Madam Rides the Bus: Class 10 First Flight · Chapter 7

7.1 Before you read

Think of something you did alone for the very first time: buying vegetables at the market, walking to a friend's house two lanes away, taking an auto-rickshaw without an elder. Part of you felt proud and part of you felt nervous. You probably noticed things that the grown-ups around you had stopped seeing long ago.

This story follows an eight-year-old girl who makes her first trip to the nearby town, on her own and without telling anyone at home. The ride out is pure delight. The ride back brings something she never planned for: her first close meeting with death. By the end she has learnt that knowing a fact and feeling what it means are not the same thing.

7.2 Reading the story

The story comes in four parts, and nearly all of it happens in a single afternoon. Part I sets up Valli and her wish. Parts II and III follow the ride to town, with a look back at how she prepared. Part IV brings her home, changed in a way nobody around her notices. Follow the route in Fig. 7.2 as you read the summaries below, then read each part in your textbook.

7.2.1 Part I: A wish takes shape

Part I is about wanting something badly and working out how to get it. Valli, short for Valliammai, is eight. Her lookout post is the doorway of her home, and the street is her entertainment. Of everything that passes, the bus to the nearest town thrills her most. Watching people climb on and off, she starts to want one ride for herself, and the want keeps growing until it fills her mind. When a friend comes back from town full of stories, Valli refuses to listen and shouts “Proud! proud!” at them, a borrowed English word that none of the children really understands.

Valli does not ask her parents. She listens to neighbours and regular passengers and slips in a careful question now and then. Slowly she builds up the facts: the town is six miles off, the fare is thirty paise each way, the trip takes forty-five minutes, and if she simply stays on the bus she can ride straight back for another thirty paise. The fare is small change to a well-dressed man she overhears, but a huge sum for a girl who almost never has a coin of her own. She works out her timetable over and over, as Fig. 7.3 shows.

7.2.2 Part II: “Madam” climbs aboard

One fine spring afternoon, the bus is just leaving the village when a small voice orders it to stop. The conductor leans out and finds an eight-year-old holding up her coins, determined to go to town. He reaches out to help her in, but she refuses: she will climb up by herself. Delighted, he begins a game that lasts the whole trip. He treats her like a grand lady, calls her “madam” and asks the handful of passengers to make room for her. They all laugh, and Valli, suddenly shy, hurries to a seat without meeting anyone's eyes.

The bus is new and spotless, white with green stripes, with a clock at the front and soft seats, and she takes in every detail. A canvas blind hides the lower half of her window, so she stands up on the seat to see out. The road runs beside a canal, and green countryside stretches away on both sides. To Valli, all of it is wonderful.

Two older passengers try to look after her, and she pushes both away. An elderly man kindly tells her to sit down. She retorts that she is no child: she has paid her own fare like any passenger. The conductor joins in the teasing, and she snaps that she is not a madam either, and that he still owes her a ticket. Everyone laughs, and soon Valli laughs too. When he warns that she could fall on a sharp turn, she announces that she is eight years old. She sits down only when new passengers board and she fears losing her seat.

Next, an elderly woman sits beside her and asks if she is alone. Valli finds her disgusting, with her stretched earlobes, heavy earrings and mouthful of betel, and answers as briefly as she can. When the woman keeps asking whether a girl should travel alone and exactly where she is going, Valli turns to the window and tells her not to worry: she can look after herself.

7.2.3 Part III: Sixty paise and a town full of wonders

Part III first steps back in time to show how much effort the trip cost. For months Valli kept every loose coin she was given instead of buying sweets or small treats, until she had sixty paise, exactly the fare there and back. The hardest test came at the village fair: she had the money for a merry-go-round ride and still said no to herself. Slipping away from home was easier. Each afternoon her mother took a long nap, roughly from one till four, and those were already Valli's free hours for street-watching and wandering.

Back on the bus, the drive is seen entirely through a child's eyes. The bus races past empty land, tiny settlements and lonely roadside shops. Oncoming vehicles and people on foot look as if they are about to be swallowed, yet the bus slips safely past each one. Even the trees seem alive, racing up to the bus and then fleeing behind it, just as in Fig. 7.1.

Then comes the funniest sight of her life. A young cow, its tail stuck up in the air, gallops down the centre of the road just ahead of the bus. The driver honks again and again, but every blast only scares it into running faster, still right in front of them. Valli laughs until tears come, and the conductor jokes that she should keep some laughter for tomorrow.

