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NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 8 Follow That Dream (letter by Irene Chua) — Learning Beyond the Text

Book page 243–244 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.
I. Create a Vision Board for yourself. A vision board is a visual representation of your goals, dreams, and inspirations. It helps you focus on what you want to achieve and stay motivated. Vision boards often include pictures, words, or symbols that reflect your hopes and intentions for the future. [Illustration on page 243: a blue vision-board template with a central label ‘My Vision Board’ and five headed areas — ‘My dreams’ (a blank card and a blank speech-bubble), ‘I want to try’ (a blank banner), ‘Goals’ (a ruled note-sheet), ‘Places I will go’ (six blank photo frames) and ‘Inspiration’ (a blank sheet with a clip). All the spaces are empty in the book, to be filled in by the student.]
Answer

How to make one that actually works. A vision board is not decoration; it is a plan you can see from across the room. Three rules make the difference between a poster and a tool:

  • Put it where you will see it without choosing to. Above your study desk, inside the cupboard door. A board in a drawer does nothing.
  • Prefer pictures to sentences. The eye reads an image in an instant and skips a paragraph. Save words for the Goals section, where precision matters.
  • Date it, and keep the old one. Write the year in a corner. Next year’s board will show you how much of this one you actually did — and, as Irene Chua says, “life itself may change a person’s dreams”, so some entries should change.

What you need: a chart paper or the inside of a shoebox lid, old magazines and newspapers, scissors, glue, sketch pens. Nothing has to be bought.

Why the book places this activity at the end of this particular letter. Chua’s complaint about most people is that they “never got beyond just wishful thinking”. A vision board is the first small step out of wishful thinking, because it forces a vague wish to become a specific picture — you cannot cut out a photograph of ‘being successful’, but you can cut out a photograph of a hospital, a stage, a cricket ground or a college gate. The act of choosing the image is the act of making the dream definite.
Do it in one sitting of about forty minutes, not perfectly. A half-finished board on the wall beats a perfect one you never got round to starting — which is, again, the whole argument of the chapter.
Q2.
I. 1. My Dreams—Think about what you wish for in the future. This could be becoming an artist, serving the Nation, or learning a new skill. Write or draw it in the ‘My dreams’ section.
Answer

What this section needs: the long-range ambitions — the ones that will take years, not months. One or two, not ten. If everything is a dream, nothing is.

Sample answer:

  • To become a wildlife veterinarian — a photograph of a vet with a rescued kite, and beneath it the single word 2033.
  • To keep drawing all my life — one of my own sketches pasted in the corner, so that the board contains something I actually made.
Why put a year under the picture. Chua’s ten-year rule is uncomfortable but useful: writing 2033 under the dream converts it from a mood into a duration. A dream with a date attached starts asking what you will do this month.
Test for this section: could someone else recognise your dream from the picture alone, without reading a word? If not, choose a more specific image.
Q3.
I. 2. I Want to Try—List new things you want to experience this year. These might include trying out for a play, starting a journal, learning to ride a bicycle, etc.
Answer

What this section needs: things you can start within this year, and each one small enough that fear is the only real obstacle. This is the experimental part of the board — items here are allowed to fail.

Sample answer:

  • Audition for the annual day play, even for a small part.
  • Learn to swim at the municipal pool during the summer holidays.
  • Keep a nature journal — one sketch and two lines about anything living, every Sunday.
  • Speak in the morning assembly at least once.
  • Learn to cook three dishes properly from my grandmother.
How this section differs from ‘Goals’. A goal is measured by whether you achieved it; a ‘try’ is measured by whether you turned up. The purpose of this box is to reduce the cost of failure — you are allowed to be bad at everything listed here. That matters, because the poem on page 246 says the same thing in four lines: “The first step is the hardest.” This box is a list of first steps.
Q4.
I. 3. Goals—Think about specific things you want to achieve. Use this space to write goals like ‘Read 10 books this year’ or ‘Improve my writing’.
Answer

What this section needs: goals with a number and a date in them. This is the one part of the board where words beat pictures, because a goal you cannot measure is a wish in disguise.

Weak goalSame goal, made measurable
Improve my writingWrite one page of my journal every day, and submit an article to the school magazine by December.
Do better in ScienceFinish every chapter’s exercise questions within a week of the chapter being taught, and raise my Science average from 72 to 85 by the annual exam.
Read moreRead ten books this year — four in English, four in Tamil, two non-fiction — and note one line from each.
Get fitterRun three kilometres without stopping by 30 November.
Why the numbers matter. A measurable goal tells you on any given evening whether you are ahead or behind, and gives you a chance to correct course. An unmeasurable goal can only be judged at the very end, when it is too late to do anything about it. This is the section of the board that will still be useful in March, when the excitement of making it has worn off.
Q5.
I. 4. Places I Will Go—These can be real or imaginary places you’d like to visit. Draw or paste pictures of cities, nature spots, or even dream destinations like the space or the ocean.
Answer

What this section needs: a mixture of scales — one place you could reach on a bus this year, one that will take a decade, and one that may be impossible. The template on page 243 gives six frames; do not fill them all with faraway countries.

