remembered
her childhood as an enchanting experience and wondered how the change of millennium changed
the attitude of people. She contrasted the balanced life of the 1990s with the present lifestyle
influenced by technology.

Aanchal named her article “A Drawer Full of Happiness” because the contents of the
Drawer presented her with happy memories. She realized that the past is remembered
authentically with the help of things that do not change with time. The run-of -the –mill quality
of products today caused in her a sentimental longing for the past.
 Nehru’s letter to daughter Indira on her Birthday

Jawaharlal Nehru 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian independence activist, and
subsequently, the first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics before and
after independence. He emerged as an eminent leader of the Indian independence
movement under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi and served India as Prime Minister from its
establishment as an independent nation in 1947 until his death in 1964. He has been described by
the Amar Chitra Katha as the architect of India. He was also known as Pandit Nehru due to his
roots with the Kashmiri Pandit community while Indian children knew him as Chacha Nehru.

With the advent of technology, the post cards and in-land letters are not the popular
communication modes any more for personal interaction. This is the age of cell phones, short
messages, video calls, Facebook, WhatsApp etc. This lesson Nehru’s letter to daughter Indira on
her birthday is highlighted to make these technological students understand the significance of
letters in those days.
In 1930s many of our leaders were imprisoned by the British. While in Naini Prison
Nehru wrote a letter to his daughter, who was in Mussoorie, on her 13 th birthday. Nehru
elucidated how life began in the universe in his first letter ‘Book of Nature’. In the other letters
he speaks on a wide range of topics including languages, trade, history, science, epics, evolution
etc. With the intension of inspiring his daughter Nehru continuously wrote to her for four years
from prison.
Being very rich Indira received material and solid presents and good wishes on her
birthday but her father sent the mind and spirit instead of solid and material presents from Naini
prison. He thought that the best way to find out what was right and what was not right, what
should be done and what should not be done through not by sermonizing but by talking and
discussing. Though they discussed many a thing in the letters he made her understand that
beyond the world lie other wonderful and mysterious worlds to imagine. He wrote her those
letters to make a suggestion for her to think over as if they really had a talk.
Nehru made her remember Jeanne d’ Arc known as Joan of Arc who inspired Indira with
her ambitions. He said that the ordinary men and women were not heroic. When the time came
they all became heroes for a great cause. Great leaders inspired them and made them do great
deeds. Nehru also said to his daughter, “In India a great leader, full of love for all who suffer and
eager to help them, has inspired our people to great actions and noble sacrifice. He has helped to
make the starving, the poor and the oppressed free and happy.”
Bapuji’s magical message from prison stole the hearts of millions of India. Everyone
came out of their shells and became soldiers. Nehru said that the freedom movement is like a
great drama people were all making history and fortunate to be the participants.
Nehru said that in our great Freedom Movement, under Bapuji’s leadership, there was no
room for secrecy. People were not afraid of what they did or what they said. They worked in the
sun and the light. Nehru inspired Indira to do same then she would grow up a child of the light,
unafraid and serene and unruffled whatever might happen. He wished her with all his love to
grow up into a brave soldier in India’s service.
 STEPHEN HAWKING- POSITIVITY ‘BENCHMARK’

Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8 1942 in Oxford, England. His father was a
well-known researcher in tropical medicine but Stephen was interested in studying mathematics
and physics. His early school years at St. Alban’s School in London were marked by
unhappiness with his peers and on the playing field. While at Oxford he became increasingly
interested in physics. After completion of his graduation he immediately began postgraduate
studies at Cambridge University.

Hawking’s education at Cambridge marked a turning point in his life as he focused on

cosmology in his studies. Then he was first stricken with Lou Gehrig’s disease, a weakening
disease of the nervous and muscular system that eventually led to his total confinement in a
wheelchair. He got married in 1965 and his marriage gave him the determination to live and
make professional progress in the world of science. He received his doctorate degree in 1966.

Hawking made his first major contribution in association with Roger Penrose on the idea of
singularity. He became popular in 1974 for his two discoveries such as off heat of black holes
(Hawking Radiation) and size of black holes. In the 1980s Hawking answered one of Einstein's
unanswered theories, the famous unified field theory.

