The Pot Maker: Class 9 Kaveri · Chapter 2

This unit is about work done with skilled hands. First comes a short story about a girl who wants to learn her family's craft of pot making, and how she finally does. Then a poem salutes the many kinds of workers who keep the country going. Read both texts in your textbook first; this companion helps you understand them, revise them and practise the language work that comes with them.

2.1 Before You Read: Skills and Vocations

Look around you. A tailor stitched your uniform, a carpenter fitted the classroom door, and a potter shaped the matka that keeps water cool in May. Work of this kind is learnt through long practice and is often handed down in families. Such skill-based work is called a vocation (व्यवसाय).

Your textbook shows four such workers: a basket maker, a potter, a handloom weaver and a carpenter. With a partner, name five more from your area, such as a cobbler, a mason or a goldsmith.

2.2 Reading for Meaning: The Pot Maker

"The Pot Maker" is a short story about Sentila, a girl who longs to make pots like the women of her family, and about the people who stand in her way or help her. Your textbook prints an abridged (shortened) version in two parts. The story has a quiet surface but a strong ending, so read it slowly and watch how Sentila changes.

Setting. The story takes place in a hill village where pot making passes from mothers to daughters. The clay comes from a distant riverbank, and the pots are fired in the open. A council of elders settles village matters, and girls of a certain age spend nights in a dormitory under a woman's care. The names and customs suggest a Naga village, the world Temsula Ao knew well.

2.2.1 Part I: A secret dream

Sentila has wanted to be a potter for as long as she can remember. Her grandmother made pots, and so does her mother, Arenla. But Arenla has decided that her daughter will weave. So Sentila keeps her wish to herself and, on days when she is left at home, she visits the village's best potters. They smile at their eager little visitor, sure that she will lose interest in a year or two.

Why the secrecy? One night Sentila had overheard her mother tell her father, Mesoba, that pot making would never be passed on to their daughter. Arenla's reasons are practical, and they fall into three groups (Fig. 2.2):

• Back-breaking labour: a long trek (sixteen kilometres, she says) to the riverbank for clay, a steep climb with a heavy load, and hours of pounding that exhaust her.
• Poor pay for a long wait: months pass before a batch is ready, and it fetches only a few rupees.
• A better choice: in her view, weaving earns more, clothes the family, stays clean and can go on indoors in every season.

None of this puts Sentila off. On her secret visits she learns the whole process by watching. The story mentions no potter's wheel: the potters turn a lump of softened clay with one hand inside it and shape the outside by tapping it with a flat spatula, and Sentila could listen to that steady tapping for hours. Finishing, drying and firing in a kiln (भट्ठा) follow. Firing is the riskiest stage, since the wrong heat can spoil every pot at once.

Arenla is not fooled by her daughter's absences, but she says nothing. Before long the girl's visits are the talk of the village, and the gossip turns into worry: if potters stop teaching their own daughters, who will make pots in the years to come? The elders summon Mesoba to explain. Careful and respectful, he defends his wife. There has been no refusal, he says, only a wish to let the girl recover from an illness first, and he promises that Sentila will one day be the best potter among them.

The elders accept his answer but send a warning home with him. In their eyes, a craft that serves the whole village and holds its memory is not owned by the expert; she only keeps it in trust. So Arenla must teach it, to Sentila and to any other willing learner. Mesoba goes home and talks it over with his wife.

2.2.2 Part II: Learning the craft

The lessons begin the next year. First Sentila learns the heavy half of the work, from digging out the grey and red clay at the riverbank with a dao (a heavy blade) to soaking it and pounding it in the shed. She learns fast, and soon her clay is soft and ready.

Shaping is where she gets stuck. The lump will not stay steady in her hands. Arenla offers no words; she watches from her corner and, each time her daughter gives up, quietly makes the pot herself. Nearly a whole year passes like this. Sentila's shame grows, because the one skill she wants most is the one she cannot get.

Help comes from outside the family. When Sentila is old enough, local custom sends her to spend some nights in a girls' dormitory run by a kind widow the girls call Onula, or 'Aunty'. Onula knows about the quarrel at Sentila's home and wants to help. Her chance comes one evening when the other girls are out at a music programme and Sentila, alone, gets out her clay. Onula sees at once what is wrong: the girl is wound up so tight that nothing will go right, and at last the shapeless lump drops from her tired hands.

Onula's teaching is simple. She reassures the girl, makes a pot in front of her and tells her to have another go. Calmer now, Sentila succeeds, and her pot is good in every way but one. The mouth is not right, Onula tells her, and the person to learn it from is her own mother.

