Class 12 English · Original EZT practice
Lost Spring - Anees Jung (Class 12 English, Flamingo, Chapter 2)
Lost Spring is Chapter 2 of Class 12 Flamingo (Reprint 2026-27, pp. 13-22), an excerpt from Anees Jung's book Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood. In two portraits - Saheb, a ragpicker scrounging the garbage dumps of Seemapuri, and Mukesh, a bangle maker's son in the furnaces of Firozabad - Jung shows how poverty, caste and tradition steal childhood itself. Yet a small flash of daring survives. This page gives a full summary, key people, theme, word meanings and 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 24 October 2026:
1. Summary - garbage that is gold, and furnaces in Firozabad
Every morning the narrator meets Saheb 'scrounging for gold in the garbage dumps' of her neighbourhood. There is no school in his neighbourhood - 'When they build one, I will go.' She asks, half-joking, 'If I start a school, will you come?' - and is later embarrassed, for 'promises like mine abound in every corner of his bleak world'. The boys go barefoot; one explanation is that 'it is not lack of money but a tradition to stay barefoot', but the narrator wonders if this is 'only an excuse to explain away a perpetual state of poverty' - she remembers the Udipi priest's son who once prayed for a pair of shoes. In Seemapuri, on the periphery of Delhi, live 10000 ragpickers - squatters who came from Bangladesh in 1971 - in mud structures 'devoid of sewage, drainage or running water'. Ration cards put their names on voters' lists: 'Food is more important for survival than an identity.' 'Garbage to them is gold.' For the elders it is survival; 'for the children it is wrapped in wonder' - Saheb's eyes light up: 'I sometimes find a rupee, even a ten-rupee note.' Saheb watches tennis through the club fence in a pair of discarded tennis shoes - 'even shoes with a hole is a dream come true' - but the game he watches 'is out of his reach'. Then Saheb takes a job at a tea stall: 'I am paid 800 rupees and all my meals.' The carefree look is gone; 'The bag was his. The canister belongs to the man who owns the tea shop. Saheb is no longer his own master!' In Firozabad, 'the centre of India's glass-blowing industry', Mukesh declares: 'I will be a motor mechanic.' About 20000 children like him work illegally in the furnaces, 'often losing the brightness of their eyes'. At Mukesh's half-built house we meet the bahu behind her veil, the failed father and the grandmother: 'It is his karam, his destiny,' she says. The young men cannot organise a cooperative: 'we are the ones who will be hauled up by the police, beaten and dragged to jail for doing something illegal.' The narrator sees two distinct worlds: the family 'caught in a web of poverty, burdened by the stigma of caste', and 'a vicious circle of the sahukars, the middlemen, the policemen, the keepers of law, the bureaucrats and the politicians'. Mukesh alone shows a flash of daring: he will walk to the garage and learn. Asked if he dreams of flying a plane, he falls silent - 'Few airplanes fly over Firozabad.'
2. Key people
Saheb-e-Alam: a ragpicker whose family left Dhaka after storms swept away their fields and homes; his name means 'lord of the universe' - and he does not know it. The narrator: the author herself, who befriends the barefoot ragpickers of her neighbourhood and travels to Seemapuri and Firozabad. Mukesh: a bangle maker's son in Firozabad who insists on being his own master - 'I will be a motor mechanic'. Mukesh's family: his elder brother's wife, the young bahu already commanding three men; his father, who after years as tailor and bangle maker could neither renovate the house nor send his sons to school; his grandmother, who calls the bangle life 'his karam, his destiny'. Savita: a young girl in a drab pink dress, soldering pieces of glass beside an elderly woman who has not enjoyed even one full meal in her lifetime.
3. Theme and word meanings
Stolen childhood: poverty and tradition force children into labour - ragpicking and furnace work - and deny them schooling; the spring of their lives is lost. The vicious circle: family, caste, middlemen, police, bureaucrats and politicians together keep Firozabad's bangle makers trapped - 'years of mind-numbing toil have killed all initiative and the ability to dream'. A spark of hope: garbage holds wonder for a child, and Mukesh's quiet insistence - 'I will be a motor mechanic' - shows daring is not wholly dead. Textbook-flagged expressions, explained: looking for - searching for (here, hunting garbage dumps for anything valuable); slog their daylight hours - work long and hard through the day; roof over his head - a home, however humble; perpetual state of poverty - an unending condition of being poor; dark hutments - gloomy, poorly lit huts; imposed the baggage on the child - forced the burden (of poverty and caste) onto the child.