He published a best-selling nonfiction book for over a year, A Brief History of Time: From the
Big Bang to Black Holes. In 1993, he wrote a book which contained a few autobiographical
elements, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays. In 1996, he and his friend Sir
Roger published The Nature of Space and Time. In 2007, he and his daughter Lucy released
sequels in 2009, 2011, 2014 and 2016 for their children’s biographical book George’s Secret Key
to the Universe. Despite deteriorating health, he attended book release circuit, motivated
differentlyabled people and was praised by them as a hero.

Hawking became a member of Royal Society of London in 1974. He was one of the 100 Great
Britons by BBC. He was awarded America’s highest civilian honour in 2009 and Russian
Special Fundamental Physics Prize in 2013. Though he was diagnosed with a rare neurone
disease he had a highly intellectual and challenging life till his 76 th year. He died on 14 March
2018. He was applauded by his renowned friends and politicians.

Hawking was an inspiration because he transformed our understanding of the universe. The
success formula he taught us through his 8 lessons from his extraordinary life and achievements.
He has used technology to overcome his disability through voice synthesiser. He refused to let
his disability not only halt his research but also his married life with his lover Jane Wilde. He
was always curious like a child by questioning himself with ‘why’ and ‘how’. He was very
active and he had never lost his sense of humour by cracking jokes on his crazy appearance. He
stood by his principles and rejected the title Knighthood for mismanagement of fund for his
research and education. He never gave up working on the nature of black holes in spite of
criticism and controversy. He valued time as a precious resource because it would be impossible
to turn back the clock. He shared his knowledge and had succeeded in making astrophysics and
artificial intelligence accessible to everyone. He concluded that if one do not share one’s
knowledge by communicating it clearly and effectively one can lose a golden opportunity.

DELIVERANCE

MUNSHI PREMCHAND

Dhanpat Rai Srivastava (31 July 1880 - 8 October 1936), better known by his pen name Munshi
Premchand, was an Indian writer famous for his modern Hindustani literature. He is one of the
most celebrated writers of the Indian subcontinent, and is regarded as one of the foremost Hindi
writers of the early twentieth century. He began writing under the pen name "Nawab Rai", but
subsequently switched to "Premchand", Munshi being an honorary prefix. A novel writer, story
writer and dramatist, he has been referred to as the "Upanyas Samrat" ("Emperor among
Novelists") by writers. His works include more than a dozen novels, around 300 short stories,
several essays and translations of a number of foreign literary works into Hindi.

The story DELIVERANCE explains a poor low-caste village couple named Dukhi and Jhuria .
Dukhi and Jhuria are chamars — an untouchable caste shunned by the members of the upper
caste for their involvement with the traditional practice of tanning. Dukhi and Jhuria want to give
away their daughter — a girl hardly into her teens — in marriage. In order to have the almanacs
read and an auspicious date and time announced for the marriage, Dukhi goes to the village
priest’s house and invites him back to his hut. On seeing an opportunity to get some free labour
in return, the brahmin priest makes Dukhi carry out a series of strenuous tasks under a scorching
and unforgiving sun. The poor man, who has just come out of a bout of fever, completes all the
tasks without uttering a single word of protest. Weak and shivering, with an empty stomach and
a mid-day sun over his head, Dukhi is then asked to chop a massive chunk of wood into fine
splints. Drained and exhausted, Dukhi attacks the monstrous log with a blunt axe and the last
remaining strength in his body, but can hardly make a dent. When the brahmin priest reprimands
him for not being able to do his job properly, and threatens to announce an inauspicious date and
time for the young girl’s marriage, Dukhi is scared, and chops away at the log — blow after blow
after blow — until he finally collapses and dies right at the spot.

