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My Childhood-Energized Textbook

This e-lesson is an enhanced version of the chapter My Childhood by APJ Abdul Kalam, Beehive, Class 9, NCERT.
Abhipsa EDU20
NCERT TEXTBOOK PDF is available at:
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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1B7B93PEfXAgJ9k_Rqf-yjGUNI3hzW5RC
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Let’s engage in following activities to solidify our understanding of the chapter.


Here is a wall painting. Guess who the man is. Share your ideas about him.
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Listening Task
In the video below, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is interviewed. Let's watch the video first, then play a fun game.
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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12zn0uzV4gawXv5q_W48M2IhTfQ8asm1x
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After you've finished watching the video, take the Kahoot quiz below to test your knowledge.
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https://play.kahoot.it/v2/?quizId=883f2443-3e4b-48a8-8e57-f9e9f773559c
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Writing Task
Scan the following QR code to get inside the padlet page. Write a gist about the video.
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We've had so much fun with the aforementioned activities.Let's go into the lesson and learn more about Kalam.


Below the paragraphs, you'll find comprehension questions. To respond to them, you must thoroughly review the chapter.
1. I was born into a middle-class Tamil family in the island town of Rameswaram in the erstwhile Madras State. My father, Jainulabdeen, had neither much formal education nor much wealth; despite these disadvantages, he possessed great innate wisdom and a true generosity of spirit. He had an ideal helpmate in my mother, Ashiamma. I do not recall the exact number of people she fed every day, but I am quite certain that far more outsiders ate with us than all the members of our own family put together.
2. I was one of many children—a short boy with rather undistinguished looks, born to tall and handsome parents. We lived in our ancestral house, which was built in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was a fairly large pucca house, made of limestone and brick, on the Mosque Street in Rameswaram. My austere father used to avoid all inessential comforts and luxuries. However, all necessities were provided for, in terms of food, medicine, or clothes. In fact, I would say mine was a very secure childhood, both materially and emotionally.
3. The Second World War broke out in 1939, when I was eight years old. For reasons I have never been able to understand, a sudden demand for tamarind seeds erupted in the market. I used to collect the seeds and sell them to a provision shop on Mosque Street. A day’s collection would fetch me the princely sum of one anna. My brother-in-law Jallaluddin would tell me stories about the war, which I would later attempt to trace in the
headlines in Dinamani. Our area, being isolated, was completely unaffected by the war. But soon India was forced to join the Allied Forces and something like a state of emergency was declared. The first casualty came in the form of the suspension of the train halt at Rameswaram station. The newspapers now had to be bundled and thrown out from the moving train on the Rameswaram Road between Rameswaram and Dhanuskodi. That forced my cousin Samsuddin, who distributed newspapers in Rameswaram, to look for a helping hand to catch the bundles, and as if naturally, I filled the slot. Samsuddin helped me earn my first wages. Half a century later, I can still feel the surge of pride in earning my own money for the first time.
4. Every child is born, with some inherited characteristics, into a specific socio-economic and emotional environment, and trained in certain ways by figures of authority. I inherited honesty and self-discipline from my father; from my mother, I inherited faith in goodness and deep kindness and so did my three brothers and sister. I had three close friends in my childhood — Ramanadha Sastry, Aravindan and Sivaprakasan. All these boys were from orthodox Hindu Brahmin families. As children, none of us ever felt any difference amongst ourselves because of our religious differences and upbringing. In fact, Ramanadha Sastry was the son of Pakshi Lakshmana Sastry, the high priest of the Rameswaram temple. Later, he took over the priesthood of the Rameswaram temple from his father; Aravindan went into the business of arranging transport for visiting pilgrims, and Sivaprakasan became a catering contractor for the
Southern Railways
To answer questions from the above passages, click on the link.
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https://app.nearpod.com/?pin=FA65F02F6108D690C4852912A6FA7E83-1
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5. During the annual Shri Sita Rama Kalyanam ceremony, our family used to arrange boats with a special platform for carrying idols of the Lord from the temple to the marriage site, situated in the middle of the pond called Rama Tirtha which was near our house. Events from the Ramayana and from the life of the Prophet were the bedtime stories my mother and grandmother would tell the children in our family.
