Class 10 English · Original EZT practice
Glimpses of India - A Baker from Goa, Coorg, Tea from Assam (Class 10 English, First Flight, Chapter 5)
Glimpses of India is Chapter 5 of Class 10 First Flight in the Rationalised 2023-24 printing (pp. 63-79), three pen-portraits of place. In A Baker from Goa, Lucio Rodrigues remembers the pader whose 'thud and jingle' of bamboo woke the village, when 'Loaves for the elders and the bangles for the children' arrived in one basket. In Coorg, Lokesh Abrol walks the smallest district of Karnataka - coffee estates, rainforests and a fiercely independent people. In Tea from Assam, Arup Kumar Datta rides the train with Rajvir and Pranjol past 'a sea of tea bushes'. This page retells all three with fresh practice questions. (Note: this is original practice, not a textbook exercise key.)
6 original worked examples, 6 fresh self-check questions and 4 mixed questions, with explained answers. These are not copied textbook exercises, an official chapter index or a full answer key. No affiliation with NCERT is claimed.
Official sources for topic and edition context, checked 26 October 2026:
1. About the authors
The chapter's contents page credits three authors: Lucio Rodrigues for A Baker from Goa, Lokesh Abrol for Coorg and Arup Kumar Datta for Tea from Assam. The chapter's own introductions describe the pieces - a pen-portrait of a traditional Goan village baker, a note that 'Coorg is coffee country, famous for its rainforests and spices', and a schoolboy's visit to a tea garden - but carry no biographical notes, so this page stays with what the pieces themselves show.
2. The pieces at a glance
The memory: 'Our elders are often heard reminiscing nostalgically about those good old Portuguese days' - 'Those eaters of loaves might have vanished but the makers are still there.' The morning call: the baker's arrival heralded by the 'thud and jingle' of the traditional baker's bamboo; 'The jingling thud of his bamboo woke us up from sleep and we ran to meet and greet him.' The real prize: 'Loaves for the elders and the bangles for the children' - 'I can still recall the typical fragrance of those loaves.' The profession: 'Baking was indeed a profitable profession in the old days. The baker and his family never starved.' - 'Monthly accounts used to be recorded on some wall in pencil.' - 'Their plump physique was an open testimony to this.' The setting: Coorg 'sits a piece of heaven that must have drifted from the kingdom of god', midway between Mysore and the coastal town of Mangalore. The land: 'Coorg, or Kodagu, the smallest district of Karnataka, is home to evergreen rainforests, spices and coffee plantations' - rainforests cover thirty per cent of the district. The people: 'The fiercely independent people of Coorg are possibly of Greek or Arabic descent' - and 'Coorgi homes have a tradition of hospitality'. The journey: 'CHAI-GARAM... garam-chai' on the train - 'Do you know that over eighty crore cups of tea are drunk every day throughout the world?' The view: 'It was green, green everywhere' - then 'the soft green paddy fields gave way to tea bushes' - 'a sea of tea bushes stretched as far as the eye could see'. The fact: 'Assam has the largest concentration of plantations in the world.' The legend: the Chinese emperor whose boiling water caught leaves when 'a few leaves of the twigs burning under the pot fell into the water giving it a delicious flavour'.
3. Key details and what they signal
Bread as social glue: cakes and bolinhas at marriages, bol at feasts - the pader is woven into every village occasion, not just breakfast. Childhood measured in bread-bangles: the children ignore the loaves meant for the servant and climb 'a bench or the parapet' to peep at the bangles - memory lives in the small things. Prosperity you can see: 'any person with a jackfruit-like physical appearance is easily compared to a baker' - the whole village reads the trade on the body. Coorg as contradiction: monsoons pour enough to 'keep many visitors away', yet 'The season of joy commences from September and continues till March' when 'The air breathes of invigorating coffee'. Valour with a lineage: 'The Coorg Regiment is one of the most decorated in the Indian Army', and the first Chief of the Indian Army, General Cariappa, was a Coorgi - the land's pride has a uniform. Rajvir's reading habit: he arrives having read 'as much as I could about tea' - legends ready before the first garden appears.
4. Theme
Place made of people: a Goan baker, Kodava hosts, an Assam tea-garden family - each glimpse is a community, not a postcard. Tradition that survives change: 'The fire in the furnaces has not yet been extinguished'; 'Maybe the father is not alive but the son still carries on the family profession.' Nostalgia as record: the pieces preserve everyday economies - pencil accounts on walls, mango-leaf toothbrushes - that official histories skip. Curiosity rewarded: Rajvir's excitement at 'green, green everywhere' shows how travel teaches the child who reads before he goes.
Choose, solve, check, then try a fresh question.
