These Lost Spring class 12 notes distil Anees Jung’s chapter — the second chapter of the Flamingo textbook — into one revision page: summary, themes, character sketches, literary devices and answer-writing pointers.
The chapter is an excerpt from her book Lost Spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood, and the NCERT theme panel names its core concern as the plight of street children forced into labour early in life and denied the opportunity of schooling (NCERT, p. 21). These notes follow the NCERT rationalised textbook for the 2026-27 session.
Work through the page in this order: glance at the two-boys comparison, read the summary once, then revise themes, characters and devices from the tables. The exam notes and common-mistakes sections are the ones to re-read the night before a test.
This page is part of the Class 12 English notes collection, which covers every prose and poem chapter of Flamingo and Vistas.
Lost Spring at a Glance: Two Boys, Two Towns, One Stolen Childhood
The chapter builds its argument through two portraits of boys the writer actually met. The table below lines their worlds up side by side so the parallel is easy to revise.
| Aspect | Saheb’s world — Seemapuri (Delhi) | Mukesh’s world — Firozabad (UP) |
|---|---|---|
| Location | A squatter settlement on the periphery of Delhi, “miles away from it, metaphorically” (NCERT, p. 15) | Famous for bangles; the centre of India’s glass-blowing industry (NCERT, pp. 16–17) |
| Home | Mud structures with roofs of tin and tarpaulin; no sewage, drainage or running water (NCERT, p. 15) | Hovels with crumbling walls, wobbly doors and no windows; Mukesh’s own house is a half-built shack (NCERT, p. 17) |
| Occupation | Rag-picking in the garbage dumps | Welding coloured glass into bangles in hot furnaces |
| Central symbol | Garbage as gold (NCERT, p. 15) | Bangles in every colour of the rainbow (NCERT, p. 17) |
| Attitude | Carefree and full of wonder — until he takes the job | Defiant; refuses to accept the family’s fatalism |
| Final state | “Saheb is no longer his own master!” (NCERT, p. 16) | “An embarrassment that has not yet turned into regret” (NCERT, p. 19) |
Decode the title before you read further. Spring in this title means childhood, and lost means stolen — by poverty, by forced labour and by custom. The chapter is not about a missed season.
Its two parts are even named after the boys’ own words — “Sometimes I Find a Rupee in the Garbage” and “I Want to Drive a Car” — and both halves show the same condition: a childhood taken over by survival and work.
Anees Jung and Her Lost Spring
Knowing where the chapter comes from explains its unusual tone. It is not a fictional short story; it is reportage on real suffering, written in almost poetical prose (NCERT, p. 20). A few facts fix the context:
- Anees Jung (born 1944) was born in Rourkela and spent her childhood and adolescence in Hyderabad; she was educated in Hyderabad and in the United States (NCERT, p. 13).
- Both her parents were writers, and she worked as an editor and columnist for major newspapers in India and abroad (NCERT, p. 13).
- The chapter is an excerpt from Lost Spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood, in which she analyses the grinding poverty and traditions that condemn children to a life of exploitation (NCERT, p. 13).
Lost Spring Summary: Saheb’s Story and Mukesh’s Story
Both boys share one robbed childhood; each half of the chapter tracks a different trap. Read the two parts as separate lists.
Part 1 — “Sometimes I Find a Rupee in the Garbage” (Saheb)
- Saheb is a ragpicker the narrator encounters every morning scrounging in the garbage dumps of her neighbourhood. His family left Dhaka after storms swept away their fields and homes (NCERT, pp. 13–14).
- His full name is Saheb-e-Alam, meaning “lord of the universe” — a grand name for a boy who owns nothing, and he does not even know what it means (NCERT, p. 14).
- Seemapuri, where he lives, holds about 10,000 squatters from Bangladesh who came in 1971. They live in mud structures with tin and tarpaulin roofs — no sewage, drainage or running water — without identity or permits, only ration cards that put their names on voters’ lists and let them buy grain (NCERT, p. 15).
- Garbage has two meanings here: for the elders it is a means of survival; for the children it is “wrapped in wonder.” Saheb sometimes finds a rupee, and once a ten-rupee note (NCERT, p. 15).
- He watches tennis from behind the club fence, content. The discarded shoes he wears, with a hole in one, are a dream come true for a boy who walked barefoot (NCERT, pp. 15–16).
- The turning point: Saheb takes a job at a tea stall for 800 rupees plus all meals, but the steel canister belongs to the owner — “Saheb is no longer his own master!” (NCERT, p. 16).
