Chapter 8 Jalebis Important Questions Class 8 It So Happened English
Short Answer Type Questions
Question 1. Why did the passer by stare at the narrator?
Answer
The passer by stared at the narrator as the money in his pocket were speaking and creating glamour.
Question 2. Why didn’t he pay, the school fees on the day he brought money to school?
Answer
He did not pay the school fees on the day he brought money to school because master Ghulam Mohammed, the teacher who collected the fees was on leave, and it would be collected the next day.
Question 3. What happened in the end?
Answer
The boy was caught in the end as the report of his absence had reached home. He must have been badly punished by everyone.
Question 4. How did he plan to pay the fees the next day?
Answer
He planned to pay the fees with the previous month’s scholarship that he would get the next day.
Question 5. How did the coins persuade the boy to buy jalebis?
Answer
The coins told the boy that the jalebis were fresh, crisp and syrupy. They were meant to be eaten and only those with money in their pocket could eat them.
Question 6. What was the consequence of buying jalebis with the fees money?
Answer
The consequence of buying jalebis with the fees money was that for the first time in his life he was absent from his school.
Question 7. Why did the boy’s head start to spin in the school?
Answer
As soon as he reached the school, he came to know that the scholarship was going to be paid the following month. This news intensified his tension so much that his head started to spin.
Question 8. What did he do to get the money?
Answer
He prayed to Allah Miyan to help him get the money somehow to pay the fees.
Question 9. What did the narrator mean by ‘for a child of such statuses’?
Answer
The narrator hailed from a decent family. Secondly he was a promising student who had earned scholarship in school.
Question 10. Which school was the boy in?
Answer
The boy was in the government school Kambelpur, now called Atak.
Question 11. What were the coins in the narrator’s pocket asking him to do?
Answer
The coins in the narrator’s pocket were asking him to spend the money and buy jalebis.
Question 12. Why did not the narrator pay his fees that day?
Answer
The narrator didn’t pay his fees because his teacher Master Ghulam Mohammed was absent that day.
Question 13. Did the boy eat all the jatebis by himself? How can you say?
Answer
The boy didn’t eat all the jalebis by himself. He ate himself to his heart’s content and distributed the rest among the boys from neighbourhood.
Question 14. Why was he suffering from ‘stomach ache’?
Answer
The narrator had eaten jalebis as he was fond of them. Later he had to eat his dinner otherwise his secret of jalebis with fee amount would be disclosed. Because he had overeaten the food and it took time to digest his heavy meal.
Question 15. How did the Master punish, according to the boy?
Answer
When Master Ghulam Mohammed got angry, he used to make the boys stand on the bench, not letting them sit till the bell rang.
Question 16. What did he do to escape from punishment?
Answer
The teacher informed the students that he would collect the fee during recess. The narrator was so scared that he lifted his bag and went to Kumbelpur railway station.
Question 17. Which class was the boy in?
Answer
The boy was in fifth standard.
Question 18. What was there in the bag of the narrator?
Answer
The narrator was carrying a few textbooks, notebooks, one pencil, one sharpener and one Id card sent by his Mammu. He did not have even four paise in his bag.
Question 19. Who was the last refuge according to the boy?
Answer
The boy was remorseful and scared, instead of taking help of his family, he considered God as the last refuge.
Question 20. “The fear was killing me”. What was the fear?
Answer
The boy’s fear was that his secret of eating jalebis should not be revealed to anyone. As he had overeaten, he got burps, with every burp he feared of vomiting the extra jalebis he had gobbled.
Question 21. How did the narrator win the scholarship?
Answer
The narrator won the scholarship as he was among the most promising students. In the fourth standard exams, he won a scholarship of four rupees a month.
Question 22. How did he plan to pay the fees the next day?
Answer
He planned to pay the fees from the amount he was supposed to receive as scholarship.
Long Answer Type Questions
Question 1. Write a short note on the character of the schoolboy in Jalebis.
Answer
The schoolboy in the story Jalebis carries four rupees to school to pay the school fees. He is honest, God fearing and brilliant student. He has won a scholarship also. He has never been punished. He enjoys prestige. He feels shy of standing in the bazaar and eating jalebis. But the coins in his pocket persuade him to go wrong. And he repents his foolishness. He asks for God’s help. He can recite the namaz and some portions from the Quran. His experience, however, teaches him a valuable lesson.
Question 2. The narrator was a responsible and honest boy. What are other qualities that can be learnt from him?
Answer
The narrator was a boy of about 10 or 12 years of age. He was a dedicated, and honest student. He spent his fee amount on jalebis but after having enough for himself, he distributed among others. He had firm belief on God and his magic. He tried everything to please him. He was soft hearted, religious and generous.
