About the poet

Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi is a Pakistani poet and he has written several poems in Urdu and also in English. He was born I 1916 in a small village Anga in Khushab District. He started writing poems in the late thirties. He published more that a dozen books. Some of his works have also been translated into foreign languages, winning applause for him in foreign countries.

Theme

This poem is very simple. Here the poet depicts the love of a mother bird for her young ones who are very small and only a few days old. They are in the nest. The mother sparrow goes out and brings a grain of millet in her beak to feed them. They are ten in number.

Holding a grain of millet in her beak

The mother sparrow has come to feed.

The young ones are so tiny and small

From head to toe they are beaks

When they cry.

One grain to be fed to the ten young ones

To whom the mother sparrow should feed?

Conjoining beak with beak

With whom should she solace?

Fissuring the atom,

You have learnt to weep and wall in a loud tone,

Splitting the grain,

You have learnt to set life on foot

Could you split the grain?

One grain to be fed to the ten young ones.

(Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi)

Glossary

 Exercises

Answer the following questions.

1. What does the sparrow hold in her beak?
2. Which line in the first stanza tells us that the young ones have no feathers?
3. How many young ones are to be fed?
4. What has the poet described in the poem?

Choose the correct answer.

What was the mother sparrow holding in her beak?

a)      Wheat          b)    rice

c)      millet             d)    maize

the young ones are tiny and …………..

a)      big                  b)    small

c)      white            d)    black

how many young ones are there in the nest?

a)      Three            b)    ten

c)      Twelve         d)    nine

Name the bird that has come to feed her young ones.

a)      Crow             b)    pigeon

c)      Sparrow       d)    parrot

Read the poem and write down the missing word in each line.

i)                    From head to toe they are………….

ii)                   The mother sparrow has come to………..

iii)                 One grain to be fed to the ……..young ones.

Mark the statements true or false.

i)                    The young ones are tiny and small.

ii)                   They mother sparrow holds a grain of rice in her beak.

iii)                 The young ones do not weep and wail in a loud tone.

iv)                 One grain is to be fed to the six young ones.

Explain the last three lines of this poem with reference to the context.

Write a critical appreciation of the poem.

What do you feel after reading the poem?

Ingredients

Minced meat: 125 g

Onion : 1

Coriander leaves : as required

Green chilies : 2 to 3

Turmeric : ¼ tsp

Ground red chili : ½ tsp

Powdered coriander : ½ tsp

Cumin seeds : ½ tsp

Slat : to taste

Plain white flour : 1 cup

Ginger : 1 piece (medium size)

Garlic : 2 to 3

Oil : 2 tbsp

Oil : to fry

Procedure

1-      Combine cumin seeds, slat, oil plus water to plain wheat flour and knead it.

2-      Sauté ginger and garlic in warm oil.

3-      Add onion, minced meat and every one the spices. Cook the minced meat until tender. Now put in green chilies plus coriander leaves and mix it.

4-      Create a long sheet of the kneaded plain wheat flour plus cut it into two pieces with a knife. fill up these pieces with minced meat with fold them into samosa shape.

5-      Now fry them in hot oil.

Presentation

Serve it with tamarind chutney or chili garlic sauce.

Chef Zakir’s Tip

If you desire the fried items absorb less ghee, insert a little vinegar to the ghee. In this way, pakoras plus samosas etc. will absorb less ghee.

About the poet

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was an English romantic poet. He wrote some of his finest lyrics, including the “Ode to the West Wind”. “To a Skylark” and “The Cloud” in the last years of his life. He died in a storm at sea after visiting Lord Byron, another great poet. Shelley’s works show his remarkable lyrical gift, his originality and his hatred for oppression. He was a great revolutionary poet of his time.

Theme

It is a very ironic poem which describes the pride of a man and the wretched reality of life. Man becomes proud by success. He thinks that he has toppled the world. He forgets that life is merciless. Time brings all luxuries of life to an end, and death is a great leveler. Shelley considers all feelings of superiority in man as only an illusion and self-deception.

Paraphrase

The poet met a traveler from an ancient country. He told the poet that he saw two huge, bodiless legs made of stone. Those legs were standing in a desert. Near thee legs there was lying the broken body of a man half sunk in the sand. His features gave the impression that he was very proud and contemptuous of others. The artist has beautifully recreated these impressions on the face of stone. One could see that he was proud and heartless. At the bottom of the statue were inscribed these words “my name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” In the desert there remains nothing except this broken statue.

