Heir Conditioning - by M.Shanmughalingam

Flustered: confuse or nervous.

Fluttered: insects or birds fly by moving their wings lightly up and down.

Necessities: something that you need to have in order to live.

Ignorance: lack of knowledge or information about something.

Pollution: the process of making air, water, soil etc dangerously dirty and not suitable for people  to use.

Destruction: the act or process of destroying something or of being destroyed.

Streams: a long and almost continuous series of events, people, objects etc.

Stanza 1

Grand dad did you breathe

Before air cons were invented

Was it hard staying

Alive without modern inventions?

Grandma weren’t you flustered

As you fluttered with paper fans?

Could you communicate before

Faxes and long distance calls

Became basic necessities?

In the first stanza, the poet asks his grandparents about the life before the technology arouse and become the important usage in the world nowadays. He asks his grandfather was it complicated to live in the life without technology as he refers the technology to the invention of the air cons. Then he asks his grandmother regarding the condition when she used paper fans to cool herself. He also asks his grandmother what were the possibilities for them to communicate without faxes and long distance calls compared to the world nowadays.

Stanza 2

Grandchild we lived

Before your age. Because

Of our ignorance,

We did not know

Pollution, stress, traffic jams

Destruction of forests, streams and

Hills

We feared God and nature

Now nature fears you and

Money is your new God.

The second stanza shows the answers given by the poet’s grandparents that sum up all the questions in one simple answer. The reason on why they did not experience all the pollution, stress, traffic jams, and destruction of forests, streams and hills is because of their ignorance; they were lack of knowledge by that time. His grandparents add, the only thing that they fear is God and nature but now, the nature turns to fear the entire human race and money is the only obsession to human.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS:

i.                     What does the phrase “did you breathe” in Stanza 1 convey to you about the child’s reaction?

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(1      mark)

ii.                   Explain one message that is implied in Stanza 2.

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(2 marks)