Question 3. Do you think, reason and intellect fail before temptation?
Answer
Initially the boy looked like a disciplined student who knows his responsibility. Yet his logics failed before his temptation. He gave up his sensibility and logics, and bought jalebis. He felt elated when he distributed the remaining jalebis amongst children and beggars. The lesson talks about an innocent child who fell a prey to temptation. However, the child might win over if he had controlled himself and checked himself before giving in to the situation.
Question 4. How does the schoolboy try to please God to come to his rescue?
Answer
The schoolboy faces a crisis after he has spent his school fees on the jalebis. He turns to Allah Miyan for help. He apologises to God. He promises to never repeat that mistake, and recites the namaaz and few verses from the Quran. He hopes in vain that God will put money under the rock. He plays a game with God. But he finds no coins but a hairy worm under the rock.
Question 5. Why didn’t he take the coins advice? Give two or three reasons?
Answer
Initially, the boy didn’t take the advice of the coins seriously for a couple of reasons. He could not spend the money meant for paying school fees on Jalebis. Secondly, the boy knew the harsh nature of the master and his punishment.
Question 6. (i) What did the oldest coin tell him?
(ii) Did he follow his advice? If not, why not?
Answer
(i) The oldest coin said that they were trying to tell him something for his own good. It said that he would get the scholarship money. The next day, with that money he could pay his fees. Hence, he could very well buy the Jalebis with the fee amount.
(ii) He didn’t follow his advice. He was a promising student. He was from a family of repute. He didn’t want to defame it.
Question 7. When it is time to pay the fees, what does he do? How is he disobeying the elders by doing so?
Answer
When it was time to pay the fees, he tucked his bag under the arm and left the school and simply kept on walking in the noise’s direction i.e., straight. He reached the point where the Kambelpur railway station began. The elders had warned him never to cross the railway tracks and never eat sweets with one’s fees money. All these instructions escaped his mind that day, anyhow.
Question 8. He reached home with the coins in his pocket. What happened then?
Answer
When he reached home, the coins began to speak again. When he went inside to have lunch, they began to shriek. He was so thoroughly fed up that he rushed out of the house barefoot and ran towards the market. Although he was terrified, he quickly asked for a whole rupee worth of Jalebis. The halwai opened up a whole newspaper and heaped a pile of Jalebis on it.
Question 9. His prayer to God is like a lawyer’s defence of a bad case. Does he argue his case well? What are the points he makes?
Answer
Yes, he argued his case very well. Some of the points are as follows.
- He had memorised the last ten surats of Quran and the entire ayat-ul-kursi so he was very religious minded.
- He confessed by admitting his mistake of eating jalebis. He did not eat alone rather distributed to a whole lot of children.
- He was totally unaware of the fact that the scholarship money would be handed over the next month otherwise he would never had finished the money on eating jalebis.
Question 10. How can one conclude that he started hating even the sight of jalebis?
Answer
The narrator spent his money on buying jalebis. He was constantly burping after devouring jalebis. He promised to himself that he won’t eat jalebis any more because it was the reason of his remorse. So next time when jalebiwala offered him to buy jalebis, he looked at it with disgust.
Question 11. Comment on the significance of the jalebis in the story.
Answer
Jalebis are central to the story. These are hot, fresh and syrupy. A school boy falls to the sweet temptation of jalebis. He spends all his school fees money in buying jalebis. He eats himself and also distributes them among children. He regrets his weakness later. He prays to God to send him four rupees. But he gets no help from God. He realises in later life that God cannot meet everybody’s demand. Were he so generous, man would not have developed the skill of making jalebis.
Question 12. Children’s stomachs are like digestion machines. What do you understand by that? Do you agree?
Answer
Children can eat huge-large amount of food/eatables and can digest easily—which can’t be done in later ages. Children are tend to be active and growing so they have more digestive capacity. We agree to it. But children should not overeat otherwise they might fall sick at times; it is bad for health also.
Question 13. He offers to play a game with Allah Miyan. What is the game?
Answer
He decided to play a game with Allah Miyan. He used to form a starting place to touch the signal. Allah Miyan was supposed to put four rupees under the big rock. The boy would touch the signal and come back. It would be fun if he found four rupees underneath the rock.
Question 14. Why did the boy hold all the four coins tight in his fist?
Answer
All the four coins began to speak at the same time in order to make the boy ready to buy the jalebis. There was such a clamour that passersby in the bazaar stared at him and his pocket. So, the boy grabbed all of them and held them tight in his fist to make them silent.