Part 2 — “I Want to Drive a Car” (Mukesh)
- Mukesh lives in Firozabad, famous for bangles and the centre of India’s glass-blowing industry; every other family there is engaged in making them (NCERT, p. 16).
- It is illegal for children to work in the glass furnaces — hot, dingy cells without air or light — yet the unenforced law leaves 20,000 children to slog their daylight hours there, often losing their eyesight (NCERT, p. 17).
- His home is a half-built shack in stinking lanes; the family crowds in with animals. His sister-in-law, the bahu, veils herself before male elders as custom demands (NCERT, p. 17).
- His grandmother calls the trade karam, destiny: “Can a god-given lineage ever be broken?” She watched her own husband go blind from the dust of polishing glass (NCERT, p. 17).
- The trap is systemic: sahukars, middlemen, policemen, keepers of law, bureaucrats and politicians form a vicious circle, and their talk moves “in a spiral that moves from poverty to apathy to greed and to injustice” (NCERT, p. 19).
- Yet Mukesh insists, “I will be a motor mechanic,” and will walk to a garage to learn. Only when asked about flying a plane does he fall silent — an “embarrassment that has not yet turned into regret” (NCERT, p. 19).
You can read both halves in full in the official NCERT PDF of the Flamingo textbook, pages 13–22.
Themes of Lost Spring: Stolen Childhood and Brushed-Aside Dreams
The chapter’s concern, as the NCERT theme panel frames it, is street children forced into labour early in life and denied the opportunity of schooling; its sub-theme is the callousness of society and the political class to the sufferings of the poor (NCERT, p. 21). Five threads carry that concern through both halves:
| Theme | What it means here | Evidence from the text |
|---|---|---|
| Stolen childhood | Work replaces play and school before a child can choose | Savita’s hands move “mechanically like the tongs of a machine”; 20,000 children work in the furnaces (NCERT, pp. 17–18) |
| Karam and the caste trap | Destiny is used to justify a brutal family trade | “Can a god-given lineage ever be broken?” (NCERT, p. 17) |
| Migration and survival | People leave land that can no longer feed them | “Rather live here than in the fields that gave us no grain” (NCERT, p. 15) |
| Dreams versus reality | Ambition is real but unreachable in this world | Mukesh’s dream “looms like a mirage amidst the dust of streets”; “Few airplanes fly over Firozabad” (NCERT, pp. 16, 19) |
| Exploitation by the system | Middlemen and the state keep workers trapped | The “vicious circle” that has “imposed the baggage on the child that he cannot put down” (NCERT, p. 19) |
The chapter’s deepest irony sits in its final pages: the bangles are beautiful in colour, yet the people who make them live in misery — a paradox the textbook asks students to observe and write about (NCERT, pp. 20–21).
Character Sketches: Saheb, Mukesh and the People Around Them
Every trait below is supported by a line from the text, so the same evidence can be dropped straight into an answer.
| Character | Key detail | Evidence line |
|---|---|---|
| Saheb-e-Alam | Ragpicker whose grand name mocks his condition | “Saheb is no longer his own master!” (NCERT, p. 16) |
| Mukesh | Bangle maker who refuses karam and dreams of engines | “I will be a motor mechanic” (NCERT, p. 16) |
| The grandmother | Fatalist; the trade is god-given destiny | “Can a god-given lineage ever be broken?” (NCERT, p. 17) |
| Savita | Young girl soldering glass, unaware of what bangles mean | “Her hands move mechanically like the tongs of a machine” (NCERT, p. 18) |
| The old woman | A lifetime without one full meal | “Ek waqt ser bhar khana bhi nahin khaya” (NCERT, p. 18) |
| The bahu (sister-in-law) | Already in charge of three men, yet veils before male elders | “As custom demands, daughters-in-law must veil their faces before male elders” (NCERT, p. 17) |
| The narrator | Observer-reporter; the one who reads hope in Mukesh | “When I sense a flash of it in Mukesh I am cheered” (NCERT, p. 19) |
Notice the narrator’s method: she asks the questions, records barefoot boys and veiled women, and lets the chapter’s two worlds — the family trapped in poverty and the vicious circle of middlemen, police and politicians — surface through what people say (NCERT, p. 19).