At the next session Sentila studies her mother's hands as never before, especially near the top of each pot: how she holds her hand and the spatula there, how her tapping slows, and how she fixes a thin roll of clay around the opening as a rim. Then, one sunny morning, the two start work early, because pots need sunshine to dry and good days are few. Arenla finishes her batch quickly. Saying that her head and back hurt, she hands the work to Sentila and leaves the shed.

Surprised and a little unwilling, Sentila begins. This time something is different. The first pot is finished before she knows it, then the next, and the next; her hands move with the speed and sureness she has watched in her mother's. When she finally counts, her row is just one pot shorter than Arenla's. Worn out, she goes indoors to eat with her mother and finds Arenla lying lifeless on the floor.

Sentila runs for help; the villagers come and Mesoba is fetched. Next morning, as her mother's body is carried out of the house, Sentila chases after it, sobbing for forgiveness. She did not want things to happen this way, she cries; the skill just came to her. The mourners are puzzled. Only Onula feels that these words point to something extraordinary.

Passing the work shed afterwards, Onula finds its door not quite shut and looks in. There is the day's work: Arenla's batch and Sentila's batch, still damp, in two lines. They match so perfectly that Onula cannot tell one maker's pots from the other's, yet she is certain one pair of hands did not make them all. She stays a long time, feeling she has witnessed something wonderful. The story ends with a short line that says it all: "A new pot maker was born."

2.3 Characters, Themes and Message

The story has only a few characters, and each one shapes Sentila's journey in a different way (Fig. 2.3).

• Sentila: passionate, determined and observant. She keeps going through a year of failure, learns by watching, and is sensitive enough to feel guilt and grief at the end. She grows from a secret dreamer into a true potter.
• Arenla: a master potter, worn out by heavy work and poor pay. She wants an easier life for her daughter. She teaches by silent example, and on the last day she leaves Sentila alone to work. Her love shows in actions rather than words.
• Mesoba: humble, respectful and protective. He defends his family before the elders with a tactful answer and then talks things over with his wife.
• Onula: kind, wise and perceptive. She sees at once that the girl is too tense to work well, and she is the only one who understands Sentila's cry at the end.
• The village council: the voice of tradition. The elders believe a community's crafts must be passed on, not kept private.

2.3.1 Themes

• Passion and perseverance (लगन): Sentila's dream survives secrecy, a year of failure and shame.
• Passing on a traditional skill: the elders see a craft as the shared wealth of a community, which experts owe to the next generation.
• The dignity and the hardship of handmade work: pot making is exhausting and poorly paid, yet it carries skill, beauty and history.
• A mother's silent love: Arenla never praises her daughter, but her example, and perhaps her choice to leave her alone, makes Sentila a potter.
• Learning from a mentor: sometimes a kind outsider can see what a family cannot.

2.4 Critical Reflection: The Story

Exam questions on the story come in two kinds. Extract-based questions point you to a passage and test inference, cause and effect, character, word meaning and the writer's choices. Answer-type questions ask you to explain, describe or give your opinion in 40–120 words.

• Read the question first, then the passage, and underline the words that answer it.
• For an assertion-and-reason question, check that the reason really explains the assertion, not just that both are true.
• For a word-meaning question, try each option in the sentence; the right one keeps the sense.
• In a long answer, make a point, support it with an event from the story, and say what it shows.

2.5 Vocabulary and Structures in Context

This part of the unit builds words connected with crafts and money, and three grammar points: noun clauses, relative clauses and determiners.

2.5.1 Words of a craft

The words of any craft fall into three groups. Tools or implements are what the worker works with. Raw materials are what the product is made from. Processes are the actions, often written as -ing words. Here is the vocabulary of pot making in the story, sorted this way.

2.5.2 Words about money and livelihood

Arenla's complaint is full of money words: her earnings are a pittance, paid in a few rupees, and the reward or return on her labour is poor. Any vocation is also a way of earning a living, so it helps to know the basic words of the economy. Learn these with their meanings and examples.

2.5.3 Noun clauses

A clause is a group of words with its own subject and verb. A main clause can stand alone as a sentence. A subordinate clause cannot; it depends on the main clause. When a subordinate clause does the work of a noun, as subject, object or complement, it is a noun clause.

• As subject: What Onula said gave Sentila courage.
• As object of a verb: Sentila hoped that she would become a potter.
• As object of a preposition: The elders worried about what would happen to the craft.
• As complement: The trouble was that the clay kept collapsing.

Quick test: replace the clause with it or something. If the sentence still works (Sentila hoped something), you have found a noun clause (Fig. 2.4).

