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NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 4 Vitamin-M (prose) — Learning Beyond the Text

Book page 119–125 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.
I. Revisit the story and choose the image that correctly displays Grandpa’s walking stick. [Four pictures of walking sticks on page 119, each with an empty box below it. From the left: (1) a plain black handle curving over, with a brass band below it, on a dark shaft; (2) a brass/golden handle carved as a bird’s head with a hooked beak and feathered crest, with a brass collar, on a brown wooden shaft; (3) a silver handle carved as a dog’s head, on a green-and-brown shaft; (4) an ornate gold crook handle on a brown shaft.]
Answer

The second stick from the left is the correct one.

The description in the story gives three tests, on page 102:

“He picked up his beautiful shiny-black mahogany walking stick with a brass handle carved in the shape of an eagle’s head…”
PictureWhat it showsVerdict
1Plain black curved handle with a brass band; no carving at all✗ — the handle is not brass and is not carved as any bird
2Brass handle carved as a bird’s head with a hooked beak and feathered crest, brass collar✓ — this is the eagle’s head in brass
3Silver handle carved as a dog’s head✗ — wrong metal and wrong creature
4Ornate gold crook, no animal head✗ — no carving of a head

The decisive detail is the carved eagle’s head in brass, and only picture 2 has it. Be honest about the one point where the illustration does not match the text: the shaft in picture 2 is drawn as brown wood rather than “shiny-black mahogany”. Since no picture combines a black shaft with a brass eagle head, the head is the identifying feature and picture 2 is the intended answer.

How to do a picture-identification task: list the separate features named in the text — here material of the handle, shape of the carving, colour of the shaft — and score each picture against each feature. Never decide on one glance and never decide on the shaft colour alone; a detail that several pictures share cannot tell them apart.
Why the stick is described so carefully: Grandpa’s three possessions get more detail than anything else he owns — the eagle-headed stick, the bright-yellow cap with a coffee stain, and the white pyjama and shirt. All three are things you could recognise from a distance, which is exactly what a person tailing someone needs. The writer plants them so that the cap can be handed to a stranger later and the whole plot can turn on it.
Q2.
II. A picture is worth a thousand words! Explore and revisit memories. Collect a few memorable photographs of yourself and your family. Make a slide show. Mention the following: • When and where was it clicked? • Who are the people in the photograph? • Why is it memorable for you?
Answer

This is a project, and it is assessed on the captions rather than on the photographs. Every slide must answer all three questions, and the third — “Why is it memorable?” — is where the marks are.

Method:
  • Choose 5–8 photographs, not thirty. Pick a range: an old black-and-white one from your grandparents’ time, a festival, an ordinary day, a photograph of a place rather than a person.
  • Ask an elder first. The best details on any old photograph are not in the picture — who took it, what happened just before, who is missing from it. This is where the assignment connects to the chapter.
  • One slide, one photograph, three lines. When and where · who · why it matters.
  • Order the slides either oldest to newest, or by theme (festivals, journeys, everyday). A slide show with an order feels like a story; one without feels like a folder.
  • Check that everyone in the photographs is happy to be shown to the class.

Sample answer (one slide, written out):

Slide 3 — “The last Deepavali at the old house”
When and where: November 2019, in the front courtyard of my grandparents’ house in Sirsi, Karnataka.
Who: my grandfather Ramachandra, my grandmother Sarojini, my father, my cousin Anusha and me. My mother is not in the picture because she took it.
Why it is memorable: It is the only photograph in which all five of us are standing in that courtyard, and the house was sold eight months later. I did not know while it was being taken that it would become the last one. My grandfather is holding the brass lamp his own mother used, and he is looking at the lamp rather than at the camera — which, my grandmother says, is what he always did.
Why the book sets this task here: the chapter is about memory that survives without a photograph. Grandpa remembers his birthday custom with nothing written down; Tagore’s speaker recovers his mother through a tune, a scent and the sky. Making this slide show is the opposite experiment — you start from the image and try to recover the story. Do it properly and you will find the same thing the poem finds: the part worth keeping is the part no camera caught.
Q3.
III. You must have read stories about taking care of the family members of all age groups in English and also in your own language. Now, read the story given below. Discuss with your classmates and teacher. [‘The Lost Child’ by Mulk Raj Anand, printed on pages 120–125.]
Answer

This is a reading-and-discussion task, so what is wanted is a set of things worth saying about the story, and a comparison with Vitamin-M. Read the story once for the plot and a second time watching only for the repetitions — that is where its design lies.

The story in one line: a small boy, taken to a spring fair, wants a toy, a burfi, a garland, balloons and the roundabout, and is refused or expects to be refused each time; the moment he is lost, a kind stranger offers him every one of those things and he refuses them all, crying only, “I want my mother, I want my father!”

Four things to bring to the discussion:

  • The structure is a mirror. The first half is a list of desires; the second half is the same list in the same order — roundabout, snake-charmer, balloons, flowers, sweets — offered and rejected. Mulk Raj Anand does not have to explain what the boy has learnt; the shape of the story says it.
  • The refrain. “Come, child, come” is repeated by the parents four times, and “I want my mother, I want my father!” five times by the child. The first refrain is a summons the boy keeps ignoring; the second is a summons nobody can answer. Compare this with the refrain in the poem you are about to read — “I cannot remember my mother” — which works the same way, opening each stanza and gathering weight each time.
  • The desires are ranked by the parents’ imagined objections — the burfi is refused because “he was greedy”, the garland because “they were cheap”, the balloons because “he was too old”. The boy has memorised his parents’ voices so thoroughly that he refuses himself before they can. That is characterisation done entirely through what does not get said aloud.
  • The ending is withheld. Anand stops before the parents are found. We are left at the sweet shop with the child turning his face away. The refusal to resolve is the point: nothing on offer is a substitute.

Comparing the two stories in this chapter:

Vitamin-MThe Lost Child
Who is thought to need looking afterthe old manthe small boy
Who is actually lostRavi, the minderthe child — genuinely, and at once
Tonecomic, affectionate, ironictender, then frightening
What both sayBeing cared for and being valued are not the same thing. Grandpa is fed, dosed and guarded, and what he wants is to be treated as a person. The lost child is offered sweets, music and balloons by a kind stranger, and what he wants is the two people who were not treating him particularly kindly at all.
Questions to open the discussion with: Why does the writer make the child refuse the very things he begged for? · Are the parents unkind, or ordinary? · Whose voice do we hear in “he was too old to play with such toys”? · Which is the more frightening moment — the child losing his parents, or the child realising the stranger will not do?
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