The priest now finds himself in a spot, because there’s a corpse lying near his house, that no one
would touch. The chamars refuse to take the body away, and accuse him of working Dukhi to
death. The other brahmins accuse him of causing them much inconvenience because the corpse
is lying on the way to the village well, and none of them want to see a dead chamar on their way
to the source of their drinking water. As the skies burst open, the rains make matters worse,
because the corpse starts to decompose sooner than expected. Left with no other option, the
priest then ‘delivers’ the corpse to its rightful place, tugging it along the roads of the village with
the help of a rope in the early hours of the morning, and dropping it heartlessly amidst the
decaying carcass of cattle in the outskirts of the village.
While Premchand’s story is a scathing account of the tragic lives of untouchables in this country,
and of the horrors of superstition

Bosom Friend

HIRA BANSODE

Hira Bansode is a well-known Marathi Dalit poet. The speaker of the poem “Bosom Friend” is a
Dalit girl who speaks about her sufferings and insults at the hands of her bosom friend who is a
rich upper caste girl. The Dalit girl invites her bosom friend to dinner. Although she came to the
dinner, she found fault with everything in the dinner. Finally the Dalit girl tells her friend that
people of high caste cannot forget the tradition of inequality for it is deep-rooted in their minds.

Answer the following questions in two or three sentences.

1.”But you came with a mind as large as the sky” – What makes the poet think like this? What is
the irony?
The speaker of the poem is a poor Dalit girl who invites her high caste, rich friend for dinner.
The girl accepts the offer and has come to dinner. It gives a pleasant surprise to the speaker and
this is why she says that her friend is broad minded and full of love for her. But the irony is that
the rich girl friend finds fault with every bit of the dinner. She blames her friend for not serving
buttermilk or yoghurt for the last course of rice. She also blamed the Dalit community and said
that they would never improve.

2. Did the visit of the ‘bosom friend” really bridge the chasm that had divided them? If not, what
was the effect of the visit? -
The visit of the bosom friend did not really bridge the chasm that had divided them. On the
other hand, it further widened the chasm because the upper caste rich girl simply found fault with
every silly things in the arrangement of the dinner. She further blamed the Dalit community and
said that they would never improve. In truth it is the upper caste that never changed their outlook
and tradition. So the speaker of the poem who is the Dalit girl burst out her anger and pain at the
bosom friend for her humiliation and contemptuous outlook of the Dalit community.

3. How differently did the “naïve devotion” work in the lives of Shabari and the poet?
In the Ramayana, Shabari is a sincere devotee of Lord Rama and she is doing her best to please
Rama. She has collected the best fruits available in Nature and tasted them to find out which are
the sweetest fruits. She does not know that it is forbidden to taste them before they are offered to
God. Yet Lord Rama is pleased with her innocent devotion, accepted her offerings and blessed
her. Similarly the Dalit girl has arranged a party to her upper caste rich friend with great love and
devotion. She has spent a lot of money, time and energy for making such a sumptuous dinner
with yoghurt, buttermilk and other dishes. Yet the upper caste rich friend blames her and even
humiliates her community saying that they will never improve.
4. “I was ashamed, really ashamed”. What made the poet feel really ashamed? -
The poet felt ashamed because she had arranged a dinner for her upper caste rich friend with
great devotion and love and she spent a lot of money, energy and time for it. But the friend found
fault with everything in the arrangement of the dinner. She blamed her and her community
because they did not know how to serve food in the proper manner.

5. When did the last bit of courage fall away like a falling star from the poet? -
The last bit of courage fell away like a falling star from the poet when the upper caste rich
friend accused her that she does not know how to serve food and asked her whether she did not
serve buttermilk or yoghurt with the last course of rice. The upper caste girl has a preconceived
notion that the Dalit community people don’t know anything about the table manners and
etiquette. This accusation of the rich friend drained away all the energy, enthusiasm and
friendliness of the Dalit girl. It is disappeared like a ‘falling star’.

6. What was the food that the poet did not have in her childhood? -
The poet lived in utter poverty that she never had even milk in her childhood days.
7. Why did the poet not know the proper arrangement of food on plates? - The poet did not
know the proper arrangement of food on plates, because she was a Dalit girl and born and
brought up in utter poverty. She could not enjoy nourished food including milk in her childhood
days.

