How I Taught My Grandmother to Read: Class 9 Kaveri · Chapter 1

1.1 Before you read: reflect and respond

Think of a moment when you could not read something you needed: a menu in a script you do not know, a form at the bank, or the small print on a medicine strip. Now imagine feeling that way about every newspaper, letter and signboard, every single day. This unit opens with a story told by the writer Sudha Murty about her own grandmother, who decided at sixty-two that she would not live like that any more. It closes with a poem that celebrates India.

Start by asking yourself a simple question: what does reading and writing make possible? Watch the web below grow, then build your own.

1.1.1 Words you will meet

Your textbook warms up with eight words that matter in this story. Flip each card to see what it means and how it is used.

1.2 Reading for meaning: Part I

Setting. The story looks back several decades to a village in north Karnataka. The narrator is the writer herself as a girl of about twelve, living with her grandparents. She tells the story in the first person, as a grown-up remembering her childhood, so she can look at her younger self honestly.

1.2.1 What happens in Part I

News comes by bus. Life in the village ran to the timetable of the bus. It carried the post, the papers and the magazines, so news always reached the village a little stale: the morning paper was read after lunch, and the weekly magazine turned up a day behind. No wonder everyone watched the road for that bus.

A favourite writer and a serial. Each week the Kannada magazine Karmaveera printed the next part of Kashi Yatre, a novel by Triveni. She was a much-loved writer, known for simple, gripping stories about the inner struggles of everyday people. The novel follows an old woman whose dearest wish is a pilgrimage to Kashi (Varanasi), which many Hindus regard as the holiest journey a person can make. She never goes. Her savings pay instead for the wedding of a poor orphan girl, because in the end she values the girl's happiness above her own pilgrimage.

Wednesday readings. Wednesday was magazine day, and it belonged to Krishtakka, the narrator's grandmother. She had never had the chance to go to school, so her granddaughter read each new instalment aloud while she sat, work forgotten, taking in every word. Her memory was so sharp that she could later retell an episode almost word for word. The heroine felt like her own reflection: Avva, too, had never made it to Kashi. Later, at the temple, she and her friends would argue over what had happened in the story.

A week away. Then the routine broke. A wedding in the next village, with cousins, endless food, games and no adults keeping watch, turned a two-day trip into a week-long holiday for the narrator. The homecoming was a shock. Avva, who had stayed dry-eyed through every hardship, was crying, and she would not say why.

A night on the terrace. The answer began late that night. The family was sleeping out on the terrace in the summer moonlight when Avva sat down beside her granddaughter and gently touched her forehead. Instead of explaining her tears, she started with her own childhood: a mother lost early, nobody to guide her, and a time when no one thought girls needed school. Marriage came early, then a lifetime of caring for children and grandchildren, which she loved. Yet the missed schooling had always hurt a little, and that is why she had insisted that her own family study.

1.2.2 Words and moments to notice

• Memory without letters. Avva can repeat an episode after hearing it once. Not being able to read is not the same as not being clever; she simply never had a chance to learn.
• A mirror in the serial. Avva follows Kashi Yatre so closely because its heroine's life is so like her own. Keep this in mind: the novel returns at the very end.
• Tears from a strong woman. The narrator is shaken because Avva never cries. The writer uses this surprise to tell us that something serious has happened.
• A life story at midnight. Avva's talk on the terrace explains the cause of her pain before she names it: she missed school because of her circumstances, not by choice.

1.3 Reading for meaning: Part II

1.3.1 What happens in Part II

Why Avva cried. Puzzled, the narrator held her grandmother's hand and asked how she could help. The trouble, Avva confessed, was that week's magazine. Alone with it, she had recognised the familiar illustration but none of the story, because the letters beside it were a closed door to her. She had touched the printed lines as if her fingers might read them. She had even thought of going to fetch her granddaughter, while asking a neighbour felt too shameful. For all the family's comfort, she said, she had felt helpless; money was of no use if she could not manage on her own.

A decision with a deadline. Avva's sadness quickly turned into a plan. Starting the very next morning, she would master the Kannada letters, and she set herself a test: by Saraswati Puja, in the Dassara festival, she would read a whole novel without help. Her granddaughter could see she meant it, but to a twelve-year-old the idea still seemed funny. A grey-haired grandmother in spectacles, with wrinkled hands and a kitchen to run, going back to the alphabet? Avva was not hurt. Smiling, she answered that nothing can stop someone who is set on a worthy goal, and that learning has no age limit.

Lessons. So the lessons started, with the usual roles turned around. The pupil outworked everyone: she practised reading aloud, copied letters, went over them again and recited them until they stuck. Looking back, the narrator calls Avva her very first student, long before the hundreds she would later teach as a Computer Science teacher.

