Poem 2: Geography Lesson

 

Summary

The poem is about the way earth looks from different altitudes. It is divided into three parts.
When the jet takes off and starts to climb up in the sky, you can have full height view of the city. The city grew as per its necessity and did not grow as per proper planning. It does not have any particular style. It even looked six inches from a certain height revealing its true structure.

When the jet climbs higher up to about ten thousand feet, he could apprehend the fact that cities grew water resources. Water fulfilled the necessities like agriculture, transport, business and others. He found that valleys were populated which met the necessities of the people.

When the jet went above six miles, there is more water than land on the earth. While appreciating the geographical niceties of our planet, the poet is unable to understand the tendency to build borders, to erect walls, to create fences. Then he reflected that people on earth selfish and narrow for they hate each other .He found the earth to be one but not the people living on this earth are divided for shallow reasons.

Textual Questions and Exercises

 

Q1. Find three or four phrases in stanzas one and two which are likely to occur in a geography lesson.

Ans. Some phrases that are likely to occur in a Geography lesson are ‘the city had developed the way it had’, ‘it scaled six inches to the mile’, ‘cities where the rivers ran’, and ‘the valleys were populated’.

Q2. Seen from the window of an aeroplane, the city appears
(i) as haphazard as on ground.

(ii) as neat as a map.

(iii) as developed as necessary.

Mark the right answer.

Ans. (iii) as developed as necessary.

Q3. Which of the following statements are examples of “the logic of geography”?

(i) There are cities where there are rivers.

(ii) Cities appear as they are not from six miles above the ground.

(iii) It is easy to understand why valleys are populated.

(iv) It is difficult to understand why humans hate and kill one another.

(v) The earth is round, and it has more sea than land.

Ans. (i), (iii) and (iv) are the correct statements.

Q4. Mention two things that are

(A) Clear from the height.

(B) Not clear from the height.

Ans. (A) From the height, it was clear why the country had cities where the rivers ran and why the valleys were populated. It was also clear that the earth was round and that it had more sea than land.

Ans. (B) From the height, it was not clear why the men on the earth found reasons to hate each other. It was also not understandable why men had to build walls across cities and why they had to kill.

 

Q5. What geographic lessons did the poet in the jet learn when the jet just took off? 

Ans. The city that human have developed have not been well planned, it grew as per necessity.

Q6. What geographic lessons did the poet in the jet learn when the jet reached ten thousand feet?

Ans. From a height of ten thousand feet above the ground, the earth’s cities were found located on the banks of rivers and a little above the river level, on valleys.

Q7. What was once most necessary for the emergence of a city in the past?

Ans. The easy availability of water for drinking to irrigation was the prime reason why civilizations flocked around rivers.

Q8. What was difficult to understand about the earth when the jet was six miles high?

Ans. It was difficult to understand why human hate each other, build borders, walls and create fences.

Q9. What is the poet trying to bring out about human beings, the earth and learning?

 Ans. The poet is trying to bring out the fact that human beings have achieved a lot of knowledge about the earth and beyond. We have learnt much about the earth, its shape, the emergence of cities and nations, but we have failed to learn how to love each other live peacefully on this wonderful planet.