NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 4 Vitamin-M (prose) — Check Your Understanding

Grandpa disliked it because the move cost him both the place he loved and the independence he had earned — and the second loss hurt far more than the first.

• The place. “Grandpa hated the noise and bustle of city life,” and he calls his daughter’s home “this poky little flat, in this horrible, crowded city”. Against that he sets his own house: “Such a wonderful place…! With that big mango tree in the garden! It is so quiet that at dusk you can even hear a leaf fall!”
• The loss of standing. His real complaint is stated in one sentence, spoken “with a trace of the firmness that had been a natural part of his job as a lawyer”: “I’ve been looking after myself for the better part of my seventy-five years. After your mother died ten years ago, I took over her duties as well and have been cooking, shopping and keeping house too. First you force me to come and live with you… and then you think you have the right to forbid me to go out on my own!”
• The way he is spoken to. His daughter uses an “over-loud tone… as though she were speaking to a child who couldn’t hear or understand too well”, and discusses his memory in front of him. Even his food is policed — sugar and bananas are “banned”.

Because in the single month since he moved in, three things had gone wrong, and each of them could have been fatal.

1. He “absent-mindedly took a double dose of his medicines” and had to be admitted to hospital.
2. He “got lost on one occasion he went for a walk and forgot the way back home”, giving the family “several anxious moments”.
3. Before the move, he had “slipped and fallen in the garden late one evening… and lain outside all night because there was no one at home to help him up”. That fall is the reason she locked up the brick house in the first place.

Added to this is his failing health: “He doesn’t hear too well, or see too well, or even remember too well these days.” He reads a newspaper “holding it inches from his nose”.

No, he was not — and the story shows it three times before Ravi ever says a word about it.

• His body reacts before his mouth does. “Ravi winced at the over-loud tone his mother used when speaking to Grandpa, as though she were speaking to a child who couldn’t hear or understand too well.” To wince is to flinch; he is embarrassed on his grandfather’s behalf.
• He denies it loyally when challenged. When Grandpa asks, “Has she told you not to let me go out on my own? Told you to keep me a prisoner here, has she?”, Ravi “felt guilty for a moment, then quickly recovered to say loyally, ‘Of course not, Grandpa. Mamma would never treat you like a baby … or a prisoner.’” The word guilty admits that the accusation is true; the word loyally shows whose side he is on.
• His solution respects Grandpa. He does not block the door or telephone his mother. “His grandfather would feel hurt if he insisted on accompanying him” — so he follows “secretly, at a safe distance”. He chooses the one plan that keeps Grandpa safe and keeps him free.

Not as she meant it. His mother’s instruction was absolute — “you’re not to let Grandpa go out on his own” — and Ravi breaks it within minutes of her leaving, because Grandpa gives him no way to refuse without insulting him: “then you’ll have no objection to my going out.”

But there were really two promises, and he keeps the second. To his mother he also said, “Don’t worry, Mamma… Grandpa’ll be fine at home with me.” The spirit of that promise is see that no harm comes to him, and Ravi honours it at real cost — crouching behind a bush, crawling out of the park “on all fours”, sprinting after a moving bus. He is “hot, bothered and close to fainting”, and he never once gives up.

So the honest prediction is: he will fail the rule and keep the purpose — and by the end even that will be turned upside down, because the person who never needed protecting was Grandpa.