A train thunders through the level crossing, rattling the bus. Then the town opens up around her: the station, busy streets, enormous shop windows and more people than she has ever seen in one place. Valli is too amazed to say a word.

At the last stop everyone gets off except Valli, who hands over another thirty paise for the return. The puzzled conductor asks if anything is wrong; she says she only wanted a bus ride. He suggests she look around the town, but she would be too frightened on her own. He suggests a drink at a stall, and she says she couldn't. When he offers to fetch her a cold drink, she says she cannot afford one, and even when he says it will be his treat, she firmly refuses.

7.2.4 Part IV: The road home

As the return trip begins, the conductor asks whether her mother will be looking for her. No one will, Valli says. The same sights excite her all over again, until she spots, at the side of the road, the young cow that had raced ahead of them earlier. It lies dead, knocked down by some speeding vehicle. She asks the conductor if it is the same animal, and he nods.

The creature that had seemed so lively and funny earlier that afternoon now looks lifeless and terrible, and the picture will not leave her. Her excitement is gone. The view holds no more interest for her, and she sits without moving until the bus reaches her village at 3:40. As she gets down, she politely tells the conductor she hopes to see him again. He tells her to come any time, and to bring her fare. She laughs and runs home.

At home her mother is awake, chatting with an aunt from South Street who never stops talking. The aunt asks where Valli has been but does not wait for an answer, so Valli only smiles. Her mother is making a general remark: nobody can know everything that goes on in the world, and knowing about something is not the same as fully grasping it. “Oh, yes!” Valli breathes. When her mother asks what she said, she covers it up by saying she was only agreeing. The aunt calls her a little girl who joins in grown-ups' talk as if she were one of them. Valli smiles to herself, a smile she means to keep private. The adults are hardly likely to read it anyway.

7.3 Thinking about the text

Board answers on this story are marked on evidence. Whenever you name a quality, point to something the character does or says, and say what it shows. The sections below collect that evidence for you.

7.3.1 Valli and the people around her

Valli is a small girl with a big will. She is curious about everything, plans like an adult and hates being treated as a baby. Yet she is still very much a child: she laughs at a frightened animal, judges a woman by her earrings and is too scared to walk around the town alone. The table pairs each trait with the evidence you can quote in an answer.

The adults matter too, because each one shows a different way grown-ups treat children. The conductor teases Valli but also protects her, answers her honestly and treats her as a real passenger. The two elderly passengers mean well, but their concern feels like interference to a girl who wants to be grown-up. Her mother and aunt are so busy with their own talk that they never learn what she has done.

7.3.2 Seeing with an eight-year-old's eyes

The story is told in the third person, but the narrator stays close to Valli's thoughts, so the point of view is hers. We notice what an eight-year-old would notice, and we judge things the way she judges them. Here is the evidence you can use in an answer:

• Moving trees. Trees seem to run towards the bus, wait, then run away. This is personification, and it is how a child explains the view from a window (Fig. 7.1).
• A hungry bus. Vehicles and walkers look as if the bus will swallow them, yet it slips past. A child sees danger and magic where an adult sees ordinary traffic.
• What is funny. A panicking cow seems hilarious to her, not dangerous.
• Money. Thirty paise is a fortune to her, though a rich man calls it almost nothing.
• Proof of being grown-up. For Valli, paying her own fare and being eight years old settle the matter.
• Judging by looks. She dislikes the old woman because of her earrings and betel, not her words.
• Wonder. The town appears as a burst of excited exclamations about shops and crowds.

Because we see through her eyes, we share her excitement on the way out. That is exactly why the dead cow hits us as hard as it hits her.

7.3.3 Themes, title and ending

• Curiosity and the wider world. A child's urge to see beyond her street drives the whole story.
• Independence and growing up. Valli wants to be taken seriously, and in one afternoon she really does grow a little older.
• Planning and self-discipline. A small dream comes true through research, saving and patience.
• Self-respect. She pays her way and refuses favours she cannot return.
• Life and death. The same cow is full of life at one moment and lifeless the next. Valli meets death for real.
• Knowing versus understanding. We may know a fact without grasping it. Valli's experience gives her an understanding the adults assume she lacks.

The title. “Madam” is the conductor's teasing name for a girl who acts like a lady. It is affectionate and slightly ironic: she is only eight. Yet by the end the title has come true in a way. The girl who rode out as a playful child rides home having learnt something serious, and she keeps it to herself like an adult.

