EN हिं

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

Book page 181–182 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.
I. Work in pairs. Identify the true statements. Check the answers with your teacher. 1. During the rehearsal, Shruti’s parents enter the room and are overjoyed at her performance. _______
Answer

True.

The stage direction is explicit: “Slowly, her parents become engrossed and Shruti’s father taps his feet and is seen evidently enjoying… Nabin claps furiously. He wears an expression of pride on his face.” Their words confirm the delight — Nabin: “Wah, how soulful! You all have done a wonderful job!”; Leela: “Oh yes children. You all were amazing!”

Note the small physical detail: he taps his feet before he says a word. Tapping the feet is the body keeping the taal — the involuntary reaction of a trained musician who has been caught by the music. The playwright convinces us of his change through an action, before any dialogue admits it.
Q2.
2. Shruti initially considers telling her friends that she can’t join them for the performance, after practising one last time. _______
Answer

True.

It is stated in her aside at the start of Act III — a speech the other characters on stage are understood not to hear: “(Aside) Oh, how much I enjoy performing this piece. Perhaps I can practise one last time and soon after that I will tell them that I can’t join them for the performance.”

Why the aside is placed exactly there: it tells the audience that Shruti has quietly obeyed her father, so that when her parents walk in unannounced the scene carries real tension — we are the only ones who know that this rehearsal was meant to be her last. It also shows her decency: she is not defying him behind his back.
Q3.
3. Shruti’s father expressed that she had sung a few notes incorrectly during her performance. _______
Answer

False — and it is wrong twice over.

  • Shruti played the violin; she did not sing. Singing belongs to her father’s family of vocalists, which is a separate strand of the story.
  • He praised her accuracy rather than faulting it: “You too Shruti! You did not lose sight of the notes of the raga even once and performed it to excellence.”
Tip: in a true-or-false exercise, check the verb as carefully as the claim. Swapping ‘played’ for ‘sung’ is exactly the kind of small substitution that makes a statement false.
Q4.
4. Shruti’s father had followed the family’s tradition of being a violinist and worked very hard to achieve all that he did. _______
Answer

False in its first half, true in its second — so the statement as a whole is false.

Leela tells Shruti the opposite: “Your own father, Shruti, had to go against his family’s wishes to play the violin. His was a family of vocalists. Your grandfather, his father, and your uncles were all vocalists belonging to a highly traditional school.” Nabin did not follow the family tradition; he broke it, and “Your grandfather saw this choice as a kind of betrayal of family values and tradition.”

The second half is accurate — “your father worked his fingers to the bone and see where the violin got him” — but a statement is true only if all of it is true.

Why this fact is the hinge of the play: it makes Nabin’s objection to Shruti an exact repetition of his own father’s objection to him. He is playing his father’s part without noticing, which is why Leela can change his mind simply by reminding him: “I had forgotten my own past.” The chapter’s theme of tradition versus new forms is not stated as a lesson — it is built into the family’s history and repeated one generation later.
Q5.
5. Shruti’s mother helped her husband realise why he should support their daughter. _______
Answer

True.

Nabin says it himself, and insists on the credit going to her: “There is no need to thank me child. I must admit it was Leela who opened my eyes. I had forgotten my own past. It is your mother you should thank.”

Look at how Leela works: she never argues about fusion music at all. In Act II she scolds Shruti for the concealment; then, off stage, she reminds Nabin of his own youth. She changes his mind by changing what he is looking at — not the concert, but himself. That is why she is the quietest character in the play and the one who moves it.
Q6.
6. Shruti’s father accepts that he underrated the potential of classical music. _______
Answer

True.

His admission is in almost these words: “I underestimated the power of our own music. I was afraid you would be lost to us. I realise that my fears were baseless.” ‘Our own music’ here means the Hindustani classical tradition he has spent his life in.

What exactly did he underestimate? Not its beauty — he never doubted that. He underestimated its strength. He had assumed that classical training was fragile, that a young musician who played fusion would be diluted and “lost to us”. What the rehearsal shows him is the reverse: Shruti carries the raga intact into the fusion piece — “did not lose sight of the notes of the raga even once”. The tradition turns out to be strong enough to travel. That is why his fear was “baseless”, and why he can say “each bay, its own wind” without feeling he has surrendered anything.
Answer at a glance: the true statements are 1, 2, 5 and 6. Statements 3 and 4 are false.
Was this helpful? Report an error