6. One day when I was in the fifth standard at the Rameswaram Elementary School, a new teacher came to our class. I used to wear a cap which marked me as a Muslim, and I always sat in the front row next to Ramanadha Sastry, who wore the sacred thread. The new teacher could not stomach a Hindu priest’s son sitting with a Muslim boy. In accordance with our social ranking as the new teacher saw it, I was asked to go and sit on the back bench. I felt very sad, and so did Ramanadha Sastry. He looked utterly downcast as I shifted to my seat in the last row. The image of him weeping when I shifted to the last row left a lasting impression on me.
7. After school, we went home and told our respective parents about the incident. Lakshmana Sastry summoned the teacher, and in our presence, told the teacher that he should not spread the poison of social inequality and communal intolerance in the minds of innocent children. He bluntly asked the teacher to either apologise or quit the school and the island. Not only did the teacher regret his behaviour, but the strong sense of conviction Lakshmana Sastry conveyed ultimately reformed this young teacher.
Hey! Let's have a look at your grasp of the lesson so far. Before going on to the next paragraph, complete the given activity.
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https://app.seesaw.me/#/activities/library?my_library&promptId=prompt.77affd56-d86a-4dd4-a1e1-fb5521e8b93b
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8. On the whole, the small society of Rameswaram was very rigid in terms of the segregation of different social groups. However, my science teacher Sivasubramania Iyer, though an orthodox Brahmin with a very conservative wife, was something of a rebel. He did his best to break social barriers so that people from varying backgrounds could mingle easily. He used to spend hours with me and would say, “Kalam, I want you to develop so that you are on par with the highly educated people of the big cities.”
9. One day, he invited me to his home for a meal. His wife was horrified at the idea of a Muslim boy being invited to dine in her ritually pure kitchen. She refused to serve me in her kitchen. Sivasubramania Iyer was not perturbed, nor did he get angry with his wife, but instead, served me with his own hands and sat down beside me to eat his meal. His wife watched us from behind the kitchen door. I wondered whether she had observed any difference in the way I ate rice, drank water or cleaned the floor after the meal. When I was leaving his house, Sivasubramania Iyer invited me to join him for dinner again the next weekend. Observing my hesitation, he told me not to get upset, saying, “Once you decide to change the system, such problems have to be confronted.” When I visited his
house the next week, Sivasubramania Iyer’s wife took me inside her kitchen and served me food with her own hands.
10. Then the Second World War was over, and India’s freedom was imminent. “Indians will build their own India,” declared Gandhiji. The whole country was filled with an unprecedented optimism. I asked my father for permission to leave Rameswaram and study at the district headquarters in Ramanathapuram.
11. He told me as if thinking aloud, “Abul ! I know you have to go away to grow. Does the seagull not fly across the sun, alone and without a nest?” He quoted Khalil Gibran to my hesitant mother, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.”
Now that you've finished the lesson, you can move on to the next step. To test your understanding, play this entertaining quiz game.
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https://www.gimkit.com/join/62a1f23e22e25b0023f6892d
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The lesson is now complete. It's time to have some fun with the games listed below.


Vocabulary
Let's have a look at our vocabulary. Examine the terms, and their definitions, and construct sentences with them.
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https://www.canva.com/design/DAFDBsphea4/JIqSLtEXvig4SgSNqz9I7A/view?utm_content=DAFDBsphea4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton
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Grammar
To test your prefix knowledge, play the game below. To play the game, scan the QR code below.
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Play this fun game to test your understanding of active and passive voice.
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https://www.turacogames.com/games/passive-voice-grammar-game-for-esl/
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Speaking
Go to the Flipgrid activity below. Make a recording of yourself discussing any outstanding figure/great personality who has influenced/inspired you.
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https://flipgrid.com/10f8792e
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Writing Task:
Read the story of My Childhood again, connect to the events of Kalam's life and write the social messages you learnt from his life.
Click on the link and share your ideas.
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https://penzu.com/journals/26772409/entries
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Additional
Read APJ Abdul Kalam's autobiography, Wings of Fire, from the PDF link below to learn more about him.
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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1B7B93PEfXAgJ9k_Rqf-yjGUNI3hzW5RC
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