2.5.4 Relative (adjectival) clauses

A relative clause describes a noun or pronoun in the main clause, just as an adjective does. It usually comes straight after that noun and begins with a relative word.

• who for people as subject: The potters who lived by the river were famous.
• whom for people as object: The widow, whom the girls loved, ran the dormitory.
• whose for possession: Sentila, whose dream was secret, watched every day.
• which for things: The kiln, which was made of hay, burned all night.
• that for people or things, without commas: The pot that she made first had a crooked mouth.
• where for places and when for times: She remembered the day when her hands found the rhythm.

Commas matter. A clause that only adds extra information goes between commas (Arenla, who was a master potter, wanted her daughter to weave). A clause that tells us which one has no commas (The girl who tried hardest was Sentila).

2.5.5 Determiners

A determiner comes before a noun, and before any adjective describing it, to tell us which one, whose, how many or how much. In her old spatula, the determiner her comes before the adjective old.

• many / few go with countable nouns (many pots); much / little with uncountable ones (much clay).
• a few means some; few means hardly any. Compare: She has a few friends (good) and She has few friends (lonely).
• each and every take a singular noun (every pot). Either and neither mean one of two.
• The same word can be a pronoun when no noun follows: this pot (determiner), this is mine (pronoun).
• Try this: reread one page of the story and list ten determiners with the nouns they introduce. Sort them into the kinds in the table.

2.6 Listen, Speak, Write and Explore

2.6.1 Listen and respond

In class you will hear a speaker talk about stone statues. Your teacher has the recording and its transcript. First you fill gaps with the exact words you hear, then you pick out the real steps of carving a statue from a longer list. The tips below help with both tasks.

• Before listening, read the gaps and guess what kind of word fits each: an adjective, a noun or a verb.
• While listening, write only key words; you can tidy your spelling afterwards.
• For a process, listen for order words such as first, next, then, after that, finally.
• Cross out a step only when the speaker clearly leaves it out or says something different.

2.6.2 Speaking: a role-play

2.6.3 Writing: reflective writing

Reflective writing looks inward. You think honestly about your own experiences, skills and hopes, and what they have taught you. It is written in the first person (I), in a thoughtful but natural voice, and it moves between past experiences and present thoughts. Follow a clear five-step plan (Fig. 2.5), and aim for about 200–250 words.

2.6.4 Learning beyond the text

Pottery is made all over India, and each region has its own style. Your textbook names six traditions and asks you to match them with pictures. Find out about them, and about any pottery made near your home. Here are a few facts to start with.

2.7 Gifts of Grace: Before You Read

The second text of the unit is a poem, "Gifts of Grace: Honouring Our Vocations". Its writer is unknown (Anonymous). Before reading it, warm up with these riddles about workers, written for this companion. Then discuss what each worker adds to the life of a town.

Every one of these workers keeps daily life running: we are clothed, fed, connected and supplied because of them. The poem asks us to notice such people and to honour their work.

2.8 Reading for Appreciation: The Poem

The poem is a joyful roll-call of workers across India. It is written in long, flowing lines without rhyme, and it is printed as nine verse paragraphs, which we call stanzas 1–9 here. Many readers find that it recalls Walt Whitman's "I Hear America Singing", which also lists workers singing as they work. The speaker does not describe what they see so much as what they hear: the whole country sounds like a festival of work (Fig. 2.6).

2.8.1 Stanza by stanza

• Stanza 1. The speaker announces the subject: "I hear Bharat celebrating" its many vocations. Work is imagined as sound, and the country itself seems to be singing.
• Stanza 2. Craftspeople come first. The imagery of weaving, colour and countless shades suggests textiles, dyeing and painting, and also India's own variety. Each maker delights in their own craft.
• Stanza 3. Next come musicians, whose stringed instruments give voice to feelings and hopes that ring out in public places. Art, too, is honoured as a vocation.
• Stanza 4. Carpenters are praised for their "mathematical precision". Craft needs a sharp, measuring mind as well as strong hands.
• Stanza 5. Electricians, cheerful as they prepare for the day, handle the wiring that lights our homes. Their work brings light, literally and in the sense of making life better, so a modern trade stands beside the old crafts.
• Stanza 6. The boatmen's day is traced from shore to sea and back: fishing, sailing, singing, and then stories to tell. Their work involves risk and adventure, and it feeds a whole tradition of storytelling.
• Stanza 7. Shoemakers take pride in their quality. Their shoes go everywhere people go, through work, play and celebration, and bring them safely back at the end of the day.
• Stanza 8. The cook, the designer and the mason each work to their own music and rhythm, and each takes pride in a skill that is theirs alone.
• Stanza 9. The poem's big idea: a person's work speaks for who they are. The opening line returns, but now the speaker hears voices, the workers themselves.