The ending. Her mother's general remark about how little we know and understand fits Valli's day perfectly, though the mother has no idea. The aunt mocks her for joining grown-up talk, when in fact Valli is the only one who has lived through what they are discussing. This is dramatic irony: the reader knows what the adults do not. Valli's private smile closes the story quietly. Follow her feelings through the afternoon in Fig. 7.4.

7.4 Language in the story

This story is mostly conversation, so the way people speak tells you who they are. In this section you learn the words that describe speech, then practise turning speech into reported speech, a regular board grammar topic.

7.4.1 How people speak: adverbs and reporting verbs

Writers rarely stop at said. They add an adverb of manner to show how the words came out (she replied curtly), or they choose a sharper reporting verb (she snapped). These choices are clues to feeling and character, which is why Question 3 in your textbook asks you to notice them.

Reporting verbs carry tone too: snapped (angry), chimed in (joined someone else's talk), mimicked (copied a tone to tease), breathed (said softly, with feeling), muttered, insisted and pleaded. Look for several of these as you reread Parts II and IV.

7.4.2 Board link: reported speech

In reported speech you pass on someone's words in your own sentence, without quotation marks. When the reporting verb is in the past (said, asked, told), three things usually shift: the pronouns (to fit who is now speaking), the tense (one step back into the past) and the time and place words. Fig. 7.5 shows the three shifts one at a time. If the reporting verb is in the present (says), the tense does not change.

Questions become statements. Yes/no questions take if or whether; wh- questions keep their question word. In both, the subject comes before the verb and the question mark goes. Commands and requests use told, asked or ordered with to + verb, and not to for a negative.

• “Is this your first trip to Delhi?” the guard asked me. → The guard asked me whether it was my first trip to Delhi.
• “Where does this bus go?” Arjun asked. → Arjun asked where that bus went.
• “Hold the rail,” the driver told the boy. → The driver told the boy to hold the rail.
• “Don't lean out of the window,” Ma said to us. → Ma told us not to lean out of the window.

7.5 Speaking and writing

7.5.1 Speaking: voices you remember

Much of this story is talk: the conductor's jokes, the old man's warning, the old woman's string of questions, the mother and aunt's chatter. Your textbook asks you to recall people like these from your own life and bring their voices alive, together with your replies.

7.5.2 Writing: a page in three paragraphs

Your textbook asks for about a page, in three paragraphs, on one of three subjects. In our words: a plan you carried out on your own without involving any adults; a journey you will never forget; or your worries about road safety, with ideas for making roads safer and pleasanter.

7.5.3 Beyond the text

7.6 The Tale of Custard the Dragon

Who is braver: the one who talks big, or the one who acts when danger comes? Ogden Nash answers with a pet dragon whom everyone laughs at for being a coward. Read the poem aloud in your textbook first. It is meant to be heard, and its beat will carry you along.

A ballad, and a joke about ballads. A ballad tells a story in short stanzas with a strong beat and simple words, often with a refrain. Old ballads tell of brave knights who kill fierce dragons. Nash turns that tradition upside down. His poem is a parody, a comic imitation, whose dragon-hero would rather hide in a cage.

At a glance. Fifteen stanzas of four lines each, rhyming in pairs. The household is a girl called Belinda; Ink, a black kitten; Blink, a grey mouse; Mustard, a yellow dog; and Custard, the pet dragon. Their home is a small white house, and they own a little red wagon. The only visitor is a pirate, and he does not stay long. Fig. 7.7 tracks who talks bravely and who actually acts bravely.

7.6.1 The poem stanza by stanza

These notes explain what each stanza does and means. They do not replace the poem: keep your textbook open beside them.

