NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 4 Vitamin-M (prose) — Reflect and Respond

Book page 97–98 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.

I. From your experience with an elderly person at home or in your neighbourhood, complete the following graphic organiser. [Graphic organiser on page 97. A central box reads CARING FOR THE ELDERLY, with four arrows leading to four boxes: ‘Why should we care for the elderly?’ (above), ‘What are the problems faced by the elderly?’ (left), ‘What could be the possible reasons for the problems faced?’ (right), ‘How can we take care of the elderly?’ (below).] Now, discuss the points written in the organiser with your classmates and teacher.

Answer

This organiser asks for your own observation, so fill each box from a real person you know — a grandparent, a neighbour, the old man who sits outside the shop. Write two or three short points in each box, and make sure the left box (problems) and the right box (reasons) actually match up: every problem you list should have a cause opposite it.

What a good answer needs:

Concrete points, not slogans. “She cannot read the small print on her medicine strip” beats “old people have problems”.
The right box must explain the left box, not repeat it — poor eyesight, weak bones, hearing loss, retirement (loss of income and of a daily role), children living in another city, a flat with stairs and no lift.
The bottom box should be about things you can actually do, and should include dignity, not only medicines.

Sample answer:

Box	Points I filled in (about my neighbour, Sushila Ammal, 78)
Why should we care for the elderly?	They looked after us first; they carry the family’s stories, recipes and language; they are more likely to fall ill or fall down and cannot always call for help; and a society is judged by how it treats people who can no longer be useful to it.
What are the problems faced by the elderly?	Loneliness after her husband died; knees that hurt on the stairs; she cannot read her medicine labels; she is often left out of family decisions and spoken to loudly, as if she were a child.
What could be the possible reasons for the problems faced?	Failing sight and hearing, arthritis; both her sons work in another city; retirement ended her daily routine and her income; and the family assumes that age has ended her judgement.
How can we take care of the elderly?	Sit and listen without hurrying her; write medicine names in large letters on the box; walk with her to the temple instead of forbidding her to go; ask her opinion before deciding for her; visit at a fixed time each week so she can look forward to it.

Why the book starts here: the story you are about to read is exactly this organiser turned into fiction. Grandpa’s problems are failing sight, hearing and memory; the reason he is unhappy is not those failings but the loss of independence that follows them; and the story’s answer to “How can we take care of the elderly?” is not a stricter rule — it is Ravi’s decision to protect his grandfather without insulting him.

Q2.

II. Fill in the table given below. You may check your answers with the help of a dictionary. [A four-column table on page 98: ‘Not heard this word before’ / ‘Have heard this word but don’t know what it means’ / ‘I know this word. It has something to do with…’ / ‘Write the meaning of this word’, for the words: 1. frail 2. shuddered 3. poky 4. forbid 5. pottering 6. winced]

Answer

The first three columns are a personal tick — only you know which word you had met before. The fourth column has one right answer each, and the story itself supplies the context. Here are the meanings, with the line each word comes from.

Word	Meaning	The line in the story
1. frail	weak and delicate, usually because of old age or illness	“pointing to the frail old figure sitting in the rocking chair” (page 98)
2. shuddered	trembled suddenly, with fear or with distaste at a memory	“she stopped and shuddered at the memory” (page 99)
3. poky	(of a room or house) unpleasantly small and cramped	“this poky little flat, in this horrible, crowded city” (page 99)
4. forbid	to order somebody not to do something	“you have the right to forbid me to go out on my own!” (page 99)
5. pottering	moving about doing small, unhurried, unimportant jobs	“while he was pottering around” in the garden (page 100)
6. winced	made a small, involuntary expression of pain or embarrassment (the book glosses it as “showed an expression of embarrassment”)	“Ravi winced at the over-loud tone his mother used” (page 100)

Tip: notice that five of these six words are used about Grandpa or about how he is treated — frail, poky, forbid, pottering — and only one, winced, is about Ravi. The word list is already telling you where the story’s sympathy lies.

Q3.

III. Think of a tradition, story, or recipe passed down by grandparents or an elderly relative in your family. What does it mean to you? How does it connect you to your growing-up years? Share with your classmates and teacher.

Answer

This is a personal question with three parts, and all three must be answered: what the tradition is, what it means to you, and how it connects you to your childhood. Choose something small and specific — one dish, one song, one Diwali habit — because detail is what makes such an answer convincing.

What a good answer needs:

Name the person and the thing: “my father’s mother” + “puran poli on Holi” / “the story of Karna she told at bedtime” / “tying the first rakhi only after the sun is up”.
One sensory detail — a smell, a sound, the feel of it. That is what turns a fact into a memory.
A sentence on meaning: what it teaches, or whom it keeps present.
A sentence on continuity: what you now do because of it.

Sample answer: My grandmother makes ellu urundai — sesame and jaggery balls — every year on the eve of Pongal. She learnt it from her mother in a village near Thanjavur, and she has never once measured anything; she says the jaggery is ready when it “sings” in the pan. The kitchen smells of roasted sesame for two days afterwards, and that smell is my whole childhood in one breath. What it means to me is that a recipe can be a kind of memory that lives in the hands rather than in a book. It connects me to my growing-up years because I used to be given the job of rolling the balls when they were still too hot, and I would drop them and get scolded and laugh. Last Pongal she let me judge when the jaggery was ready, and I got it right. I understood then that I was being handed something.

Why this question comes before the story: Vitamin-M is about what an old person still holds that no one in the family thinks to ask for. Grandpa remembers Karpov, Fischer and Spassky, and he remembers a family custom the family itself has forgotten. This question makes you notice, before you read, that you are already carrying something an elder gave you.

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