II. Answer in a paragraph of not more than 100 words.

1.Describe the contrasting emotions of elation, frustration and shock as portrayed by Hira
Bansode at the start of the poem “Bosom Friend”
The poem “Bosom Friend” is written by Hira Bansode, a well-known Marathi Dalit poet. The
poem is a vehement critique of the hypocritical caste-ridden society. It speaks about the untold
sufferings and insults of the Dalit at the hands of the upper castes for centuries. The narrator is a
Dalit girl who has invited her upper caste rich friend to dinner. The speaker is so excited with joy
unlimited because her bosom friend has come forgetting the age old untouchability and tradition
of inequality. So the rich girl’s mind is as large as the sky because she is coming to the pocket
size house of the narrator. The narrator is so elated with great expectation that her friend’s visit
will certainly bridge the chasm of the caste system that divided them. So she has arranged the
food with the great devotion of Shabari, the elderly woman ascetic in the Ramayana. The
narrator thought that as the Lord Rama accepted the fruits of Shabari and blessed her, her upper
caste friend would appreciate her devotion and love in arranging the food for her. But alas, the
moment the friend looked at the plate, her face changed and began to blame the narrator. She
accuses that the narrator does not know table manners and the proper arrangement of food on the
plates. The friend blamed even her Dalit community and said that they would never improve.
Rama was pleased although Shabari tasted every fruit before it was offered to Lord Rama
because Rama was wise and full of love and mercy for Shabari. On the other hand the upper
caste girl is foolish, arrogant and wicked. So the dinner party became an utter failure. The upper
caste girl is so foolish that she judges human being by their artificial table manners and money
power. She is also ruled by her preconceived ideas about the caste system. So the poor Dalit girl
is frustrated at the behaviour of her friend.

2. How did the poet justify her ignorance of elite table etiquette? Who was responsible for that?
Do you think the situation can be changed? How?
- Hira Bansode’s poem “Bosom Friend” is a sad story of a Dalit woman’s sense of shame
because poverty has never allowed her to know the variety of food such as buttermilk, yoghurt,
halva, basundi etc., This sad situation arose out of age old poverty, lack of education and
exploitation at the hands of the upper caste people who are rich and politically powerful. They
always suppressed the lower caste people and enslaved them and made them work from dawn to
dusk and the wages were not enough even for two decent meals a day. As a result the Dalit girl
never enjoyed healthy, nourished food in her childhood days. The situation can be changed by
giving free education for Dalit and financially backward classes and also make effective social
awareness about equality and human dignity and brotherhood.

3. Write an appreciation of Hira Bansode’s poem “Bosom Friend” bringing out its poetic
qualities
Hira Bansode’s poem “Bosom Friend” is remarkable for its poetic qualities. The title of the poem
“Bosom Friend” itself is ironical because the upper caste rich girl is not at all bosom or intimate
to the Dalit girl. She cruelly criticised her and her community for their ignorance of table
manners or etiquette. In the first stanza of the poem we can see the effective use of irony. With
the innocent devotion of Shabari, the Dalit girl carefully arranged the food on the plate for her
friend. The whole poem is a vehement critique of the caste-ridden society. The mind of the upper
caste girl is compared to the sky. The figure of speech is simile. There is also irony in it because
her mind is actually narrow-minded and selfish. There is simile in the use of the phrase “pocket
size house”. “The last bit of my courage fell away like a falling star” the figure of speech is
metaphor.
 SHAKESPEARE’S SISTER

