Glimpses of India
Personal writing and dying crafts
Write a personal, vivid account rather than a factual one.
From notes to a paragraph. Make a small table about the writer's childhood: how bread was baked, how it was sold, what the pader wore, when he was paid, how he looked. Then join the notes into a paragraph.
Same facts, different feeling. Compare two texts about Goan bakers:
- Lucio Rodrigues (our lesson): personal and nostalgic, full of sounds and sights: the 'jhang, jhang', the fragrance of the loaves;
- Nandakumar Kamat: short and factual. The paders survived by delivering door to door; leavened, oven-baked bread was 'a gift of the Portuguese to India'.
The facts are similar, but only the first lets you see the baker.
Write about a place. Take a travel brochure about a place you have visited. Then write your own account. Add what you saw, heard, smelt and felt, and one thing that happened. That turns facts into a picture.
How bread is made now. In groups, find out how bakeries work today: machines instead of hand kneading, factories instead of village furnaces, packaged loaves.
Crafts that are dying. Choose one: pottery, batik, dhurri weaving, embroidery, carpentry, bamboo weaving, jute products or handloom. Present the skills it needs, why it is declining, and ideas to save it.
Practise this lesson
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