Before calculating, read the method prompt and name the condition that makes it useful. Write your own attempt. Open the steps only when you need them, and use the check to catch a wrong sign, unit or interpretation. Finish with the fresh question before reading its answer.
Hear the bamboo
Choose the method: Jhang first, baker next.
EZT practice question
What announces the Goan baker's arrival each morning?
Show the worked solution
- The sound: the 'thud and jingle' of the traditional baker's bamboo - his specially made staff.
- The effect: 'The jingling thud of his bamboo woke us up from sleep and we ran to meet and greet him.'
- The meaning: the sound, not the sight, is the village alarm clock - the pader is heard before he is seen.
Answer: The 'thud and jingle' of the traditional baker's bamboo - 'The jingling thud of his bamboo woke us up from sleep' and sent the children running to meet him.
Check: The bamboo, the jingling thud, the running children.
Watch for this: Do not say the children ran for the bread - the narrator admits 'What we longed for were those bread-bangles which we chose carefully'; the loaves were for the elders.
Now try it yourself
How does the baker make his entry 'musical'?
Check your answer
He arrives 'with the jhang, jhang sound of his specially made bamboo staff' - one hand on the basket, the other banging the bamboo on the ground, a one-man band announcing bread.
The rhythm is the shop-front of a business with no shop.
Choose the bread-bangles
Choose the method: Loaves for elders.
EZT practice question
What did the narrator and the other children actually run to the baker for?
Show the worked solution
- The division: 'Loaves for the elders and the bangles for the children.'
- The prize: 'What we longed for were those bread-bangles which we chose carefully.'
- The memory: 'I can still recall the typical fragrance of those loaves' - and hot tea washed everything down, no toothbrush needed.
Answer: Not the loaves - those went to the elders and the servant. The children ran for the bread-bangles: 'What we longed for were those bread-bangles which we chose carefully', peeping into the basket from 'a bench or the parapet'.
Check: The loaves-for-elders rule, the bangles, the careful choosing.
Watch for this: Do not miss the pecking order - the children do not even brush their teeth first ('The tiger never brushed his teeth'); the bangle matters more than manners.
Now try it yourself
Why is the mango-leaf detail in this memory?
Check your answer
Because the pieces preserve everyday economies: 'Who would take the trouble of plucking the mango-leaf for the toothbrush?' - hot tea 'could wash and clean up everything so nicely' after the bread.
Nostalgia lives in habits, not headlines.
Read the baker's body
Choose the method: Accounts on walls.
EZT practice question
How does the piece show that baking was a thriving Goan profession?
Show the worked solution
- The claim: 'Baking was indeed a profitable profession in the old days. The baker and his family never starved.'
- The system: 'Monthly accounts used to be recorded on some wall in pencil' - credit settled at the month's end.
- The proof on the body: 'Their plump physique was an open testimony to this' - a jackfruit-like build still reads as a baker's.
Answer: 'Baking was indeed a profitable profession in the old days. The baker and his family never starved' - accounts went on the wall in pencil and were collected monthly, and the baker's 'plump physique was an open testimony' to the trade's prosperity.
Check: The profitability claim, the pencil accounts, the plump physique.
Watch for this: Do not treat the tradition as dead - 'The fire in the furnaces has not yet been extinguished', and sons still carry on the family profession.
Now try it yourself
Where does bread appear beyond breakfast?
Check your answer
At every village occasion: cakes and bolinhas at marriages, bol at feasts and party occasions, sandwiches at a daughter's engagement - the pader is stitched into the calendar.
Bread is social glue, not just food.
Time the Coorg visit
Choose the method: Rain first, joy later.
EZT practice question
When does Coorg get its best weather, and what keeps visitors away before that?
Show the worked solution
- The bad months: during the monsoons 'it pours enough to keep many visitors away'.
- The good season: 'The season of joy commences from September and continues till March.'
- The air: in those months 'The air breathes of invigorating coffee' from the estates.
Answer: The best season runs September to March - 'The season of joy commences from September and continues till March', when 'The air breathes of invigorating coffee'; the heavy monsoon before it 'pours enough to keep many visitors away'.
Check: The September start, the March end, the monsoon deterrent.
Watch for this: Do not call Coorg a beach stop - it is a hill district 'midway between Mysore and the coastal town of Mangalore', all rainforests, estates and high places.
Now try it yourself
What does the piece claim about Coorg's land cover?
Check your answer
That Coorg (Kodagu) is Karnataka's smallest district, 'home to evergreen rainforests, spices and coffee plantations', and that rainforests cover thirty per cent of the district.
The land itself explains the coffee in the air.
Meet the Coorgi soldier
Choose the method: Lineage, then uniform.