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert … near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

                                                                (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Glossary

Ingredients

Plain wheat flour: 1 cup

Potatoes : 1 to 2

Onion : 1

Slat : to taste

Ground red chili : 1 tsp

Coriander, mint : as required

Nigella seeds : ½ tsp

Mustard seeds : ½ tsp

Baking soda : ¼ tsp

Oil : as required

Procedure

1-      Mix water with plain wheat flour and knead it. Add salt and baking soda.

2-      Pour a little oil, salt, nigella seeds, mustard seed, baking soda, ground red chili and the pieces of boiled potato in a pan, and fry.

3-      Make a soft dough. Shape into a ball and roll into a 4 inch circle. Keep the potato mixture in the center and close from the sides. Brush with dry wheat flour and roll gently and evenly.

4-      Now place on a skillet (already hot) and cook both sides of pratha.

5-      Spread a little butter or oil on it.

Presentation

Serve steaming hot potato filled pratha with green chutney, yogurt or raita.

Chef Zakir’s Tip

If 1 tsp of vinegar is added to the water while boiling potatoes, they become soft and white.

Theme

This poem is a tribute to a working woman. Work creates rhythm in life. Work keeps a person strong and vigilant. An idle person will soon decay. This poem also portrays realistically the slums of Karachi in a few works. The poet praises and appreciates the working woman who has practically turned her work into an art. The woman walks softly with the delicacy and rhythm of a dancer’s feet.

Paraphrase

A Sindhi woman is going through a bazaar with bare feet. She is walking impressively and there is a rhythm in her movement which can be seen in her swaying body and floating dress. The wind pushes the cloth from her face. She is carrying stone jar on her head. She walks as smoothly as the wave of a stream. She is passing through stones, garbage, pieces of bread and the broken glass. This is the scene of a Karachi slum. The poet meditates and sees his own body that is bent by time. He observes that only those who bear the burden of life and carry its hardships through life are strong and straight.

Bare foot, through the bazaar,

And with the same undulant grace

As the cloth blown back from her face,

She glides with a stone jar,

High on her head

And not a ripple in her tread.

Watching her cross erect

Stones, garbage, excrement and crumbs

Of glass in the Karachi slums,

I, with my stoop, reflect:

They stand most straight

Who learn to walk beneath a weight.

                                                                    (Jan Stallworthy)

Glossary

Today, after life has become extremely fast, the idea of rapidly prepared foods has also approach into practice. The fast foods. Like sandwich with burger, started to be used mostly in Europe. Club sandwich VOG is a dish having a mix together of European plus Asian taste.

Ingredients

Bread: 3 slices

Chicken : 1 breast

Beef: 4 to 5 slices

Eggs: 2

Cheese: a few slices

Cucumber: half

Tomato: 1

Lettuce leaves: as required

Mayonnaise : ½ cup

Black pepper: ¼ tsp

White pepper: ¼ tsp

Slat: to taste

Worcestershire sauce: 2 tbsp

Procedure

1-      Cut chicken into long thin strips.

2-      Rub white pepper, black pepper, salt plus Worcestershire sauce on chicken pieces plus mix them well. Fry them in hot oil.

3-      Spread mayonnaise on bread plus heat it in a pan.

4-      Combine white pepper, black pepper plus salt on beef slices plus sauté them.

5-      Add salt plus black pepper to eggs plus fry them.

6-      Cut cucumber plus tomato into slices.

7-      Put lettuce leaves, chicken, slices of cucumber plus tomato on the bread. Place a slice of the bread on it plus then place beef, cheese, cucumber, tomato, egg, chicken, mayonnaise plus lettuce leaf plus place another slice of bread on it.

8-      Cut it into triangular shape plus serve.

Presentation

Place club sandwich VOG under a plate plus garnish with lettuce leaf. Now serve it with tomato ketchup plus chips.

Chef Zakir’s Tip

To refresh bread, set it (including its packet)on the lid of a wok having hot stream.

Green gram and lentil belong to south Asia. These bulses have been used in this region fro centuries. Before the advent of Islam, the people of India generally lived on vegetables and pulses. Hindu Raja, Chundergeet Moray. Was very fond of pulses.

Ingredients

Pulses of lentil and green grams : 150 g

Tomato : 1

Onion : 1

Ginger garlic paste : 1 tbsp

Turmeric : ½ tsp

Ground red chili : ½ tsp

Garam masala : ½ tsp

Salt : to taste

Oil : as required

For stir fry (tarka)

Whole cumin : 1 teaspoon

Garlic : 4 cloves

Onion : 1

Oil : as required

Procedure

1-      Put both the pulses (green gram and lentil) in a bowl and wash them.

2-      Heat oil in a pan.