Literary Devices in Lost Spring (With Lines From the Text)
Three devices anchor the NCERT language exercise (NCERT, p. 20). Hyperbole exaggerates to make something sound greater than it really is; metaphor transfers a single quality of one thing to another; simile compares two things using “like” or “as”.
| Device | Exact line from the text | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Irony | “Saheb-e-Alam which means the lord of the universe is directly in contrast to what Saheb is in reality” (NCERT, p. 20) | A name of majesty on a child who owns nothing |
| Irony | “Few airplanes fly over Firozabad” (NCERT, p. 19) | Even dreams of flight are unreachable in that world |
| Metaphor | “Web of poverty” (NCERT, p. 19) | Poverty as a net the family cannot slip free of |
| Metaphor | “Drowned in an air of desolation” (NCERT, p. 14) | The temple place now feels lifeless and abandoned |
| Simile | “Her hands move mechanically like the tongs of a machine” (NCERT, p. 18) | A child reduced to a machine with no thought of her own |
| Hyperbole | “Garbage to them is gold” (NCERT, p. 15) | Exaggeration that makes garbage as precious as gold — the textbook’s own example |
| Paradox / contrast | “She still has bangles on her wrist, but no light in her eyes” (NCERT, p. 18) | The ornament remains; the joy and hope are gone |
| Paradox / contrast | Survival “has acquired the proportions of a fine art” (NCERT, p. 15) | Living on garbage is described with the language of refined craft |
| Symbolism | Bangles stand for an Indian woman’s suhaag, auspiciousness in marriage (NCERT, p. 18) | The sacred meaning of the product against the misery of its makers |
| Symbolism / contrast | The steel canister versus the plastic bag (NCERT, pp. 15–16) | Ownership decides freedom: the bag was his, the canister belongs to the tea-shop owner |
Two exercise items (NCERT, p. 20) are worth seeing solved. Item 8, “web of poverty”, is a metaphor: poverty borrows the quality of a web — entangling, inescapable — for the family’s condition.
Item 11, the steel canister versus the plastic bag, is a contrast built on ownership: the bag was his, the canister belongs to the man who owns the tea shop, so the heavier feeling is really lost freedom.
The answering method for any device question is the same: name the device, quote the line exactly, then explain the effect — what the comparison or exaggeration makes the reader feel or understand.
Six Key Quotes From Lost Spring and What They Reveal
- “Garbage to them is gold” (NCERT, p. 15) — hyperbole: for elders garbage is survival, for children it is wonder.
- “Saheb is no longer his own master!” (NCERT, p. 16) — the tea-stall job may feed him, but it robs him of freedom.
- “I will be a motor mechanic” (NCERT, p. 16) — Mukesh’s dream defies the karam his grandmother preaches.
- “Few airplanes fly over Firozabad” (NCERT, p. 19) — even the sky offers no escape in that world.
- “Together they have imposed the baggage on the child that he cannot put down” (NCERT, p. 19) — society and the system load exploitation onto children before they can resist.
- “Ek waqt ser bhar khana bhi nahin khaya” (NCERT, p. 18) — the old woman’s whole life has been hunger; she has never had one full meal.
Textbook Questions: What Your Answer Must Include
These are the evidence points for the chapter’s main exercises (Understanding the text and Talking about the text, NCERT p. 19). Frame each point into sentences; the points are what a complete answer must contain.
| Question | Points a complete answer must include |
|---|---|
| What are some reasons for migration from villages to cities? | Storms that swept away fields and homes (the Dhaka case); fields that gave no grain; the search for food — “we would rather live here than in the fields that gave us no grain” (NCERT, p. 15) |
| Would you agree that promises to poor children are rarely kept? | The narrator’s own hollow promise of a school; “promises like mine abound in every corner of his bleak world” (NCERT, p. 14) |
| What forces conspire to keep bangle workers poor? | Middlemen and sahukars; fear of the police, beating and jail; no leader or cooperative; caste and karam fatalism; no schooling (NCERT, pp. 17–19) |
| How can Mukesh realise his dream? | His own will — he will walk to the garage and learn; the text leaves the outcome open, so end with hope, not certainty (NCERT, p. 19) |
| Why should child labour be eliminated, and how? | The law exists but is not enforced — 20,000 children still work in the furnaces; elimination needs enforcement, schooling and public awareness (NCERT, p. 17) |
| Mention the hazards of working in the glass-bangle industry. | High furnace temperatures; dingy cells without air or light; loss of eyesight before adulthood (NCERT, p. 17) |
For the identification exercise (Thinking about language, NCERT p. 20), answer each item with the same three steps — name the device, quote the line, explain the effect. The device table above already works through the major items in that list.