Sample answer, six frames:

  1. Valparai, Tamil Nadu — a two-day trip; I want to see a lion-tailed macaque in the wild.
  2. The Anamalai Tiger Reserve field station — where I hope to volunteer once I am sixteen.
  3. Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Chennai — the college gate itself, pasted as a photograph.
  4. Kaziranga, Assam — the far end of the country, for the rhinos.
  5. The Andaman coast — for the turtles that nest there.
  6. The deep ocean floor — the impossible one, from a magazine photograph of a submersible.
Why the near places matter more than the far ones. Anyone can paste a picture of Switzerland. A board that contains one place you could reach next month is a board that can be acted on. Notice too that in the sample every place except the last is connected to the same dream — the board is not a holiday list but a map of one ambition. That is the difference between a vision board and a scrapbook.
Q6.
I. 5. Inspiration—Who or what inspires you? It could be a family member, teacher, a famous personality, or a quote that gives you strength.
Answer

What this section needs: people or words you can actually turn to on a bad day. Include at least one person you know personally — a distant hero inspires, but a near one can be telephoned.

Sample answer:

  • My grandmother, who passed Class 10 through open school at fifty-two — a photograph of her with her certificate.
  • Dr Salim Ali, the ornithologist, whose The Book of Indian Birds is on my shelf — his portrait, cut from a newspaper.
  • A quotation, in my own handwriting: “Dream is not that you see in sleep, dream is something that does not let you sleep.” — Dr APJ Abdul Kalam
  • My biology teacher’s remark on last year’s project, kept and pasted: “You noticed something nobody else in the class noticed.”
Why the fourth item is the most valuable one on the whole board. Kalam’s sentence is inspiring, but it was not addressed to you. A single line of specific praise from someone who actually watched you work is evidence, not encouragement — and on the day the dream feels absurd, evidence is what you will need. Chua’s letter is exactly this kind of object for Ming: not a slogan, but one person’s considered attention, kept in writing.
Q7.
II. Great personalities in history were inspired by their parents. [Illustration on page 244: a mother in a green sari seated on a cushion in a palace hall, one hand raised as she speaks, and a small boy in a red angarkha and turban listening intently beside her.] 1. Chhatrapati Shivaji’s mother, Jijabai, instilled in him a strong sense of dharma, patriotism, and justice. She told him tales from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, which shaped his leadership ideals and bravery.
Answer

What the example is teaching: that a parent shapes a child’s ambition less by instruction than by the stories they choose to tell.

The three qualities the book names, and what each became in Shivaji’s life:

What Jijabai instilledWhat it became
Dharma — a sense of right conduct and dutyHis well-known insistence on the protection of civilians, of places of worship of every faith, and of women during campaigns
Patriotism — devotion to one’s own land and peopleThe idea of swarajya, self-rule, as a cause rather than a personal conquest
Justice — fairness in rulingA system of administration with defined ministers, salaried soldiers and written accounts, rather than rule by favour

Why the Ramayana and the Mahabharata? Because they are stories about rulers who must choose — Rama accepting exile, Yudhishthira weighing duty against loss, Arjuna hesitating before battle. A boy raised on these does not merely learn that kings are brave; he learns that a ruler is judged by what he does when the right choice is costly. That is a very different lesson from a tale of simple heroism, and the book is careful to say the stories “shaped his leadership ideals and bravery” — ideals first.

The link back to the letter. Irene Chua’s letter is itself a story told by a mother — several stories, in fact: the Academy Award winner, the Raffles College students, her own book. Jijabai and Chua use the same instrument, four centuries apart. Neither says “you must be brave” or “you must work hard”; both hand over a narrative and let the child draw the moral. That is why the book prints this note at the end of this chapter rather than any other.
Q8.
II. 2. Queen Madālasa, wife of King Ritudhwaja, a revered figure from Indian scriptures, nurtured in her children a deep understanding of the soul and detachment from material desires. Her wisdom led her sons to seek spiritual liberation. Madalasa is a timeless example of a mother guiding her children on the path of enlightenment.
Answer

What the example is teaching: that a parent shapes not only how a child pursues a goal but what the child comes to believe is worth wanting.

Madālasa appears in the Markandeya Purana. She is remembered for the lullaby she is said to have sung to her infant sons — a cradle song whose burden is that the child is pure, spotless and without form, and that the body and its titles are borrowed things. The story is that her sons, raised on it, turned away from kingship altogether and sought moksha, liberation.

JijabaiMadālasa
What she taughtDharma, patriotism, justiceKnowledge of the soul, detachment from material desire
Her instrumentEpic tales of rulersA lullaby, sung from infancy
Where it ledTo rule — swarajyaTo renunciation — moksha
Why the book prints these two together, and why the pairing is not accidental. The two mothers point their children in opposite directions — one towards a kingdom, one away from every kingdom — and the chapter calls both admirable. That is the real lesson of the pair: the book is not recommending a particular dream. It is saying that what a parent gives a child is a measure of worth, and the dream follows from it.
Read it against the letter one last time. Irene Chua tells Ming “It could be in any field—sports, science, arts, business, or design,” and never once says which. Jijabai, Madālasa and Chua all shape the seriousness with which a dream is held, and leave its content to the child. That is as good a summary of this chapter’s argument about parents as you will find.
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