The test on Saraswati Puja day. Dassara arrived, and with it the test. The narrator had a surprise ready: Kashi Yatre, now printed as a complete book, bought in secret. Avva had a surprise too. In the place of worship she seated her granddaughter on a stool, gave her cloth for a new frock, and then bowed to touch her feet. The girl was stunned, since custom runs the other way: the young bow to their elders. Avva explained. Today she was honouring not a granddaughter but the teacher who had taught her so lovingly, and the scriptures ask us to respect a teacher whatever the teacher's age or gender. The narrator bowed to Avva's feet in turn and handed over the novel. Avva unwrapped it and at once read out the title, the author and even the publisher. The exam was over, and the student had passed with top marks.

1.3.2 Moments to notice

• Money is not freedom. Avva is comfortable, yet she feels dependent. For her, independence means being able to read for herself.
• Pride and embarrassment. She would rather wait and cry than admit to a neighbour that she cannot read. This shows her self-respect.
• A clear goal. She does not just wish to learn; she fixes a date (Saraswati Puja, the day of the goddess of learning) and a test (reading a novel alone).
• Childish laughter. The narrator judges by appearances: grey hair and spectacles. Looking back, she admits that she was being childish.
• Taken aback. This phrase means surprised and slightly shocked by something unexpected, as the narrator is when Avva bows to her.
• The circle closes. The serial that made Avva want to read becomes the first book she reads by herself.

1.4 Characters, themes and message

1.4.1 The characters

The story has only two main people, and it shows them changing their roles. Use the comparison below when you answer character questions; always back a quality with something the character does.

1.4.2 Kashi Yatre: a story inside the story

A novel inside a story is not decoration here; it drives the plot. Watch the three links appear between the novel and Avva.

There is a quieter link too. The heroine gives up her own dream so that a young girl can be happy. Avva also lived for others, feeding and educating her family. Now, for once, she claims something for herself, and the young girl in her life helps her get it.

1.4.3 Themes and message

• Literacy means independence. Avva has money and a loving family, yet she feels helpless because she must depend on others to read. Learning to read gives her freedom and dignity.
• Learning has no age limit. A sixty-two-year-old learns an alphabet in a few months. Age and grey hair are not barriers; lack of will is.
• Determination and goals. Avva's success comes from a clear target, a date and hard daily practice.
• Respect for teachers. Avva shows that respect belongs to the role of teacher, whatever the teacher's age or gender.
• A bond across generations. The weekly readings, the midnight talk and the shared gift show deep love between grandmother and granddaughter.
• Girls' education, then and now. Avva missed school because people of her time did not think girls needed it. Her story reminds us why every child should be in school.

Message. It is never too late to learn, and learning is one of the surest ways to stand on your own feet. The story also teaches us not to judge people by their age, and to honour anyone who teaches us.

1.5 Critical reflection: the story

Exam questions on a prose piece come in two kinds. Extract-based questions point you to a short passage: read it again, find the clue, and answer in your own words. Short and long answers test whether you understand people, events and themes. For a long answer, make a point, support it with an event from the story, then explain what it shows.

Keep your NCERT book open for the extract questions below. Each one names the passage by its opening words.

1.6 Vocabulary and structures in context

The story gives us four language tools to practise: word pairs, word beginnings, idioms about learning and a tense for telling events in the right order.

1.6.1 Binomials

In Part I, the children play hide and seek in the temple courtyard. A pair of words like this, joined by and or or and always used in the same order, is called a binomial. Swap the order and it sounds wrong to a fluent speaker: we say bread and butter, never butter and bread.

• Similar words: safe and sound, peace and quiet
• Opposite words: ups and downs, give and take, right or wrong
• Words that belong together: salt and pepper, pen and paper
• Repeated words: again and again, round and round

Many binomials have meanings you cannot guess from the two words alone. Flip the cards to learn some common ones.

1.6.2 Prefixes that make opposites

A prefix is a group of letters added to the front of a word to change its meaning. Some prefixes turn a word into its opposite: happy becomes unhappy. The root word keeps its spelling, so un + necessary gives unnecessary with two n's, and mis + spell gives misspell with two s's.

Spot them in the story. Words such as unhappy, unusual, unfortunately, independent and irrespective carry negative prefixes. Others carry prefixes that do not make opposites: grandparents (grand-), afternoon (after-), overcome (over-) and return (re-, meaning back or again).

1.6.3 Idioms about learning

The story's last line says Avva passed “with flying colours”. This is an idiom: a fixed phrase whose meaning you cannot work out from its words. It means very successfully. The phrase is said to come from sailing ships that returned from a victory with their flags (their colours) flying high. English has many idioms about studying and learning.

1.6.4 The past perfect tense

Here is the story's ending in one sentence: By the time Dassara came, Avva had learnt to read. Two things happened in the past. Learning to read happened first, so it takes had learnt. Dassara came later, so it takes the simple past, came. The form had + past participle is the past perfect tense.