Mood and message. The poem feels festive from start to finish. It treats a cook and a carpenter with the same respect as a musician, and it suggests that every honest vocation adds a voice to the nation's song.

2.9 Appreciating the Poem

2.9.1 Free verse and lineation

The poem has no regular rhyme scheme and no fixed beat, so it is written in free verse (मुक्त छंद). Its lines are of very different lengths, and some run on like whole sentences. This makes the poem sound like natural, excited speech, or like a long list being chanted, which suits a picture of busy, never-ending work.

There is still a pattern. Most stanzas follow one shape: The + a group of workers + an -ing word, such as the carpenters celebrating or the electricians humming. These -ing forms show actions going on right now, and repeating the same shape (parallelism) binds the long list together.

2.9.2 Speaker, tone and mood

The speaker is an I who listens to the whole country. It may be the poet or any proud citizen; their role is to notice the workers and praise them. The tone, the speaker's attitude, is celebratory and reverential (full of respect). The mood, the feeling the poem creates in us, is joyful and lively, like a festival.

2.9.3 Imagery

Imagery (बिंब) is language that appeals to the senses. This poem uses visual images (things we can picture) and, even more, auditory images (things we can hear) (Fig. 2.7).

2.9.4 Metaphor and personification

A metaphor (रूपक) describes one thing as if it were another, without like or as. The cook's "delicious singing" is a metaphor. Singing cannot be tasted, but calling it delicious tells us the cook's work is so pleasing that its sounds, the sizzle and the chopping, are like a song we can almost taste. Mixing senses in this way is sometimes called synaesthesia.

Personification (मानवीकरण) gives human qualities to something that is not human. Bharat itself celebrates, as if the country were a person at a festival. In the last stanza a vocation even has a voice, which is the clearest case of personification in the poem.

2.9.5 Repetition and alliteration

The poem begins and ends with almost the same line. This repetition works like a frame or a refrain: it makes the poem feel complete and song-like, and it stresses the central idea of a whole country celebrating its work. The small change at the end, from vocations to voices, shows that the work and the worker have become one.

Alliteration (अनुप्रास) is the repetition of the same consonant sound at the start of nearby words. Listen for the two v-words side by side in the first line, the s-sounds as the boatmen sail and sing, and the w-sounds as the electricians work with wires. These sounds add music, which suits a poem about hearing.

2.9.6 Symbolism

A symbol (प्रतीक) is a thing that stands for a bigger idea. Each vocation in the poem stands for more than a job: it stands for skill, dignity and a person's place in the community. The electricians' light suggests progress, the boatmen's tales suggest courage and memory, and shoes that carry us home suggest life's journeys and belonging. Together the workers stand for India's unity in diversity.

2.10 Critical Reflection: The Poem

As with the story, poem questions may point you to a stanza or ask for a longer answer. In poetry answers, always name the device and then say what effect it has on the reader.

2.11 Words, Listening, Speaking and Writing

2.11.1 Words for vocations

The poem names many workers. Your textbook adds more vocation words; learn them with these cards.

2.11.2 Synonyms

Synonyms are words with nearly the same meaning, such as varied and diverse. They are never perfectly identical, so choose the one that fits the context. An odd-one-out task tests whether you can spot a word that does not belong, often an antonym in disguise.

2.11.3 Listen and respond

In class you will hear two friends talk about their parents' jobs, and you will be asked how a speaker feels as well as what they say. Listen for attitude: hesitation (well…, I suppose) suggests doubt, a rising, excited voice suggests happiness or a sudden realisation, and words like what if or I'd love to show a wish.

2.11.4 Speaking: voices of vocations

2.11.5 Writing: a poster

A poster announces an event and must catch the eye in a few seconds. It is placed in a box and uses large and small lettering, neat spacing and no more than about 50 words. Include the organiser, the event's name and purpose, the date, time and venue, a few highlights, a slogan and entry or contact details (Fig. 2.8).

2.12 Learning Beyond the Text

2.12.1 Write a haiku

A haiku is a very short poem from Japan. A traditional haiku has three lines with 5, 7 and 5 syllables, 17 in all (Fig. 2.9). It usually captures one small moment, often from nature, and it does not need to rhyme. Clap out the syllables of each word as you write. Here is one about a young potter:

• Red clay from the bank (5)
• a girl taps and turns the lump (7)
• slowly, a pot wakes (5)