NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 4 I Cannot Remember My Mother (poem) — Vocabulary in Context

Book page 131–133 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.

Answer

Ask of each word: is this something you see, hear, smell or feel with the skin?

Visual (sight)	Auditory (hearing)	Olfactory (smell)	Tactile (touch)
glowing (example)	hiss (example)	aroma (example)	sticky (example)
gigantic	rustle	scent	rough
minuscule	sizzle	fragrant	chilled
gloomy	deafening	pungent	fluffy
vibrant	squeaky	stinky	smooth
crimson	ear-splitting	stale	slimy
			hairy

The words worth arguing about:

stale — you can smell stale air and taste stale bread. Since taste is not one of the four columns, put it under olfactory.
gloomy — it names a quality of light (dim, overcast), so it is visual, even though we also use it of a mood.
sizzle — a frying sound, so auditory; the smell that goes with it is not what the word names.
chilled — the skin registers cold, so it is tactile.
fluffy and hairy can be seen as well as felt; classify them as tactile, because both words describe how a surface feels against the hand.

Why the exercise is here: the poem has just been analysed sense by sense — auditory in stanza 1, olfactory in stanza 2, visual in stanza 3. This box makes you build the same vocabulary for yourself, and it adds the tactile column that the poem only touches (“the stillness of my mother’s gaze”). Notice how much stronger the words are when they name the sense precisely: “a pungent smell” tells a reader far more than “a bad smell”.

Q2.

II. Fill in the blanks with sensory words in the box for the following passage written by Sarojini Naidu. There are two extra words. [Word box on page 132] scarlet | shrill | sizzle | perfumes | flaming | scents | sweetness | essence | smooth Come and share my exquisite March morning with me: this sumptuous blaze of gold and sapphire sky; these 1. _____ lilies that adorn the sunshine; the voluptuous 2. _____ of neem and champak and serisha that beat upon the languid air with their implacable 3. _____; the thousand little gold and blue and silver breasted birds bursting with the 4. _____ ecstasy of life in nesting time. And, do you know that the scarlet lilies are woven petal by petal from my heart’s blood, these little quivering birds are my soul made incarnate music, these heavy 5. _____ are my emotions dissolved into aerial 6. _____, this 7. _____ blue and gold sky is the ‘very me’…

Answer

No.	Answer	Sense	Why it fits
1.	scarlet	visual	A colour is needed before “lilies”, and the passage confirms it four lines later — “the scarlet lilies are woven petal by petal from my heart’s blood”.
2.	scents	olfactory	“The voluptuous ___ of neem and champak and serisha” — three flowering trees; what comes from them is fragrance. Plural, to match “of neem and champak and serisha”.
3.	sweetness	olfactory	“beat upon the languid air with their implacable ___” — the quality of the scent, and an abstract noun is needed after “their implacable”.
4.	shrill	auditory	An adjective before “ecstasy of life” describing birds in nesting time — high, piercing bird-cries.
5.	perfumes	olfactory	“these heavy ___” — the adjective heavy goes with rich, thick fragrance, and the noun must be plural and countable.
6.	essence	olfactory / abstract	“my emotions dissolved into aerial ___” — an essence is the concentrated extract of a fragrance, so the metaphor completes itself: perfumes are her emotions, dissolved into essence.
7.	flaming	visual	An adjective before “blue and gold sky”, matching the “sumptuous blaze” of the opening line.

The two extra words are sizzle and smooth — a frying sound and a texture, and this passage contains neither. Every other word in the box is a colour, a fragrance or a bird-cry.

How to do a gap-fill of this kind: decide the part of speech first (blank 3 follows “their implacable”, so it must be a noun; blank 4 precedes “ecstasy”, so it must be an adjective), then decide the sense, and only then choose the word. Working from meaning alone will trip you up here, because scents, perfumes, essence and sweetness all name fragrance — grammar and number are what separate them.

Did you know? Sarojini Naidu — the poet, freedom fighter and first Indian woman to become President of the Indian National Congress — was known as the Nightingale of India. This passage comes from a letter, not a poem, and it shows why: the prose is packed with sensory words, and its rhythm is built on a rising list. Reading it beside Tagore’s poem is a useful contrast — where Tagore uses one sense per stanza and holds back, Naidu piles all the senses together and lets them overflow.

Q3.

III. Write numbers against each picture with the phrases that describe them with their sensorial associations. One example has been done for you. 1. beats of music echo in air 2. melody of soothing scent, dancing in the air 3. fragrant breeze of blooming buds 4. gentle lullaby, a soft melody 5. colourful sky, painting a lively sight 6. attractive canvas painting the horizon [Six circular pictures on page 133, each with a box below it. Top row, left to right: (a) hands picking white shiuli flowers from a leafy bush, with a handful already gathered; (b) a woman in a pink sari bending over a baby in a wooden cradle-swing; (c) several colourful kites flying in a bright blue sky. Bottom row, left to right: (d) a sunset over water, the orange sun reflected in the sea; (e) a pair of tabla drums — this box is already filled in with ‘1.’; (f) incense sticks burning in a brass holder, with smoke curling upwards.]

Answer

Picture	Number	Phrase	Sense it appeals to
Hands picking white shiuli flowers	3	fragrant breeze of blooming buds	olfactory — fragrant, and the flowers are freshly opened buds
Woman bending over a baby in a cradle	4	gentle lullaby, a soft melody	auditory — a lullaby is sung at a cradle, exactly as in the poem
Kites in a bright blue sky	5	colourful sky, painting a lively sight	visual — the kites are what make the sky colourful and lively
Sunset over water	6	attractive canvas painting the horizon	visual — a sunset is the classic “canvas” at the horizon
Pair of tabla drums	1 (example)	beats of music echo in air	auditory — beats belong to a percussion instrument
Incense sticks burning	2	melody of soothing scent, dancing in the air	olfactory, described in the language of sound — the phrase mixes two senses on purpose

How to separate the two easy confusions:

3 and 2 are both smells. Phrase 3 says “blooming buds”, so it must go to the flowers; phrase 2 says “melody of soothing scent… dancing in the air”, and it is smoke, not petals, that visibly dances in the air.
5 and 6 are both sights of the sky. Phrase 5 says “colourful sky… a lively sight” — lively suits moving kites; phrase 6 says “painting the horizon”, and only the sunset sits on the horizon.

The point the exercise is making: phrase 2 calls a smell a “melody”, and phrase 6 calls a sunset a “canvas”. Describing one sense in the vocabulary of another is called synaesthesia, and it is exactly what Tagore does in the poem when he gives his mother’s gaze a stillness that spreads — a look given the qualities of silence and of space. The exercise is training your ear for it.

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