Class 10 English First Flight Chapter 5 (formerly Chapter 7 before The Hundred Dresses I & II were removed), Glimpses of India, brings together three cultural travelogue portraits: Lucio Rodrigues’s A Baker from Goa, Lokesh Abrol’s Coorg, and Arup Kumar Datta’s Tea from Assam. The chapter PDF also includes Adrienne Rich’s symbolic poem The Trees.
What Class 10 English (First Flight) Chapter 5 Covers
I. A Baker from Goa (Lucio Rodrigues), II. Coorg (Lokesh Abrol) & III. Tea from Assam (Arup Kumar Datta) A Baker from Goa recalls the nostalgic Portuguese-era village baker (pader), the musical ‘jhang, jhang’ of his bamboo staff, loaves for elders and bread-bangles for children, bol for marriage gifts, cakes and bolinhas for Christmas, and the baker’s knee-length kabai (turning a plump physique into an ‘open testimony’ to a prosperous profession). Coorg portrays Kodagu—the smallest district of Karnataka midway between Mysore and Mangalore—its evergreen rainforests, coffee estates, fiercely independent martial people of possible Greek or Arabic descent (kuppia resembling the Arab kuffia), General Cariappa, mahaseer fish in the Kaveri, adventure sports and the view from Brahmagiri hills and Nisargadhama / Bylakuppe Tibetan settlement. Tea from Assam follows schoolmates Pranjol and Rajvir travelling by train to Dhekiabari Tea Estate in Assam, sharing Chinese (Emperor boiling water) and Indian (Bodhidharma’s eyelids) legends of tea’s discovery and observing the second-flush sprouting period (May to July).
Poem: The Trees (Adrienne Rich) depicts trees kept indoors in the poet’s house struggling all night to disengage their roots from the cracks in the veranda floor and their leaves and twigs from the glass to move out into the empty forest—a powerful metaphor for women breaking free from domestic confinement to reclaim their rightful space in the world.
Exercises in Chapter 5
- Thinking about the Text covers the elders’ nostalgia in Goa, the baker’s bamboo sound and kabai, Coorg’s location, crops, Kodavus’ Greek/Arab origin theories and wildlife, and Rajvir’s homework on the history and legends of tea.
Read Class 10 English (First Flight) Chapter 5 Online
More Chapters
- Previous: Chapter 4: From the Diary of Anne Frank (with Poem: Amanda!)
- Next: Chapter 6: Mijbil the Otter (with Poem: Fog)
- Workbook companion: Words and Expressions II Unit 5: Glimpses of India
- All English (First Flight) chapters and the other Class 10 books: Class 10 NCERT books 2026-27
- All Class 1 to 12 NCERT Textbooks: NCERT Books PDF (Class 1–12)
- Every book chapter by chapter: NCERT chapter wise PDF
FAQ
Why was the baker’s furnace (‘pader’) absolutely essential in a traditional Goan village?
Bread was an indispensable part of every social and festive occasion in Goa: marriage gifts were meaningless without the sweet bread known as the ‘bol’; a party or feast lost its charm without bread; the lady of the house had to prepare sandwiches on the occasion of her daughter’s engagement; and cakes and bolinhas were a must for Christmas and other festivals.
What are the two legends about the discovery of tea shared by Rajvir in ‘Tea from Assam’?
(1) Chinese legend: A Chinese emperor always boiled water before drinking it; one day a few leaves of the twigs burning under the pot fell into the water, giving it a delicious flavour—they were tea leaves. (2) Indian Buddhist legend: Bodhidharma, an ancient Buddhist ascetic, cut off his eyelids because he felt sleepy during meditations; ten tea plants grew out of the eyelids, and their leaves, when put in hot water and drunk, banished sleep.