• Form: had + past participle (V3) for every subject: I had gone, she had gone, they had gone.
• Negative and question: She had not (hadn't) finished. Had she finished?
• Signal words: by the time, before, after, when, already, just, never … before.
• With after or before, the order is already clear, so the simple past is also correct in both parts: After she finished her homework, she went out. The past perfect stresses that the first action was complete.
• Not for a single past event: ✗ I had visited Hampi last year. ✓ I visited Hampi last year.
• Always V3 after had: ✗ had went ✓ had gone.

Story sentences to try aloud: Avva had never been to school, so she could not read the serial. When the narrator returned, the new episode had already arrived. The narrator had bought the novel before Saraswati Puja came.

1.7 Listen, speak and write

1.7.1 Listening: digital literacy

Your textbook's listening task is a short talk on digital literacy, which your teacher will play or read aloud. To practise at home, use the script below, which we have written for this purpose.

1.7.2 Speaking: a turncoat debate

In a turncoat debate one speaker argues for a topic and then, at a signal, switches sides and argues against it. A turncoat is someone who changes sides, which is where the name comes from. It trains you to see both sides of an issue and to think on your feet.

1. Pick a topic. Your book offers two: learning a language besides your mother tongue matters; and people can learn only when they are young.
2. Speak for the topic for one minute: make two or three points, each with a reason or example.
3. When your teacher signals, switch with a linking phrase and speak against it for one minute.
4. End with a one-line summary of both sides.

• Opening: I stand in favour of the idea that … · My first reason is … · Take the example of …
• Adding points: What is more, … · Another strong reason is … · I am convinced that …
• Switching sides: Now let me look at the other side. · That said, … · However, many would argue that …
• Closing: To sum up, … · All things considered, …

1.7.3 Writing: a letter to the editor

When you want a newspaper's readers to think about a public problem, you write to its editor. This formal letter may raise an issue, share a view, suggest a solution or reply to something the paper has printed. Because thousands may read it, it must be clear, polite and to the point.

• Paragraph 1: raise the issue. Refer to a news report, a survey or your own experience.
• Paragraph 2: explain why it matters: its causes, its effects and who is affected.
• Paragraph 3: suggest practical steps, ask the authorities to act, and request the editor to publish your letter.
• Language: formal and polite; short, clear sentences; no slang or short forms such as don't; facts rather than feelings.
• Useful phrases: Through the columns of your newspaper, I wish to draw attention to … · This problem affects … · I would urge … · I hope my views will find a place in your paper.

1.8 Learning beyond the text

The Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists 22 languages, and each has its own words for the people closest to us. In the story, the narrator calls her grandmother Avva, a north Karnataka word for mother. Fill in the table with words from your own language and a classmate's.

Avva's story is about the oldest kind of literacy: reading and writing. Today the word has grown. Watch how it widens, ring by ring.

1.9 Bharat Our Land: before you read

Most school days in India begin or end with the National Anthem. You know it by heart, but have you noticed how many places it names? Rabindranath Tagore wrote Jana Gana Mana, and India adopted it as the National Anthem on 24 January 1950. Before you read a poem in praise of India, test your memory of the anthem.

The poem uses some old and grand words. Flip the cards before you read it.

1.10 Reading for appreciation: the poem stanza by stanza

The poem at a glance. The extract in your book has three stanzas. The speaker is a proud Indian who speaks for all Indians, so the poem keeps saying ours and let's. Stanza 1 praises India's natural and sacred treasures, stanza 2 its people and culture, and stanza 3 its spiritual wisdom and great age.

Stanza 1 (eight lines). The speaker names four treasures, one in each pair of lines: the Himalaya (called Himavant), the river Ganga, the Upanishads and the land itself. The pattern is the same each time. The first line of the pair claims the treasure as ours, a dash makes us pause, and the second line boasts that nothing on earth can match it. Two of these boasts are questions that need no answer: which river is as graceful, which scriptures could stand beside them? The stanza ends by calling India peerless and inviting everyone to praise her.

Stanza 2 (four lines). Here the poet turns from nature and books to people and culture. Each line names a different kind of greatness: courage (the warriors), holiness (the sages), art (the music) and good fortune. His point is that India is great not only because of its landscape but because of what its people have achieved. The repeated word here keeps pointing at the land as the home of all these riches.

Stanza 3 (four lines). The last stanza presents India as the birthplace of great spiritual ideas: the Upanishadic search for the ultimate truth, Brahman, and the Buddha's teaching both grew on this soil. The poet also stresses how old the land is, a land of “hoary antiquity”, before the refrain returns to close the extract. The dots at the end tell us that Bharati's song goes on beyond what your book prints.