Adeline Virginia Woolf Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer,
considered one of the most important modernist 20th century authors and also a pioneer in the
use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child in
a blended family of eight which included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. Her mother
was Julia and her father Leslie Stephen. While the boys in the family received college
educations, the girls were home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature. An
important influence in Virginia Woolf's early life was the summer home the family used in St
Ives, Cornwall, where, in the late 1890s, she first saw the Godrevy Lighthouse, which was to
become central to her novel To the Lighthouse (1927).
Shakespeare’s Sister” was a story about how woman are treated and what types of
opportunities they have compared to men. Virginia Woolf describes a story about Shakespeare
and what if he had a sister. What kind of life would she have? What kind of education would
she be given? Would she be a playwright like her brother with the same kind of talent? During
the time of Shakespeare, his sister would live in a different kind of world compared to her male
brother. Men were allowed to wife-beat. Women had arranged marriages from the time they
were born. If they refused to be married to their picked husband, their father would beat
them. Women were made to feel like their thoughts were stupid and that their ideas were not
valued. If Shakespeare had a sister, she would be declined from many things. She would not be
allowed to go to school and learn the things that he learned. She would not be allowed to act and
learn the stage. Because she is a woman, she is not allowed in theater. She also would not be
allowed to read, learn, or write. She would be expected to do housework, follow the rules of her
family, and do the activities expected of “proper” woman. His sister would have no chance of
learning the many things that Shakespeare learned. Therefore, if Shakespeare sister lived to
grow up as he did, she would not be able to experience the same things because of her gender
and would suffer. Woolf described her story of Shakespeare’s sister and wrote that she would
run away from her betrothed to be an actress and live a life that would be looked down upon by
everyone. She would not live up to the greatness of her brother. Virginia Woolf made me think
about how many things woman of the 20th century were not allowed to do and pursue. Their
entire life was planned by someone else. They had no choices or life or their own. Woolf
encourages the readers of today to go out and accomplish things for the woman before us who
were not granted the simple freedoms that we have today. We must follow our passions and act
on ideas and feelings that we had because we are allowed to and have the right to. Simple daily
activities are there for us to do if we chose. However, woman years ago were forced to follow
the same daily plans every day and do them without disagreement. Today woman are allowed to
have different opinions and ideas and act on our impulses. We must appreciate that and not
 forget it. It is interesting to me to think that Virginia wrote about all of these topics so honestly
even in the time period she lived in. I am sure that her ideas and writings could have been seen
as “wrong” or “not normal”. She went against the rules of a common woman and spoke what
she thought was the truth. Today, we read her work not understanding the restrictions that every
woman had in their life. Thanks to her we have a chance to be reminded to appreciate the
freedoms we have in life and appreciate her courage to write about these things.
 Telephone Conversation Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka is a renowned African novelist and poet. Soyinka was the first African to receive
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. “Telephone Conversation” is a simple and amusing
poem. As the title suggests, it is a conversation over ‘phone between an African and a white lady
who is the owner of the apartment in London. The narrator is looking for a rented apartment in
London. In this poem, the poet is able to portray the hypocrisy and cold inhumanity of the white
lady who rejects the African only because he is ‘black’. Thus the poem is a strong satire on racial
prejudice.

The speaker of the poem is an African. He is well educated, cultured and willing to pay the rent
demanded by the landlady. At first the white English land lady is very happy that a tenant has
come to stay in her apartment. The location of the building is not good. But the African is not
worried about it. For him, the rent is reasonable and the landlady promises that she is living in
another place. Therefore the Nigerian is also very glad to get such an apartment in London
City. But he has a big problem. His skin is black. So he is afraid whether the white lady likes him
or not. The flora and fauna in Nature have different colors. The color of the skin is not a problem
for animals, birds and other objects in the world. The sky is blue, the rose is red, the oak is black,
the crow is black, orange is yellow, there are black dogs and cows and here the colors are
blessing and beautiful. Nature is blessed with all the colors given by God. But man hates man if
his skin is not white. So the African confesses to the white lady that he is an African. It is a rude
shock to the white lady as if “African” is a criminal. There is a prolong silence. This silence hurts
the African. He is insulted. Humanity is insulted. After some time she asks politely ‘how dark he
is’? She enquires whether he is light black.

She does not say that she does not want an African. Instead she asks again whether he is dark or
very light. She uses two terms such as plain or milk chocolate to describe his dark skin. He tells
her that he is “West African sepia in his passport”. Again there is a long silence. Her words were
compared to stinking or polluted air because her words are poisonous.