EZT practice question
Which army regiment is tied to Coorg, and who was General Cariappa?
Show the worked solution
- The people: 'The fiercely independent people of Coorg are possibly of Greek or Arabic descent.'
- The regiment: 'The Coorg Regiment is one of the most decorated in the Indian Army.'
- The chief: 'the first Chief of the Indian Army, General Cariappa, was a Coorgi.'
Answer: The Coorg Regiment, 'one of the most decorated in the Indian Army'; General Cariappa, a Coorgi, was the first Chief of the Indian Army - the district's valour runs from descent stories to the top of the army.
Check: The regiment, its decorated record, Cariappa as first Chief.
Watch for this: Do not state the Greek or Arabic descent as settled fact - the piece itself says the people are 'possibly' of that descent; keep the hedge.
Now try it yourself
How does hospitality sit beside this martial pride?
Check your answer
'Coorgi homes have a tradition of hospitality' - the same fiercely independent people who fill a decorated regiment are proud hosts; the piece holds toughness and welcome together.
The portrait needs both halves to be Coorgi.
Ride to the garden
Choose the method: Facts first, bushes next.
EZT practice question
What does Rajvir tell Pranjol about tea on the train?
Show the worked solution
- The fact: 'over eighty crore cups of tea are drunk every day throughout the world.'
- The legend: a Chinese emperor whose water boiled under a tree caught leaves - 'a few leaves of the twigs burning under the pot fell into the water giving it a delicious flavour'.
- The destination fact: 'Assam has the largest concentration of plantations in the world.'
Answer: That 'over eighty crore cups of tea are drunk every day throughout the world', the legend of the Chinese emperor whose pot caught tea leaves from burning twigs, and that Assam has 'the largest concentration of plantations in the world'.
Check: The eighty crore cups, the emperor legend, the Assam record.
Watch for this: Do not let Rajvir's knowledge look accidental - he has 'read as much as I could about tea' before the trip; the facts are preparation meeting its subject.
Now try it yourself
What does Rajvir see as the train nears the garden?
Check your answer
'It was green, green everywhere' - 'the soft green paddy fields gave way to tea bushes', and against the hills 'a sea of tea bushes stretched as far as the eye could see'.
The reading boy finally gets the view the books promised.
Try a mixed set
Choose a method or explanation before opening each answer.
1. The Goan baker's morning signal?
Show answer and reason
The 'thud and jingle' of the traditional baker's bamboo.
Heard before he is seen.
2. What the children really wanted?
Show answer and reason
The bread-bangles - 'What we longed for were those bread-bangles which we chose carefully'.
Loaves were for the elders.
3. Coorg's best season?
Show answer and reason
September to March, when 'The air breathes of invigorating coffee'.
Monsoon before it keeps visitors away.
4. Rajvir's tea number?
Show answer and reason
'Over eighty crore cups of tea are drunk every day throughout the world.'
He read before he travelled.
Try it yourself
Work these on paper before checking any notes. Answers are deliberately not shown here.
- In two sentences, explain how A Baker from Goa makes a whole village economy visible through one tradesman.
- Contrast how the Coorg piece and the Assam piece introduce their places - the settled portrait against the moving train window.
- Explain in your own words what the three pieces together claim about tradition and change in India.
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Questions about this practice page
- Who wrote Glimpses of India in Class 10 First Flight?
- Three authors on the contents page: Lucio Rodrigues (A Baker from Goa), Lokesh Abrol (Coorg) and Arup Kumar Datta (Tea from Assam). The textbook carries no biographical notes for them.
- What is A Baker from Goa about?
- Lucio Rodrigues' memory of the traditional Goan pader - his bamboo's 'thud and jingle', the bread-bangles children ran for, pencil accounts on walls - a baking tradition from Portuguese days that still survives.
- What does the Coorg piece describe?
- Coorg (Kodagu), Karnataka's smallest district - rainforests over thirty per cent of it, coffee estates, a proudly independent people possibly of Greek or Arabic descent, Coorgi hospitality and the decorated Coorg Regiment.
- Is Glimpses of India in the 2026-27 syllabus?
- Yes - it is on the CBSE Class 10 English (Language and Literature) curriculum for 2026-27. This page follows the Rationalised 2023-24 printing (pp. 63-79); the Reprint 2025-26 contents keeps the same numbering, and a 2026-27 printing of this chapter has not been observed. Check your own copy.
- What happens in Tea from Assam?
- Rajvir travels with his classmate Pranjol to the Assam tea garden where Pranjol's father is manager; on the train Rajvir shares tea facts and legends, then watches 'a sea of tea bushes' stretch to the hills as they arrive in tea country.