NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 3 Winds of Change (prose) — Learning Beyond the Text

This is a research-and-present task. The chapter has already given you the model: pick one craft, and show that its material, its shape and its uses all come from its place.

Sample answer: outline of a presentation on Sikki grass craft of Mithila, Bihar

• Slide 1 — Name and features. Sikki craft: baskets, boxes (pauti), toys and fans coiled from golden grass. A typical pauti is 15 cm across and 12 cm high, with a domed lid. The natural colour is bright gold; dyed strands are added in magenta, green and black.
• Slide 2 — Material. Sikki grass, cut in the monsoon from the wetlands of north Bihar, dried in the sun, split with a needle-like tool called the takua, and coiled around a core of kaisa grass. No glue is used.
• Slide 3 — Region and traditional use. Mithila region — Madhubani, Sitamarhi, Darbhanga. Sikki boxes are traditionally part of a bride’s trousseau; sikki dolls and toys are made for children; sikki fans and mats for household use.
• Slide 4 — Origin and evolution. A household craft carried down the female line, taught by grandmothers and mothers. Once made only for the family and for gifting; now made for sale through self-help groups and craft fairs, with new forms such as wall panels, jewellery boxes, coasters and lampshades.
• Slide 5 — Process, in six steps. (1) Cut the grass, (2) dry it in the sun to bring out the golden colour, (3) split the stems with the takua, (4) dye a portion of the strands, (5) coil the grass round the kaisa core, stitching each coil to the one below with a fresh strand, (6) trim, and finish the rim.
• Slide 6 — Use and safety today. Keep away from damp, which causes mould; do not use for hot or oily food unless lined; store flat. Suitable as gift boxes, storage and décor.
• Slide 7 — What would help it survive. Fair pricing, direct sale by the makers’ groups, workshops in schools, and a Geographical Indication tag — the same remedies this chapter proposes for the pankha.

Reading the seven pictures (page 81, ‘Paper hand fan’):

1. A rectangular sheet of stiff coloured paper — red with a green border — is marked along one edge with a pencil, so that the folds will be of equal width.
2. The sheet is folded into an even concertina (accordion) pleat, one fold forward, one fold back, all the way across. The picture shows both hands pressing the pleats flat.
3. The pleated strip is folded once in the middle, and the two halves are pinched together at the fold, so a half-fan opens out.
4. The two inner edges that meet at the middle are pressed and glued to each other, and the fan opens into a semicircle.
5. A flat stick — an ice-cream stick or a strip of green card — is glued along the back of the folded edge to make the handle.
6. The stick is held in place with the fingers until the glue sets.
7. The finished fan: a full round pleated disc, red at the centre with a scalloped green rim, on a single green handle. (In the first strip, the same fan is made in rainbow colours from two half-fans joined together.)

Sample answer: describing the process to the class

“Our fan is called Chakra. We made it in five stages.

First we prepared the paper. We took two A4 sheets of chart paper and pasted seven strips of coloured paper across each of them, in the order of the rainbow, so that the fan would show every colour when it opened. We let them dry flat under a book for ten minutes.

Then we marked and pleated. Using a ruler we made pencil marks every one and a half centimetres along the top edge, and folded along each mark, alternating the direction of the fold. Equal folds are the whole secret: where our marks were uneven, the fan did not close flat.

Third, we formed the two halves. We folded each pleated strip exactly in half, pinched it at the centre and glued the two inner faces together. Each strip then opened into a half-circle.

Fourth, we joined the halves. We glued the flat edge of the first half-circle to the flat edge of the second, which gave us a full circle about 24 centimetres across.

Finally we fitted the handle. We glued two ice-cream sticks, one on each side of the joint at the back, and held them for two minutes until the glue set. The sticks stiffen the centre and give a grip.

What we learnt: paper that is too thin will not hold the pleat and the fan flops; paper that is too thick will not fold evenly. And a hand fan works only if it is stiff — which is exactly why the traditional makers in this chapter use split bamboo ribs, plaited moonj or a cardboard base under the painting. Thank you.”

The book sets no question here — it says “read and enjoy”. But read it with the chapter in mind, because it has been placed here for a reason. Here is what to notice.

The story in brief. Sue and Johnsy, two young artists, share a flat on the third storey of an old house. Johnsy falls ill with pneumonia in November and will not fight it: watching an ivy creeper shed its leaves through the window, she counts them backwards and decides, “When the last leaf falls, I will die.” The doctor tells Sue plainly, “If she doesn’t want to live, medicines will not help her.” Downstairs lives Behrman, a sixty-year-old painter whose “lifelong dream was to paint a masterpiece but that had remained a dream”. After a night of storm and “an icy-cold wind”, one leaf is still on the wall, “quite green and healthy”. It does not fall the next night either. Johnsy recovers — “I have realised that it is a sin to want to die.” Behrman dies of pneumonia two days later, and Sue finds beside his bed “a ladder and a lantern still lighted… some brushes and green and yellow paints on the floor”. The last leaf was painted on the wall. “That’s Behrman’s masterpiece.”

How O. Henry produces the effect.

• The twist is planted, not sprung. Every element of the ending is shown to us earlier and then made to look like something else — Behrman’s unpainted masterpiece, his silence when he sees the last leaf (“Behrman did not say a word. He went back to his room”), the wet clothes and shoes the janitor finds. On a second reading his silence is the loudest thing in the story.
• The clue that gives it away is a detail of physics. Sue asks, “Haven’t you wondered why it doesn’t flutter when the wind blows?” A real leaf in a storm moves. The reader, like Johnsy, was too anxious to notice.
• The leaf is a symbol that works two ways. For Johnsy it stands for her own life; for Behrman it becomes the masterpiece he never painted. The story’s irony is exact — one life is bought with another, and the greatest painting of Behrman’s career is one that nobody will ever hang, sell or even recognise as a painting.
• Counting down is the story’s clock. “Twelve… eleven… ten… nine, eight, seven… Six… only five left… only four leaves left”. The falling number does the work of suspense without a single sentence of explanation.