Now the African knows that he will not get the apartment, because the landlady does not want a
black man as her tenant. So the African tells her that the color of his face is dark brown
(brunette), but unfortunately certain parts of his body are very dark. The palm and sole of his feet
are semi dark. But the bottom is raven black because of friction by sitting and requests her to see
it by herself personally. At that moment the white lady knows that she is insulted by the African
and she angrily puts the ‘receiver on the thunderclap. Thus the poem proves that it is the white
people who believe in the color prejudice are always insulted. The color prejudice boomerangs
upon the white people themselves!

1. Comment on the use of satire, irony, sarcasm, imagery and pun in this poem
“Telephone Conversation” is a vehement attack on racial discrimination. The poet uses various
poetic devices such as satire, irony, sarcasm, imagery; pun, alliteration and assonance have been
used to bring home to the reader the hypocrisy and racial discrimination of the white landlady.
“Location indifferent”, nothing remained but self-confession”, “Caught I was foully” are all used
in ironical tone. The speaker very politely tells the English landlady over phone that he hated a
wasted journey- he was an African is irony because he speaks that he is an African is like a
crime. There is also pun here because African means a criminal. “Plain or milk chocolate” is also
a pun. “Silence for spectroscopic flight of fancy” is an example for double alliteration of‘s’ and
‘f’. The satirical poem reaches its climax with the words ‘wouldn’t you rather see for yourself?”
shows the irony in judging people based on the color of their skin.
 STILL I RISE
Maya Angelou

About the Poet

Maya Angelou born on April 4, 1928 is a famous black American woman poet. The introduction
in your textbook gives you a lot of information about her.

In her thirties, Maya became a distinguished social activist author. Also her commitment to
promote black civil rights strengthened. She began to examine the nature of racial oppression,
racial progress and racial integration.

For many readers, she personifies the Afro-American female writer with a wide range of
experiences and interests. On the one hand, she is heir to the slave narrative; on the other she is
sister to the women authors of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s.

Maya Angelou’s poetry seems to be conjured out of her by the soul of her people, in particular,
women; her journey towards selfhood is a metaphor of their lives. Her primary concern is the
human capacity for survival, redemption and transcendence. She maintains a confident and
positive attitude about the possibilities of life not by denying pain and sorrow in her life but
rather by focussing on the sense of humanity and self worth that have helped her transcend these
experiences.

In a newspaper interview with David Frost, published in The New Sun Newspaper, she said,
“growing up is very painful, almost impossible; growing up is admitting there are demons you
cannot overcome----. The greatest of all virtues is COURAGE”.

Surviving inspite of these demons is what Still I Rise is about.

The Poem

The poem has a raw energy and is addressed to a hostile world.

The first stanza draws attention to the fact that accounts of the lives of an exploited, suppressed,
enslaved, racial group or community are invariably biased by colour prejudice, such a strong
cultural factor in western society. The phrase, “bitter twisted lies”, actually expresses the
bitterness of the poet herself. And her indomitable spirit refuses to be trod on, crushed. Like
dust, it still rises.

As the poem progresses, she uses new images to assert her spirit of survival; sassiness is
rudeness, a lack of respect. If a black woman's sassiness upsets people, so be it. If it makes
them gloomy, that is a victory for an oppressed group – black women. When she talks of oil
wells, she is referring to access to wealth.
Her amazing self-confidence is reiterated in her psychological security reaffirmed by images of
the certainty of the moon and the sun and the tides caused by the moon. The rising tide is hope
springing high.

She does not lose sight of the fact that people would not like to see her so confident. 'Broken
with bowed head, and lowered eyes' is not how people will get to see her. Nor will they see her
with drooping shoulders, defeated and demoralized. She is bold, even arrogant, and can laugh as
if she has goldmines in her backyard. And the wealth represented by oil wells and gold mines is
not just material; it is an emotional and psychological resource, the source of strength.

All the hostility described in Stanza VI cannot upset the speaker.

That there is an undeniable physical dimension to sexuality is emphasized in Stanza VII. To

“dance like I've got diamonds/ At the meeting of my thighs” is to revel in one's sexuality rather
than deny it.