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.
Name and find
Choose the method: Lord of the universe.
EZT practice question
What does Saheb's full name mean, and what has he sometimes found while scrounging?
Show the worked solution
- His name is Saheb-e-Alam, which means 'lord of the universe'.
- The irony: he does not know what his name means - the 'lord of the universe' roams barefoot through garbage.
- His finds, with eyes lighting up: 'I sometimes find a rupee, even a ten-rupee note.'
Answer: Saheb-e-Alam means 'lord of the universe' - he does not know it; his eyes light up: 'I sometimes find a rupee, even a ten-rupee note.'
Check: The meaning, the irony that he is unaware of it, and the found money.
Watch for this: Do not romanticise the 'wonder' - it exists, but it is a child's wonder inside survival.
Now try it yourself
What does the narrator half-jokingly offer Saheb?
Check your answer
To start a school - 'If I start a school, will you come?'
A promise she cannot keep, in a world where such promises 'abound'.
Weigh the promise
Choose the method: Embarrassment afterwards.
EZT practice question
Why is the narrator embarrassed by her promise to Saheb?
Show the worked solution
- Half-joking, she asks if he would come to a school she started - and he takes it seriously.
- Building a school takes longer than a joking offer can deliver.
- Her reflection: 'promises like mine abound in every corner of his bleak world' - she has become one more person offering what will never arrive.
Answer: She had asked half-joking if he would come to a school she started; building a school takes longer, and 'promises like mine abound in every corner of his bleak world'.
Check: The half-joke, the slow reality of building, and the 'abound' reflection.
Watch for this: Do not credit her with starting a school - the whole weight of the moment is that the promise stays empty.
Now try it yourself
How do Saheb and his friends answer the offer of school?
Check your answer
'When they build one, I will go' - there is no school in their neighbourhood to attend.
The boys' matter-of-fact reply exposes the absence the joke stumbled on.
Test the tradition excuse
Choose the method: Excuse or reason?
EZT practice question
Why does the narrator doubt that tradition explains the barefoot children?
Show the worked solution
- One explanation on offer: 'it is not lack of money but a tradition to stay barefoot.'
- She has seen barefoot children across the country, not in one community alone.
- Her counter-memory: the Udipi priest's son, a child who prayed to the goddess for a pair of shoes - poverty, not custom, is the common thread.
Answer: She has seen barefoot children across the country; calling it a tradition to stay barefoot strikes her as 'only an excuse to explain away a perpetual state of poverty' - she remembers the priest's son who once prayed for a pair of shoes.
Check: The excuse, its reach across the country, and the priest's son as counter-evidence.
Watch for this: Do not present the tradition claim as the narrator's own - she quotes it to doubt it.
Now try it yourself
How is the priest's son different from the ragpicker boys?
Check your answer
He is the son of a temple priest, yet he too goes barefoot - which shows bare feet mark poverty, not one community's custom.
The comparison across stations dismantles the 'tradition' excuse.
Read Seemapuri's logic
Choose the method: Food before identity.
EZT practice question
Why do the squatters of Seemapuri prefer it to the fields they left?
Show the worked solution
- Seemapuri, on the periphery of Delhi, holds about 10000 ragpickers - squatters who came from Bangladesh in 1971, in mud structures 'devoid of sewage, drainage or running water.'
- Ration cards put their names on voters' lists and let them buy grain.
- Their own logic: 'we would rather live here than in the fields that gave us no grain' - 'Food is more important for survival than an identity.'
Answer: Wherever they find food they pitch their tents; ration cards let them buy grain - 'we would rather live here than in the fields that gave us no grain', for 'Food is more important for survival than an identity'.
Check: The 1971 arrival, the ration cards, and the food-before-identity maxim.
Watch for this: Do not call Seemapuri a legal settlement - they are squatters; the ration card is a foothold, not a deed.
Now try it yourself
What does garbage mean to the adults and to the children of Seemapuri?
Check your answer
To the elders, survival; to the children, 'wrapped in wonder' - the occasional rupee or ten-rupee note.
The same heap holds two different worlds.
Weigh the canister
Choose the method: Wages versus ownership.
EZT practice question
What does the steel canister come to symbolise in Saheb's new life?
Show the worked solution
- Saheb takes a job at a tea stall: 'I am paid 800 rupees and all my meals.'
- The wages are real, but the carefree look is gone from his face.
- The text's own contrast: 'The bag was his. The canister belongs to the man who owns the tea shop. Saheb is no longer his own master!'
