The Blue Bead Workbook Answers - Evergreen

             

                                                                       Extract-1

(i) She had husked corn, and gathered sticks, and put dung to dry, and cooked, and weeded, and carried, and fetched water, and cut grass for fodder, during her childhood.

(ii) She went with her mother, and some other women, to get paper grass from the cliffs above the river, which could then be sold to an agent, which would give them some revenue.

(iii) The women toiled for the whole day to earn themselves a living by selling the paper grass to the agent. This agent would then arrange for the dispatch of the paper grass to paper mills.

(iv) Sibia carried a sickle and her homemade hay fork, with her, when she went with her mother to collect paper grass from the cliffs, and then sold it to the agent.

(v) Sibia could not skip work, when she was on her way back from the cliffs, since at that point, her body would always ache with tiredness, and there was also a great load to carry on her back as well.

Extract-2

(i) The crocodile rested in the river, sunning himself sometimes with other crocodiles- muggers, as well as the long snorted fish- eating gharials, on warm rocks, and sandbanks.

(ii) The big crocodile lay motionless in the river, as it was sunning himself, and relaxing. It was also waiting for its prey to come to the river, to drink water, and it would then attack it.

(iii) The big crocodile fed mostly on fish, but also on deer, and monkeys that came to drink water from the river, perhaps a duck or two, but sometimes here at the fords, he fed on a pi- dog full of parasites or a skeleton of a cow.

(iv) The big crocodile sometimes went down to the burning ghats, as it would find the half- burned bodies of some Indians cast into the stream, which he would then eat.

(v) The blue bead was a sand- worn glass that had been rolling about in the river for a long time. It was later found by Sibia, after defeating the crocodile, who would then use the bead for her necklace.

Extract-3

(i) The women were going towards the river. They passed a Gujar encampment of grass huts, where these nomadic grazers would live until the time their animals had perhaps finished all the easy grazing withing reach, and they would then move on.

(ii) The Gujar women wore trousers, tight and wrinkled at the ankles. In the ear, they would wear large silver rings, made out of melted rupees.

(iii) The Gujar men, and boys had gone out of camp just now with the herd, or gone to the bazaar to sell their produce. The men, and boys did not had a lot of hard work to do as compared to the Gujar women.

(iv) Sibia noticed the one or two buffaloes that the Gujar men left behind, were standing about. These were creatures of wet noses, and moving jaws, and gaunt black bones, as the author describes them.

(v) The Gujars, like Sibia, are called junglis because they were born, and bred in the forest. For countless centuries, their forebears had lived like this. They had never been to a developed city or such.

Extract-4

(i) The ancestors of the Gujars had been getting their living from animals, from grass and trees, as they scratched their food together, and stored their substances in large herds, and silver jewelry.

(ii) The women crossed the river by jumping from stones to stones. They gathered up their skirts, and they clanked their sickles, and forks together over their shoulders, to have an ease of movement.

(iii) While the women were crossing the river, they were laughing and joking, and were asking about how each other's day was going. They were in a talkative, and jolly mood.

(iv) Crocodiles are frightened by noises. The big crocodile did not move in fear while the women were crossing, as the women were very talkative, and noisy, and thus, all of them crossed the river in safety, to the other bank.

(v) The women had to climb a still hillside to get to the grass, and sliced away at it, wherever there was a foothold to be had. In the river, there were kingfishers, great turtles, mahseer weighing more than a hundred pounds, and crocodiles too.

Extract-5

(i) When Sibia was halfway through crossing the river, she sat her load down on a big boulder to rest, and leaned, breathing, on the fork.

(ii) A Gujar woman came with two gurrahs to the water on the other side of the river, in order to get clear water, which would quickly fill both gurrahs to the top without sand.

(iii) When the Gujar woman was withing a yard of the crocodile, the crocodile heaved out of the darkening water, with water slashing off him, with his livid jaws yawning, slashing at her leg.

(iv) In order to save herself, the Gujar woman clenched one of the timber logs, which jammed between two boulders, and she clung to it, and screamed out loud for help.

(v) After pulling her leg, the crocodile thrashed his mighty tail, to and fro in great smacking flails, as it tried to drag her free, and then carry her off down into the deeps of the pool.

Extract-6

(i) When Sibia saw the woman being attacked by the crocodile, she leaped from boulder to boulder like a rock goat, and aimed at the crocodile's eye, and then with all her force, she drove the hay fork at its eyes.

(ii) Sibia aimed at the crocodile's eyes with her hay-fork, and with all her body's force, she drove the hay fork at its eyes, with one prong going right in while the its pair scratched past on the horny cheek.

(iii) After he was attacked by Sibia, the crocodile reared up in pain, till half of his lizard body was out of the river, the tail, and nose nearly meeting over his strong back.

(iv) The crocodile would die, not then, but soon. Though its death would not be known for days, not till his stomach, filled with gas, floated him on the river.

(v) Sibia got her arms round the fainting woman, and somehow managed to drag her out of the water. She stopped her wounds with sand, and bound them with rags, and helped her go home, to the Gujar encampment.

Extract-7

(i) Sibia took the wounded Gujar woman to the Gujar encampment where the men made a litter to carry her to someone, that could help her, to heal her wounds.

(ii) Sibia wanted to pick her fork from the river. As she bent to pick it up from the river, she saw the blue bead in the water, which she then picked up, for her necklace.

(iii) Sibia twisted the blue bead into the top of her skirt against her tummy. She then picked up her hay fork, and sickle, and the heavy grass, and set off to home, happily singing, 'What a day, what a day'.

(iv) Sibia's mother was apprehensive about what had happened to Sibia, as till the time she had reached her home, she saw that Sibia was not there behind her.

(v) When Sibia's mother asked her if something had happened, she told her that something did happen, about her finding a blue bead for her necklace, in the river.