From line 20 onwards the mood of the poem becomes philosophical. The brazenness is left
behind. It is almost a recollection of the racial past of a whole community. The “hunts of
history's shame” refers to the horrible past of victims of the slave era – the torture, humiliation
and suffering described in all slave narratives of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

She talks of the pain her ancestors endured. Her own life is rooted in pain but she transcends all
to stay afloat to survive; “black” in line 33 is meaningfully used. So is the image of the
ocean. Significantly, the individual speaker here is herself the ocean which contains/bears the
welling and swelling of the tide, rather than being lost in the ocean. Other poets often see the
ocean as one of the inconquerable forces of nature. Here, the poet herself is the ocean unlimited
power personified.

Another natural image which follows is that of daybreak. The night of fear and terror ends to
give way to a beautiful clear day. And the poet faces this beautiful new day with 'gifts that my
ancestor's gave'. This phrase refers to the intense racial pride in African culture and ancestry
which all blacks see as a source of strength in their struggle for survival against heavy adds.

When the slaves, powerless and crushed, dreamt of a future, surely they must have dreamt and
hoped for future generations free of bondage, happy and assertive. She in an ascendant mood is
the fulfillment and embodiment of that imagined dream of several past generations of her
ancestors.

You observe that from line 29 onwards, as the poet shifts mentally to her racial past, the rhythm
of the lines becomes different. The long-drawn out suffering represented by long lines
culminates in the powerful brief assertiveness expressed in the repeated use of I rise, I rise, I rise
(7 times). This is reinforcement and reassertion of a triumphant self – the black poet.
 Like a Tree, Unbowed
NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct. 8 - The Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai has been clubbed in
the head by riot police officers. She has been denounced as a subversive. Her efforts to advocate
for women's rights in a country where men run the show have long been considered quixotic at
best.
But Dr. Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her decades of advocacy work,
has stood firm through all of that. Some people, in fact, have likened her to a tree, perhaps one of
the ficus trees or elms she has planted throughout Kenya -- solid and unbowed.
It is trees that Dr. Maathai has used to build her women's movement. Through her efforts,
women across Africa have planted tens of millions of trees and done their part to stop the
deforestation that has stripped much of the continent bare. Dr. Maathai's Green Belt Movement
has also nurtured as many women as it has acacias or cedars.
Her movement, begun in 1977, started with just a handful of seedlings in her backyard. It grew to
include hundreds of tree nurseries throughout Africa, where seedlings are doled out to women,
who plant them on both public and private lands. For every tree that takes root, the woman who
planted it earns a small sum. For many women, tree planting is now a good deed that also helps
make ends meet.
Many women wondered decades ago why Dr. Maathai was so devoted to saving trees. It is
Africa's women, after all, who trek out in the morning with small axes in hand in search of
firewood to cook the family meal. Some women wondered whether Dr. Maathai had turned on
her fellow women in favor of the tree.
The answer, of course, was no. Her movement has always been as much about women as about
trees.
"We try to make women see they can do something worthwhile," she said in an interview with
The New York Times in 1989. "And we're trying to empower people, to let them identify their
mistakes, to show they can build, or destroy, the environment."
When Kenya's ruling party sought to put up a 60-story skyscraper in a downtown park, Dr.
Maathai stood up for the people who use the little green space Nairobi has to offer. She
denounced the proposal and drew the wrath of the government, who labeled her movement
subversive.
The ruling elite eventually backed off, and Kenya remained a little more green.
"She always taught us that right was right, even if you're alone," said Wanjira Maathai, one of
her three children. "She told us so often that nothing was impossible. She has fire on the inside
and she tried to give us some of that, too."
Dr. Maathai's work has gone beyond trees. She has played a role in fighting for the cancellation
of African governments' foreign debts and campaigned against land grabbing, in which members
of Africa's elite claim public land as their own. Fighting corruption has also been one of her
causes.
Editors’ PicksT
Born in Nyeri, Kenya, on April 1, 1940, Wangari Muta Maathai became the first woman in east
Africa to earn a doctorate degree, in 1971. She studied first at Mount St. Scholastica College in
Atchison, Kan., as part of a program during the Kennedy administration to prepare Kenyans for
independence. Then she earned a master of science degree from the University of Pittsburgh and
a doctorate in biological sciences from the University of Nairobi.
She was divorced from her husband, who was a member of Parliament, in the early 1980's after
he publicly accused her of adultery with another lawmaker. When her husband won his divorce
case, Dr. Maathai accused the judge of being incompetent. She was jailed for a night.
The case would come up again a decade later during debate over the skyscraper. Members of
Parliament, referring to the divorce, denounced her as a woman who was out to get men.
In 1992, Kenya's president unleashed the riot police on Dr. Maathai and other women who were
holding a hunger strike at a city park to pressure the government to release political prisoners.
Dr. Maathai, who dared to join an opposition party at a time when the government would not
tolerate dissent, was knocked unconscious by the police.
In 2002, she became a member of Parliament, representing a district that sits at the base of
Mount Kenya, Africa's second highest peak. She was in that peaceful setting, surrounded by
trees, when a phone call came on Friday alerting her to her Nobel Peace Prize.
"I am very happy to receive this news at the foot of Mount Kenya," she said in a telephone
interview, describing the mountain, so tall and solid, as her inspiration over the years.
She has played a similarly inspirational role for many women, a role that will only increase now
that she has been named the first woman from Africa to win the peace prize.
"All of Africa's women won today," said Beatrice Elachi of the National Council of Women of
Kenya, a group Dr. Maathai was chairwoman of from 1981 to 1987. "The culture pulls us down
so often. We are told to give way to men. But now, thanks to Wangari, every woman will know
she can make it."