Answer: He is paid 800 rupees and all his meals at the tea stall, but the carefree look is gone - 'The bag was his. The canister belongs to the man who owns the tea shop. Saheb is no longer his own master!'
Check: 800 rupees and meals, then the bag-versus-canister ownership contrast.
Watch for this: Do not count the job as pure progress - the text measures it as a loss of freedom, not only a gain of wages.
Now try it yourself
What game does Saheb watch through the club fence, and with what feeling?
Check your answer
Tennis - in a pair of discarded tennis shoes, watching a game 'out of his reach'.
The fence between him and the game is the chapter in one image.
Spot the flash of daring
Choose the method: One boy against the circle.
EZT practice question
What flash of daring does the narrator sense in Mukesh, and why is it so rare?
Show the worked solution
- Mukesh repeats 'I want to be a motor mechanic' and is ready to walk all the way to the garage to learn.
- Around him, 'years of mind-numbing toil have killed all initiative and the ability to dream' - bangle making is treated as 'his karam, his destiny'.
- So his insistence is rare: 'daring is not part of his growing up in Firozabad' - yet it flickers in him.
Answer: He repeats 'I want to be a motor mechanic' and is ready to walk to the garage; around him, 'years of mind-numbing toil have killed all initiative and the ability to dream', and 'daring is not part of his growing up'.
Check: The declared ambition, the willingness to walk, and the surrounding dreamlessness.
Watch for this: Do not inflate the flash into a plan - Mukesh has daring, not yet a route; the text stays tentative.
Now try it yourself
Why is Mukesh silent when asked if he dreams of flying a plane?
Check your answer
'Few airplanes fly over Firozabad' - even dreaming has a local ceiling.
The silence measures how far the vicious circle reaches into imagination.
Try a mixed set
Choose a method or explanation before opening each answer.
1. Saheb-e-Alam means?
Show answer and reason
'Lord of the universe' - and he does not know it.
The name's irony is the chapter's first wound.
2. Food or identity?
Show answer and reason
'Food is more important for survival than an identity' - ration cards beat papers of belonging.
Seemapuri's ordering of needs.
3. Bag versus canister?
Show answer and reason
The bag was his; the canister belongs to the tea-shop owner - 'Saheb is no longer his own master!'
Wages bought with freedom.
4. Mukesh's flash of daring?
Show answer and reason
'I will be a motor mechanic' - and he is ready to walk to the garage.
The one dream the circle has not killed.
Try it yourself
Work these on paper before checking any notes. Answers are deliberately not shown here.
- Explain in two sentences why 'garbage is gold' means different things to adults and children.
- List the members of the 'vicious circle' the narrator names in Firozabad.
- Contrast Saheb's face before and after the tea-stall job, with one quoted detail.
Know the rule but lose track of the steps?
Bring your book edition, your school topic list and a question you attempted. Ask a tutor to explain the choice of method and test it with a different problem. Agree the lesson topics, schedule and fee before starting.
For cost context, see home tuition fees in Delhi NCR. Agree the topics, schedule and fee with your chosen tutor.
Questions about this practice page
- Who wrote Lost Spring and what is it about?
- Anees Jung, born in Rourkela, educated in Hyderabad and the USA, an editor and columnist for major newspapers in India and abroad; the chapter is an excerpt from her book Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood, analysing 'the grinding poverty and traditions which condemn these children to a life of exploitation'.
- Who are Saheb and Mukesh in Lost Spring?
- Saheb-e-Alam, a ragpicker in Seemapuri whose family came from Bangladesh, and Mukesh, a bangle maker's son in Firozabad who dreams of becoming a motor mechanic - two faces of stolen childhood.
- What is Seemapuri, and who lives there?
- A settlement 'on the periphery of Delhi' where about 10000 ragpickers - squatters who came from Bangladesh in 1971 - live in mud structures 'devoid of sewage, drainage or running water', keeping ration cards that let them buy grain: 'Food is more important for survival than an identity.'
- Why do the young men of Firozabad refuse to organise a cooperative?
- They fear the law itself: even if they get organised, 'we are the ones who will be hauled up by the police, beaten and dragged to jail for doing something illegal' - and there is no leader among them to help them see things differently.
- Where is Lost Spring in the Class 12 book?
- Chapter 2 of the Flamingo core-course textbook (Reprint 2026-27, pp. 13-22), subtitled 'Stories of Stolen Childhood', by Anees Jung.