• Stanzas 1–2: the household. We meet Belinda and her four pets, each with a colour and a name. The names are jokes: Ink is black like ink, Mustard is yellow and as sharp as the sauce, and Custard is named after a soft, wobbly pudding, a clue that this dragon is no hero. The poet tells us straight away that he is a coward.
• Stanza 3: what Custard looks like. On the outside he is everything a terrifying dragon should be: teeth, spikes, scales, a fiery mouth, a smoking nose and claws like knives. The joke is the gap between his frightening body and his timid heart.
• Stanza 4: who is brave? Belinda and the pets are praised with grand, exaggerated comparisons of courage. Custard alone wants to be shut away in a cage where nothing can reach him.
• Stanzas 5–6: teasing. The whole household makes fun of Custard: tickling, a mocking nickname (Percival), giggles and rude questions every time he asks for his cage. Even the tiny mouse joins in. The 'brave' ones enjoy picking on the one they think is weak.
• Stanzas 7–8: danger. A sudden noise breaks up the fun: a pirate is climbing in through the window. Nash draws him like a comic-book villain, with every pirate cliché at once, and leaves no doubt that he has come to do harm.
• Stanza 9: the 'brave' ones vanish. Belinda can only turn pale and shout for help, and each pet escapes in its own comic way. Not one of them fights.
• Stanzas 10–11: Custard attacks. The dragon is transformed: noisy, clanking and fierce, he charges like a hungry bird at its prey. The pirate's courage and weapons are useless against him, and the battle ends in one comic gulp.
• Stanza 12: celebration. The household that mocked Custard now smothers him with hugs, licks and a happy dance, and the pirate gets no sympathy at all. The teasing has turned into hero-worship, at least for now.
• Stanza 13: excuses. Once the danger is over, the pets rewrite history: each claims he would have been far braver, two or three times over, if only he had not been caught off guard. Custard, too modest to argue, simply agrees that everyone is braver than him. The joke is on the boasters.
• Stanzas 14–15: back to the start. The last two stanzas repeat the first and fourth almost exactly, but in the present tense. Nothing has changed: the others are still called brave, and Custard still asks for his cage. Reputations stay fixed even when actions have proved them wrong.

7.6.2 Tone, humour and message

Tone and mood. The tone is playful and mock-heroic: Nash tells a battle story in a nursery-rhyme voice. The humour comes from the food and stationery names, invented words like realio, trulio, animal noises, cartoon violence that never feels real, and above all the reversal in which the coward becomes the hero. The mood is light and merry from start to finish.

Message. Under the fun lies a real idea. True courage shows in action, not in words, and it often belongs to the quiet one nobody expects. Boasting is easy once the danger has passed. Custard's modesty after his victory is a kind of greatness too. Finally, we should not judge anyone by a label: the dragon called a coward is the only one who saves the house.

7.7 The poet's craft

7.7.1 Rhyme scheme and rhythm

To find a rhyme scheme, give the first line's end sound the letter A, the next new sound B, and so on. Every stanza of this poem rhymes in pairs, or couplets: AABB. The beat is strong and bouncy, made for reading aloud, though Nash happily stretches some lines longer than others.

Nash's favourite trick is the comic rhyme: he bends a word, or invents one, to force a rhyme. A window becomes a winda to match Belinda, and the mouse dives into a hole in a new verb, mouseholed, to rhyme with household. A long word like unmerciful is made to rhyme with the name Percival. These forced rhymes are part of the fun (Fig. 7.8).

7.7.2 Poetic devices and imagery

Your textbook gives one simile, the dragon's tail clashing like irons in a dungeon, and asks you to find more. The table collects the main devices, with where to find them and what each one does.

Alliteration, onomatopoeia and hyperbole all serve the same purpose here: to make a fight with a pirate feel like a cartoon. The metaphor of a chimney-nose turns a monster into a piece of household furniture.

Imagery. Imagery lets us see and hear without being told. Picture Custard's spiky back and smoking nose; the pirate with weapons in both hands and one between his teeth; the little red wagon full of laughing animals. Hear the clank of the dragon's tail, the mouse's squeak and the dog's yelp. The best action image is Custard going for the pirate “like a robin at a worm”: eager, hungry and natural, as if eating pirates were the easiest thing in the world.

7.8 Writing: your own ballad

Now write a ballad of your own. Its purpose is to entertain, so choose a funny or surprising story. Decide your audience first: classmates, younger children or your family. Then gather an idea, sort your material into characters and story, write, and revise until it is fun to read aloud. Fig. 7.9 gives the recipe.

Notice what makes it a ballad: a simple story with a problem and a twist, a few characters, four-line verses rhyming AABB, a refrain that changes at the end, and humour. Like Nash's poem, it ends with the loudest people taking credit while the quiet hero says nothing.

7.9 Board exam practice

CBSE papers test this unit with extract-based questions, short answers of about 40–50 words and long answers of about 100–120 words. Read each extract in your textbook first, then answer from it. Every model answer ends with the key points an examiner looks for.