1. Chapter at a glance

Unit 4 has two main texts plus two supplementary pieces. The thread joining all four: family, memory and the people we sometimes take for granted.

2. Who’s who — the characters

• Grandpa — 75 years old, a retired lawyer, Ravi’s grandfather and Vidya’s father. Frail body, sharp mind.
• Ravi — the grandson. His school holidays have just begun, so he is put ‘in charge’ of Grandpa.
• Vidya — Ravi’s mother, Grandpa’s daughter. Works in an office; worried and protective.
• Ravi’s father — buys Grandpa the Tamil paper on his way home; stays mostly confused.
• The stranger on the bus — a man in white pyjama-shirt wearing Grandpa’s yellow cap.

3. Part I — Grandpa moves in

• Ravi’s mother jokes that somebody should invent a memory vitamin — ‘Vitamin-M’ — to give to old people.
• Grandpa moved in a month ago because he had become too old to live alone.
• It had been a hard month. He absent-mindedly took a double dose of his medicines and had to be admitted to hospital. Another day he got lost on a walk and forgot the way home.
• So Vidya forbade him from going out alone — and Grandpa was deeply hurt.
• His argument: he had looked after himself for most of his 75 years, and after his wife died ten years ago he had done the cooking, shopping and housekeeping too.
• He hates the poky little flat and the noise and bustle of the crowded city. He misses his small brick house with the big mango tree — so quiet you could hear a leaf fall at dusk.
• But he had once slipped and fallen in that garden while pottering around and lay outside all night, with nobody to help. That is why the house was locked up.

• Ravi winces when his mother speaks to Grandpa in an over-loud tone, as if to a child who cannot hear or understand.
• Grandpa is a brilliant chess player — cool and cunning. He recalls Karpov’s opening moves and the Fischer–Spassky match. Irony: he remembers thousands of chess games but forgets people’s names.
• He announces he is walking to the corner shop for the Tamil newspaper. When Ravi offers to go instead, Grandpa craftily traps him: “You’ll have no objection to my going out, then.”
• Off he goes with his shiny-black mahogany walking stick (brass handle carved as an eagle’s head) and his bright-yellow cap, twirling the stick jauntily.

4. Part II — Ravi the secret detective

This is the funniest part of the story. Grandpa strolls happily; Ravi suffers one humiliation after another.

5. Part III — The twist at home

• Ravi rushes back to the barber shop and the park — no Grandpa. He becomes frantic.
• He tries phoning his mother and father from a telephone booth, but both numbers are busy. Sick with worry, he goes home.
• Huge relief: the first thing he hears at the front door is the gentle whirr of Grandpa snoring in his bedroom.
• Ravi kneels by the bed and puts his cheek against the old man’s face — skin with more creases than lines on a map, smelling of eucalyptus ointment and shaving cream. He hugs him; Grandpa only grunts in his sleep.
• Ravi decides not to ask any questions — that would give away that he had been following.
• When Mother returns, Grandpa says coolly that he had a quiet morning, but Ravi “just disappeared” instead of looking after him.

• Grandpa produces a gift-wrapped parcel. Mother protests that Ravi’s birthday was three months ago.
• Grandpa’s reply: he always gives a gift to every child in the house on his own birthday — and asks, “Have you forgotten?”
• Mother flushes and darts a stricken look at the calendar, where she herself had circled the date in red at the start of the year and written ‘Papa’s birthday’. She had forgotten.
• There are gifts for her and Ravi’s father too — Grandpa still thinks of them as his ‘babies’.
• Grandpa’s punchline: “My daughter needs some Vitamin-M, I think — for her memory.”
• Ravi’s gift: a thick hardcover book, ‘The Best Detective Stories’, with, as Grandpa says solemnly, good tips on how to avoid getting fooled while trailing a suspect.
• Ravi is left wondering whether the twinkle in Grandpa’s eye is an innocent gleam or a mischievous one — a perfect open ending.

6. What ‘Vitamin-M’ really means

7. Themes & message

• Dignity of the elderly — old people want respect, not baby-talk. Speaking loudly and slowly to Grandpa hurts him more than any illness.
• Ageism (bias based on age) — the family assumes ‘old’ means ‘helpless and forgetful’, and the story proves them wrong.
• Independence vs safety — a real dilemma. Vidya’s worry is genuine and Grandpa’s need for freedom is genuine. Neither is the villain.
• Love shown quietly — Ravi’s secret following, Grandpa’s gifts, the hug beside the bed. Nobody in this family says “I love you”; they just do things.
• Humour and irony are the writer’s tools. The comedy of Ravi’s hiding places makes the serious point land more gently.

