Q1 of 39 Page 89

In groups, collect information on how bakeries bake bread now and how the process has changed over time.

Students can do this activity in groups. They can visit a factory of any bakery and watch the process of baking and note it down. Then this process can be compared with the one given in the chapter.


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2

Compare the piece from the text (on the left below) with the other piece on Goan bakers (on the right). What makes the two texts so different? Are the facts the same? Do both writers give you a picture of the baker?

Our elders are often heard remniscing nostalgically about those good old Portuguese days, the Portuguese and their famous loaves of bread. Those eaters of loaves might have vanished but the makers are still there. We still have amongst us the mixers, the moulders and those who bake the loaves. Those age-old, time-tested furnaces still exist. The fire in the furnaces had not yet been extinguished. The thud and the jingle of the traditional baker’s bamboo, heralding his arrival in the morning, can still be heard in some places.


May be the father is not alive, but the son still carries on the family profession.

After Goa’s liberation, people used to say nostalgically that the Portuguese bread vanished with the paders. But the paders have managed to survive because they have perfected the art of door-to-door delivery service. The paders pick up the knowledge of bread making from traditions in the family. The leavened, oven-baked bread is a gift of the Portuguese to India.


[adapted from Nanda Kumar Kamat’s ‘The Unsung Lives of Gaon Paders’]
2

Now find a travel brochure about a place you have visited. Look at the description in the brochure. Then write your own account, adding details of your own experience, to give the reader a picture of the place, rather than an impersonal, factual description.

 2

There are number of craft-based professions which are dying out. Pick one of the crafts below. Make a group presentation to the class about the skill required, and the possible reasons for the decline of the crafts. Can you think of ways to revive these crafts?

(i)Pottery


(ii)Batik work


(iii)Dhurri (rug) weaving


(iv)Embroidery


(v)Carpentry


(vi) Bamboo weaving


(vii) Making jute products


(Viii)Handloom

 1

Where is Coorg?