(compiled by Aparna Dubey, TGT English, KV 2, Belagavi Cantt.

TSUNAMI

Word Meanings

(NOTE : To be written by the student herself/himself as the given chapter has

been taught in the class. If needed, help could be taken from the virtual/paper
dictionaries available.)

Key Points

How the people and animals behaved before, during and after tsunami.

The sea slowly rose and started to foam, bubbled and formed Whirlpools; gave
warning to the local people.

Tsunamis can be caused by earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides.

It seems either animal possess a sixth sense and know when the earth is going
to shake or have more acute hearing power. Not many animals died in tsunami
as compared to people.

Summary

In tsunami that occurred on 26th December, 2004, Ignesious, the manager of a

cooperative society, lost two of his children, wife and father-in-law as he could
not get alarmed by the tremor.

Sanjeev was a policeman. He jumped into the water to rescue his cook’s wife,
but they were both swept away.

Both Meghna’s and Almas’ families were washed away. Both of them kept
floating in the sea for days. Meghna floated in the sea for two days holding on
to a wooden door. She was brought to the shore by a wave. Similarly, Almas
climbed on to a log of wood and fainted. She woke up in a hospital. Both the
girls were traumatized after the incident. While Meghna was seen walking on
the seashore in daze, Almas does not talk about the incident to anyone. Both of
them were not noticed by relief helicopters.

Tilly Smith, a British school girl, was able to save many lives when the tsunami
struck Phuket beach in Thailand as she had seen the sea behaving in the same
manner as in a video in her class of a tsunami that had hit the Hawaiian islands
in 1946. She won a number of awards. The tourist thanked Tilly and her
geography lesson that had warned her.

Before tsunami in India and Sri Lanka, wild and domestic animals fled to safety,
elephants ran for higher grounds; dogs refused to go outdoors; flamingos
abandoned their low-lying breeding areas as they seemed to know what was
about to happen.

It is believed that animals either posses a sixth sense or have more acute hearing
that helps them to hear or feel earth’s vibration. Near about 150,000 were
people killed in that tsunami in a dozen countries but not many animals were
reported dead.

Questions-Answers and Exercises

Working With the Text (page 30)

Discuss the following questions in class. Then write your own answers.

Question 1: When he felt the earthquake, do you think Ignesious

immediately worried about a Tsunami? Give reasons for your answer.
Which sentence in the text tells you that the Ignesious family did not have
any time to discuss and plan their course of action after the tsunami
struck?

Answer: No, Ignesious did not think about the tsunami. He thought that it
was just an earthquake. So he took the television off the table and put it
on the ground. His family did not have time to discuss and plan their
course of action. The following sentence tells about the chaos and
confusion. “…two of his children caught hold of the hands of their
 mother’s father and mother’s brother, and rushed in the opposite
direction.”

Question 2:
Which words in the list below describe Sanjeev, in your opinion?

cheerful ambitious brash brave careless

heroic selfless heartless

Answer:
brave, heroic, selfless

Use words from the list to complete the three sentences below.

i. I don’t know if Sanjeev was cheerful, ambitious or brash.

ii. I think that he was very brave, heroic and selfless.
iii. Sanjeev was not heartless, careless or humorous.

Question 3: How are Meghna and Almas’s stories similar?

Answer: Meghna and Almas—both were lucky. Meghna was carried away
with her parents and other people. But she alone survived. She was
washed ashore by a wave. Almas climbed on to a log of wood. When she
opened her eyes, she found herself in a hospital in Kamorta.

Question 4: What are the different ways in which Tilly’s parents could
have reacted to her behaviour? What would you have done if you were in
their place?

Answer: Tilly foresaw the danger of tsunami at once. She became

hysterical. Her parents didn’t ignore her. They were sure that something
wrong must be going to happen. So they all left the beach and were saved.
If I were in place of Tilly’s parents, most probably, I might not have
believed her. I might have scolded her for making a nonsense situation.

Question 5: If Tilly’s award was to be shared, who do you think she should
share it with— her parents or her geography teacher?

Answer: It is very obvious. Tilly’s award should be shared with her

geography teacher. Her parents could not guess the tsunami was coming.

Question 6: What are the two different ideas about why so few animals
were killed in the tsunami? Which idea do you find more believable?