8. Character sketches

9. Word meanings (glossary)

10. Movement & sound words

Asha Nehemiah keeps the story fast and funny by choosing very specific verbs instead of plain ones. They fall into two groups.

Why it matters: “Ravi walked out of the park” is flat. “Ravi crawled out of the park on all fours, ducking behind the benches” makes you see and feel his embarrassment.

11. Grammar: Prepositions

Examples from the story

• I’ll just walk across to the corner shop… → direction
• …he felt a shadow fall over him… → position
• …the vendors sitting under the tree… → location
• Ravi took position behind a big banyan… → location

Common ones to know: in, on, at, to, into, towards, through, between, among, beside, near, over, under, above, below, across, along, behind, beyond, against.

12. Grammar: Direct & Indirect Speech

What changes

Reporting questions

• First, turn the question into a declarative (statement) order — no question mark, no helping-verb inversion.
• Yes/No type → use if or whether after the reporting verb.
• Wh- type → keep the same wh- word after the reporting verb.
• Reporting verbs to use: asked, enquired, replied, said that, countered.

13. Questions & intonation

There are two types of interrogative sentences: Wh- type (what, who, why, how…) and Yes/No type (Shall we…? Have you…? Are you…?).

Intonation = the rise and fall of your voice

14. The Lost Child — quick summary

Writer: Mulk Raj Anand

• It is the spring festival. A little boy walks to the village fair with his parents, brimming with life and laughter.
• On the way he keeps falling behind — first for the toys in the shops, then for dragonflies, insects, falling flower petals and cooing doves. Each time his parents call, “Come, child, come.”
• At the fair he badly wants four things: burfi from the sweet seller, a gulmohur garland, balloons, and to listen to the snake-charmer’s flute.
• But he asks for none of them. He already knows the answers — he’d be called greedy, the flowers are cheap, he is too old for balloons, and that music is coarse. So each time he quietly moves on.
• Finally he makes one bold request — a ride on the roundabout. There is no reply. He turns around and his parents are gone.
• He runs in panic, crying “Mother, Father!” His yellow turban comes untied and his clothes get muddy.
• A kind man lifts him out of the dangerous crowd and offers him everything he had wanted earlier — the horse ride, the snake-charmer’s music, a rainbow balloon, a garland, sweets.
• The child refuses every single one and only sobs, “I want my mother, I want my father!”

15. Poem — ‘I Cannot Remember My Mother’

Poet: Rabindranath Tagore  |  Form: 3 stanzas, free verse (no rhyme scheme)

16. Stanza-wise explanation

Stanza 1 — a sound (indoor)

In the middle of his play, a tune seems to hover over his toys. It is the song his mother used to hum while rocking his cradle. He does not remember her, but her music has stayed inside him.
Sense: auditory (hearing)

Stanza 2 — a smell (outdoor)

On an early autumn morning, the fragrance of shiuli flowers floats in the air, mixed with the scent of the morning service in the temple. Together they reach him as the scent of his mother — pure, sacred and comforting.
Sense: olfactory (smell)

Stanza 3 — a sight (limitless)

Looking out of his bedroom window into the blue of the distant sky, he feels that the stillness of his mother’s gaze on his face has spread all over the sky. Her love is no longer in one room — it covers everything above him.
Sense: visual (sight)

17. Poetic devices in the poem

18. Sensory words

Words can be sorted by which sense they belong to. This is the skill the poem is teaching you.

19. ‘I Remember, I Remember’

Poet: Thomas Hood

• The poet remembers the house where he was born and the little window through which the sun came peeping in every morning.
• As a child, the sun never came too early and never made the day too long — everything felt exactly right.
• But now, as a tired and unhappy adult, he sometimes wishes the night had taken his breath away — a startlingly sad line in the middle of a sweet memory.
• He recalls the garden: red and white roses, violets, lily cups that seemed ‘made of light’, the lilacs where a robin built its nest, and the laburnum tree his brother planted on his birthday — “The tree is living yet!”

20. Quick revision box