3-      Cut onion and fry it in hot oil until light brown. Add ginger-garlic paste to it.

4-      Also add chopped tomatoes and fry till they are tenderized.

5-      Add ground garam masala, turmeric and ground red chili to it.

6-      After frying for a little, add water and pulses and leave it to be cooked.

7-      Add salt in the end.

For stir fry

1-      Heat 1/3 cup of oil in a pan. Cut garlic and onion into thin slices and fry them in the hot oil.

2-      When onion and garlic become light brown, add cumin seeds start to crackle pour the mixture into the pot of daal.

Presentation

Garnish with thin slices of ginger and coriander leaves, and serve with chapatti.

Chef Zakir’s Tip

If a little milk is added to lentil pulse during the last few minutes while cooking, its harmful effects disappear altogether.

Gram pulse is the most eaten food. There are many ways of cooking it. Among those dishes, meat with gram pulse, pumpkin with gram pulse and gram pulse sweet are delicious. Gram pulse belongs to south Asia. By adding spices, it can be eaten as snacks.

Ingredients

Gram pulse (chana dal) : 1 cup (boil it)

Tomato : 1 (slice it thinly)

Onion : 1 (chop thinly)

Green chilies : 2 (chop thinly)

Coriander leaves and mint : as required

Slat : to taste

Chat masala : ½ tsp

Tart powder : ½ tsp

Tart powder : ½ tsp

Ground red chili : ½ tsp

Lemon : 1 (extract juice)

Procedure

1-      Boil the gram pulse.

2-      Combine gram pulse, tomato, green chilies, coriander leaves, mint, onion and all the spices in a bowl and mix them. Now pour lemon juice on it and serve.

Presentation

To serve, garnish with coriander leaves, lemon slices and tomato.

Chef Zakir’s Tip

Soak gram pulse in water for half an hour, it will boil soon.

Theme

The poem is a dialogue between two imaginary persons personified as reader and rider. The rider is a bold and courageous person, ambitious to make his way through thick and thin.

The reader, full of awe and reverence, tells him that the valley beyond is full of dangers and that heaps of dung and rubbish lie on his journey ahead, whose bad smell sickens and maddens the mind.

The opposite force is working to discourage the traveler from going farther and farther. Fear and horror try to discourage the rider from going on his path to the pass.

The way to glory and success is vague and uncertain, but it can be paved through with courage and perseverance.

“O where are you going?” said reader to rider,

“That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,

Yonder’s the midden whose odours will return.

That gap is the grave where the tall return.

“O do you imagine,” said fearer to farer,

“that dusk will delay on your path to the pass,

Your diligent looking discover the lacking

Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?”

“O what was that bird,” said horror to hearer,

“Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?

Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,

The spot on your skin is a shocking disease?”

“Out of this house” – said rider to reader,

“yours never will” – said farer to fearer,

“They’re looking for you” – said hearer to horror,

As he left them there, as he left them there.

                                                                                                  (W.H. Auden)

Glossary

Exercises

1.       Summarize the poem in your own words.

2.       Answer the following questions.

1. What kinds of feelings does the poet create in the minds of his readers?
2. How do you feel after reading the poem?
3. What does the title of the poem signify?
4. Write down the rhyming words in the poem.
5. Explain the third stanza of the poem in your own words.

 3.       Mark the statements true / false.

1. The valley is fatal when the furnaces burn.                  T/F
2. That dusk will not delay on your path to the pass.     T/F
3. Your footsteps feel from granite to grass.                     T/F
4. The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.                 T/F

When the Englishmen came to India, they brought bread with them while the chefs gave a local touch to this bread. Once, a butler of the ruler of Hyderabad state prepared fried sandwiches for his master’s lunch. This English dish with a blend of Hindustani taste and style was very much appreciated.

Ingredients

Minced meat : ½ quarter

Bread : 2 slices

Egg : 1

Coriander : as required

Mint : as required

Chat masala : ½ tsp

Salt : to taste

Oil : as required

Procedure

1-      Combine salt, chat masala, coriander and mint to the minced meat and mix well.

2-      Beat the egg and spread minced meat mixture on the bread slice. Dip the lower side of the bread in egg and put it in the pan. Pour the remaining egg on the sandwich.

3-      Put upside down when it becomes light brown. Take it out of the pan when both of its sides become golden, and then serve.

Presentation

Garnish a plate with lettuce leaf and cucumber, and place fried sandwich on it. Serve it with ghili-garlic sauce.

Chef zakir’s Tip

Brown the sandwiches lightly. Thinly sliced chicken can also be used in place of minced meat.