Answer: Very few animals were killed in the tsunami. Perhaps they feel
the tremor much before humans do. Secondly, the animals have sixth
sense. They can guess the coming disaster and so run away to safer
places/higher ground. The idea that the animals are gifted with the sixth
sense is more believable. They move fast to get over the crisis.

Working with Language (Page 31)

Question 1:
Go through Part-I carefully, and make a list of as many words as you can
find that indicate movement of different kinds. (There is one word that
occurs repeatedly-count how many times!). Put them into three
categories :

fast movement slow movement neither slow nor fast

Can you explain why there are many words in one column and not in the
others?

Answer :

Fast movement slow movement neither slow nor fast

 fall (once) Rising floating
rushed (3 times) receding
swept away (3 times)
washed away (once)

There are more words in column A. These are related to fast movements
of escape from the tsunami. It was natural for men and animals to make
fast movements in such situation. The waves also overtook some people
very fast and washed them away.

Question 2:
Fill in the blanks in the sentences below (the verbs given in brackets will
give you a clue).

Answers :

i)The earth trembled, but not many people felt the trembling/tremors
(tremble)

ii) When the zoo was flooded, there was a lot of confusion and many
animals es-caped into the countryside. (confuse)

iii) We heard with relief hat the lion had been recaptured. (relieve)

iv) The zookeeper was stuck in a tree and his rescue was filmed by the TV
crew. (rescue)

v) There was much excitement in the village when the snake charmer
came visit-ing. (excite)

Question 3. Study the sentences in the columns A and B.

A B
 Meghna was swept away The waves swept Meghna away.

Almas’s grandfather was hit on the Something hit Almas’s grandfather

head. on the head.

Sixty visitors were washed away. The waves washed away sixty
visitors

No animal carcasses were found. People did not find any animal
carcasses.

Say whether the following sentences are in the Active or the Passive voice.
Write A or P after each sentence as shown in the first sentence.

Answers :
(i) Someone stole my bicycle. Active (A)
(ii) The tyres were deflated by the traffic police. Passive (P)
(iii) I found it last night in a ditch near my house. Active (A)
(iv) It had been thrown there. Passive (P)
(v) My father gave it to the mechanic. Active (A)
(vi) The mechanic repaired it for me. Active (A)

SPEAKING AND WRITING (Page 32)

Question 1.
Suppose you are one of the volunteers who went to the Andaman and Nicobar
Islands for relief work after the Tsunami. You work in the relief camps,
distributing food, water and medicine among the victims. You listen to the
various stories of bravery of ordinary people even as they fight against odds to
bring about some semblance of normalcy in their lives. You admire their grit and
determination. Write a diary entry.
You may start in this way.
31 December, 2016
The killer Tsunami struck these islands five days ago. But the victims are being
brought in even now. Each one has a story to tell…

Answer :
… All of them rouse our pity. But a few inspire me too. There is an old woman of
about 65. She has survived along with her 8 year-old granddaughter. The people
in the camp suggest that the granddaughter be sent to an orphanage. The old
lady refuses to listen. She says that she will not let her granddaughter go away
from her. In fact she wants no charity. She is willing to do some useful work to
help her granddaughter.

Question 2.
The story shows how a little girl saved the lives of many tourists when a tsunami
struck the beach, thanks to the geography lesson that she had learnt at school.
She remembered the visuals of a tsunami and warned her parents.

Do you remember any incident when something that you learnt in the classroom
helped you in some way outside the classroom ?

Write your experiences in a paragraph of about 90-100 words or narrate it to

the whole class like an anecdote.

Answer :
The other day I was walking back from school. Suddenly my eyes fell on a cyclist.
He seemed to be losing balance. Before I could think of helping him, he had
somehow got down the cycle. However, he just left the cycle and lay on the side
of the road. He was perspiring and breathing with difficulty. Soon a crowd
gathered. I immediately remembered the lesson my biology teacher had taught
me. I requested the people to stay away and sent one of them to call a doctor.
In the meantime I fanned him to help him get a lot of fresh air. Then very
tenderly, I massaged his heart. That was what my teacher had advised me to do.
The man felt relief and was breathing easily when the doctor arrived.