Mood, tone and sound. The mood, the feeling the poem creates in the reader, is proud, uplifting and reverent. The tone, the poet's own attitude, is admiring and celebratory. The English version has no fixed rhyme scheme: it is in free verse, and its music comes from repetition (ours, here) and the returning refrain. India is personified as a woman (she, her), and the Ganga is given human grace and generosity: both are examples of personification.

1.11 Poetic devices in the poem

Your book asks you to spot many devices in this short poem. The table brings them together; the notes below explain the trickier ones.

Refrain. A refrain is like the chorus of a song. Here it ends the first and last stanzas, so the poem keeps returning to its main claim. Its words let's praise her turn readers into singers, so the poem feels like a song for everyone.

Metaphor. A metaphor describes one thing as if it were another. India is not literally made of gold, but calling it “this sunny golden land” suggests sunshine, golden harvests, wealth and glory, all at once.

Symbols. Each treasure in the poem is also a symbol: it stands for a quality the poet admires. Press Play to see what each one suggests.

Imagery. Imagery is language that appeals to the senses. We see the huge snowy Himavant, the flowing Ganga and the land glowing in sunshine, and we almost hear the heavenly music of stanza 2.

Dashes and question marks. In stanza 1, a dash ends the first line of each pair. It creates a deliberate pause, gives the lines a slow, chant-like rhythm, and separates the treasure from the bold claim that follows. The question marks do not show doubt. They mark rhetorical questions: the poet is so sure that no river or scripture can compare that he dares us to name one.

Poets use hyperbole when their feelings are too big for plain facts. Saying that every auspicious thing is found in India is not a measured claim; it is how love for one's country sounds.

This poem is an ode because its only aim is praise, its subject is a land the poet reveres, its words are grand, and its refrain calls on all of us to praise India.

The poem alludes to three great traditions without explaining them: the Upanishads, the ancient texts at the heart of Indian philosophy; Brahma-knowledge, the knowledge of the ultimate truth and of one's true self; and the Buddha's dhamma, his teaching of compassion, non-violence and the path to enlightenment.

1.12 Critical reflection: the poem

When you answer questions on a poem, name the device, quote or point to the words, and say what effect they have. A good pattern is: The poet uses …, as in …; this makes the reader feel …

1.13 Vocabulary in context: suffixes

A suffix is a group of letters added to the end of a word. It can turn one kind of word into another (celebrate → celebration) or change its form (kind → kindest). The poem is full of suffixes: generous, antiquity, divinest and peerless each carry one.

• Drop a final silent e before a suffix that starts with a vowel: create → creative, pure → purity.
• Keep the e before a suffix that starts with a consonant: achieve → achievement, care → careless.
• Change y to i after a consonant: happy → happiest, beauty → beautiful.
• Double the last consonant of short words like plan, stop, shop before -ed, -ing: planned, stopping.

1.14 Listen, speak, write and explore

1.14.1 Listening: places people love

In your textbook's listening task, four people talk about places they love to visit. Practise with our own four-speaker script: ask four friends to read one part each while you listen without looking.

1.14.2 Speaking: in praise of my place

Like the poet, praise a place you know well: your village, town or city. Talk with a partner for a minute each about what makes it special: its landscape, people, food, festivals or history.

• What makes my town truly special is …
• Visitors are always amazed by …
• If you come here in (month), you must see …
• The people here are known for …
• Whenever I come back home, I feel …

A model talk. What makes Mysuru special is its Dasara. For ten days the whole city celebrates, and on festival evenings the palace glows with thousands of bulbs. Visitors are always amazed by the grand procession on the last day. Mysuru is also known for its sandalwood, its silk and rich Mysore pak. Whenever I stand on Chamundi Hill and look down at the city, I feel lucky to call it home.

1.14.3 Writing: a paragraph about a place you remember

A descriptive paragraph about a trip should take the reader along with you. Build it like a sandwich: a topic sentence on top, details in the middle, a closing thought at the bottom.

• Write 120–150 words in the past tense, in one paragraph.
• Answer five questions: why you went, who went with you, how you prepared, where you stayed and what you did.
• Use your senses: what you saw, heard, smelt, tasted and touched.
• Use linking words for order: before the trip, on the first morning, later, in the evening, finally.

1.14.4 Learning beyond the text

Songs of the motherland. Almost every Indian language has songs in praise of the country. Find one in your own language, learn a few lines, and explain its meaning to your class. Some well-known examples are Vande Mataram by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Saare Jahan Se Achha by Muhammad Iqbal (in Urdu) and Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate by Kuvempu (in Kannada), as well as Bharati's own Tamil songs.

Group project: India's landforms. In groups of six, each member takes one kind of landform: a mountain range, a river, a desert, a valley, a group of islands and a plateau. For each, describe where it is, why it matters to the people who live there, and which languages they speak. One row is done as an example.