NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 6 Twin Melodies (play by Mitra Phukan) — Check Your Understanding (Act I)

Book page 174 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.

I. Complete the table given below based on Act I of the play. Check your answers with the teacher. Setting — Where: Iqbal’s room / Description of the room: a small rack, ................ / On the wall: ............ Children and the instruments they play — 1. Iqbal: flute 2. .................. 3. .................. 4. .................. Speaker / Words of the Speaker / Reason — .......... | “Oh ho! Wow Shruti! You are a sensation now! The least you can do is throw a party!” | ............ .......... | “There is need to worry Iqbal! You don’t know papa.” | .......... .......... | “That’s the spirit!” | ...........

Answer

Every blank can be filled straight from the opening stage direction and the dialogue of Act I.

Setting	Where: Iqbal’s room Description of the room: a small rack, and a wooden table stacked with books On the wall: posters of the famous Indian flute players Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia and Shashank Subramanyam
Children and the instruments they play	1. Iqbal: flute 2. Avinash: tabla 3. Peter: keyboard 4. Shruti: violin

Speaker	Words of the Speaker	Reason
Avinash	“Oh ho! Wow Shruti! You are a sensation now! The least you can do is throw a party!”	He has just heard Iqbal read out the newspaper line praising Shruti’s performance with her father, and he is teasing her happily about her sudden fame — a friend’s way of congratulating her and asking her to celebrate.
Shruti	“There is need to worry Iqbal! You don’t know papa.”	Iqbal has just said “There is no need to worry!” She contradicts him because she alone knows how strict her father is about fusion music — he would call playing the violin to Western tunes “a desecration”. Her friends are being casual about something she knows is serious.
Peter	“That’s the spirit!”	Shruti has just promised, “Tonight, at dinner, I promise to bring this up.” Peter is applauding her decision and encouraging her to hold on to that courage.

Tip: notice how much the stage direction is doing. The posters of two great flute players are on Iqbal’s wall, and the room belongs to the flutist — so even the wall tells you whose room it is and what he loves. In a play you must read the bracketed directions as carefully as the dialogue.

Q2.

II. Do you think Shruti will gather the courage to speak to her father? Give a reason.

Answer

Yes, she will speak to him — she has already fixed the time and the place. Act I ends with her own promise: “Tonight, at dinner, I promise to bring this up.” A character who names the moment has stopped avoiding it.

Two things in the Act make the promise believable. First, her hesitation was never about willingness — she says plainly, “I want to give this a try too. I just don’t know how to tell him in the right way!” The obstacle is method, not nerve, and Iqbal removes it in one line: “All ways are right ways.” Second, she uses the phrase “time to bite the bullet” — an idiom for facing something unpleasant deliberately and getting it over with. That is the language of someone who has decided.

Why the prediction is safe: the friends also lower the price of failure for her. Avinash asks, “What’s the worst that can happen? He will scold you a little, maybe,” and Iqbal jokes that he has “a little bit of scolding for breakfast every day!” Once the worst outcome has been named and laughed at, it stops being frightening. That is how the scene is built — the laugh at the end of Act I is what makes Act II possible.

Q3.

III. What might be Shruti’s father’s reaction? Why?

Answer

The likely reaction is a calm, firm refusal rather than a loud one — and refusal not of the concert but of the kind of music.

Shruti has already described him for us: “He is very strict about these things. He will think it a desecration of the violin to be played to Western tunes.” The word desecration is the key — it means disrespect to something sacred, so for Nabin Sharma this will not be a matter of a schedule or of permission; it will feel like an offence against his art. She adds that he “firmly believes that Classical Hindustani music, with its ragas and aalaaps, is the only kind of music that an artist of any worth should play,” which tells us he judges by a single standard.

So one would expect him to be hurt and disappointed rather than merely angry, and to end the conversation instead of arguing it out — the reaction of a man who thinks the matter is beyond discussion. There is also a second possibility worth naming: Avinash predicts “he will eventually come round,” and a father who is also a teacher may agree to look before judging.

Check it against Act II: both halves of this prediction come true. He is calm and final — “(calmly but firmly) No is the answer” — and he withdraws rather than argues: “I think there remains nothing for me to say now.” The sting comes only in his parting mockery of “ ‘phoo’ music”.

Was this helpful? Report an error