[🌾 Rice — Paragraph Questions and Answers
Chemmanam Chacko | XII English
Translated by K. Ayyappa Paniker
🌾1. Why is the speaker eager to return home? What welcome does he imagine?
The speaker returns home after four years of research in North India. He has earned a doctorate for his work on making toys from rice husk. Tired of eating chapatis, he longs for a meal of athikira rice. He imagines his father working in the paddy field, wearing a mud-stained handloom dhoti. He expects his younger brother to carry rice seedlings and excitedly announce his arrival. He hopes to reach home just as his mother finishes cooking rice. These thoughts reveal his love for his family, native food and village life.
🌾2. What changes does the speaker notice when he reaches his village?
The speaker discovers that his village is very different from the place he remembers. Trees hide the view of the distant palm-thatched houses. Tall rubber plants grow where modan and vellaran varieties of paddy were once cultivated. The changed surroundings confuse his path home. There are no workers’ voices or sounds of ploughing. Arecanut palms cover the former paddy field, and dealwood trees stand beside the canal. Instead of farming rice, his father watches a rubber-sheet machine being installed. These changes show the replacement of food crops with cash crops.
🌾3. Why does the father prefer cash crops to rice cultivation?
The father explains that rice farming was difficult and brought little profit. He believes that growing cash crops is a better way to earn money. He is therefore happy with the change and proudly watches the installation of a rubber-sheet machine. He also points out that the government supplies rice to people who do not have paddy fields. His attitude shows how market conditions influence farmers’ choices. The poet exposes the irony of abandoning food production while depending on government supplies. The father’s words also highlight the need to make rice cultivation economically worthwhile.
🌾4. How does the poet use satire and irony in the final part of the poem?
The final part uses several ironic situations to criticise dependence on outside food supplies. The speaker returns hoping to eat native rice, but his brother brings ration wheat. The boy carries wheat instead of the seedlings imagined earlier. Meanwhile, the Chief Minister flies to the Centre to request more grain while cash crops flourish below. Finally, the speaker wonders whether the Centre can supply husk for his toys too. His research depends on a by-product of the rice cultivation that his family has abandoned. These situations make the poem humorous but sharply critical.
🌾5. How does the contrast between expectations and reality convey the poem’s message?
The first part presents the speaker’s hopeful memories of home. He imagines busy paddy fields, his father ploughing, his brother carrying seedlings and his mother cooking rice. The second part overturns these expectations. Cash crops replace paddy, his father turns to rubber production, and his brother carries ration wheat. This contrast highlights changes in farming, family life and social values. Greater importance is given to profit, while local food production declines. Through the speaker’s disappointment, the poet warns that neglecting food cultivation can weaken agricultural self-reliance and threaten food security.]
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[Prepared by Sindhu P,HSST English,GGHSS Kallai]