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish: Steve Jobs' speech at Stanford

This is the "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish" address delivered by Steve Jobs in 2005 at Stanford

University:

1. Connect the Dots

Steve jobs believe that his decision to drop out from college and learn calligraphy is what makes

an apple an all an all different technology from other. Right after he dropped out from REEDS,

he had no idea what he wanted to do. To just learn something fresh, he decided to learn

calligraphy. He says that he never imagined at that point of time if this would help him so much.

He believes that his calligraphy skills helped him design the world’s most beautiful computer

Macintosh. The typography in the Macintosh simply differentiates between Apple computers and

other computers. The life lesson he gives is that you can never connect the dots looking forward,

you can only connect them looking backward. Just believe that the dots will connect in the

future.He believes that this trust, destiny, gut whatever you may call has never let him down and

indeed made all the difference in his life.

2. Love and Loss

Probably the best of the 3 life lessons. Nobody can differ on this fact that you must find what’s

your passion as soon as possible. Steve jobs say that he was lucky that he found his love at an

early age of 20. This helped him in restricting his domain and completely focus on it. He started

Apple at 20 in a garage with Steve Wozniak. Apple later turned into a billion dollar company

with over 4000 employees. This was all because he found his love early in his life. But that’s no

the end. How his love helped him in life comes next. At the age of 30 Steve Jobs was fired from

his own company. Quite unbelievable.The board of directors wanted him out of the company,

But you cannot defeat the man who knows his passion. After getting fired, he launched a

company named NEXT and PIXAR. Pixar created the world’s first computer animated film

named Toy Story, and today it is the most successful animation studio in the world. Next was

purchased by apple and Steve Jobs got a call back to his own company. Today Next is the heart

of apple’s renaissance. Had he not been fired from Apple he would have never formed
Next.Without Next apple would not have reached the peak. He says that life will hit you in your

head with a brick, but you must keep doing what you love because that will pave your path to a

bright future. Since work will acquire a large part of your life, it’s very important to find out

what you love.

3. Death

Death is immortal. It will come one day. Steve jobs were diagnosed with a tumor in his pancreas,

which doctor’s believed was not curable at all. He was advised to prepared for the death. But

later on when he got some other diagnosis, the doctor’s found out that it was a minor cancel

which was completely curable with a surgery. After the surgery, he was hail and hearty. The

lesson he wants to depict here is that your time on this planet is limited, so stop wasting it living

someone else’s life. Stop believing in other’s opinions because it destroys your mental

confidence completely. The most important things in life are to follow your heart and intuition.

Once you find it out, everything else in your life will become secondary.