Common Mistakes in Lost Spring Answers (and the Corrections)
| Mistake | Correct rule | How to check your answer |
|---|---|---|
| “Saheb’s tea-stall job improves his life” | It is a loss of freedom — the steel canister belongs to the owner, and “Saheb is no longer his own master!” (NCERT, p. 16) | Ask who owns the canister; the owner owns the labour too |
| “Lost Spring means a missed season” | Spring means childhood; the title refers to stolen childhoods, not weather | Replace “lost” with “stolen” and the title still works instantly |
| “Garbage to them is gold is only a metaphor” | The textbook classifies it as hyperbole — it exaggerates to make garbage sound as precious as gold (NCERT, p. 20) | The NCERT device list itself gives this line as the hyperbole example |
| “Saheb lives in Firozabad; Mukesh lives in Seemapuri” | Saheb is the Seemapuri (Delhi) ragpicker; Mukesh is the Firozabad (UP) bangle maker | Map the boy to the town before writing: Saheb = Delhi garbage, Mukesh = UP bangles |
| “Mukesh’s grandmother is hopeful about change” | She is fatalistic — she calls the trade karam, a god-given lineage that cannot be broken (NCERT, p. 17) | Find the word karam in her speech; it settles her mindset |
| “The text is a fictional short story” | It is reportage — an excerpt from Anees Jung’s non-fiction book that uses poetic prose on factual situations (NCERT, pp. 13, 20) | Recall the subtitle Stories of Stolen Childhood and the reportage style |
Exam Notes: How to Structure Long Answers on Lost Spring
Three answer recipes, applied to this chapter:
- Theme answer: state the theme in one line, support it with one piece of evidence from each half of the chapter (a Seemapuri detail plus a Firozabad detail), then tie it back to the title. For example: the theme of stolen childhood appears in both halves — Saheb loses his freedom to the tea stall while Mukesh is pressed toward the furnace — and both losses are what the title calls a lost spring.
- Character answer: name the trait, give the evidence line, then say what that character reveals about the system — never retell the story.
- Device answer: name the device, quote the line, explain the effect.
For the “forces that keep workers poor” question, use the chapter’s own two-worlds framework (NCERT, p. 19): one world is the family “caught in a web of poverty, burdened by the stigma of caste”; the other is the “vicious circle” of the sahukars, the middlemen, the policemen, the keepers of law, the bureaucrats and the politicians.
Showing both worlds proves that no single person is to blame — the whole structure is.
For the paradox writing task (Things to do, NCERT pp. 20–21), structure your 200–250 word paragraph in four moves: observe the contrast, describe the workers’ misery, contrast it with the beauty of the product, and close with the paradox that society accepts this. The task’s sample opening shows the same rhythm: it starts with the invisible poor, then moves to their labour.
Quick Revision Recap: Lost Spring in Ten Lines
- The chapter is an excerpt from Anees Jung’s Lost Spring: Stories of Stolen Childhood (NCERT, p. 13).
- Two boys, two towns, one lost childhood.
- Saheb is the ragpicker of Seemapuri, Delhi.
- Garbage is gold to him.
- The tea-stall job trades freedom for wages.
- Mukesh is the bangle maker of Firozabad, UP.
- Bangles are beautiful; the makers live in misery.
- Children lose their eyesight in the furnaces.
- Karam and middlemen keep the cycle going.
- Mukesh’s dream of being a motor mechanic is the chapter’s one flash of hope.
| Character | One-line detail |
|---|---|
| Saheb | Garbage as gold: wonder for him, survival for his elders (NCERT, p. 15) |
| Mukesh | Bangles as glass: beautiful product, blinding work (NCERT, p. 17) |
| The grandmother | Karam — the god-given lineage that must not be broken (NCERT, p. 17) |
| The narrator | The one who senses hope: “a flash of it in Mukesh” (NCERT, p. 19) |
Two memory hooks fix the whole chapter. Saheb is garbage-gold; Mukesh is bangle-glass. And the trap runs on “a spiral that moves from poverty to apathy to greed and to injustice” (NCERT, p. 19) — quote that spiral in any answer about why the cycle persists.
For the main theme, use the NCERT panel wording: the plight of street children forced into labour early in life and denied the opportunity of schooling (NCERT, p. 21).
This page is part of the wider Class 12 revision notes across subjects, all indexed in the CBSE notes library. When you finish this chapter, continue revision with our notes on the next chapter, Deep Water.
Frequently Asked Questions About Lost Spring
Why is the chapter called Lost Spring?
Spring stands for childhood, not a season. The title means a childhood that has been stolen — by poverty, forced labour and custom — which is exactly what happens to Saheb and Mukesh in the chapter.
Who is Saheb in Lost Spring and where does he come from?
Saheb is a ragpicker the narrator meets every morning in her Delhi neighbourhood. His family came from Dhaka, Bangladesh, after storms swept away their fields and homes, and they now live in the squatter settlement of Seemapuri (NCERT, pp. 13–15).
Who is Mukesh and what does he want to become?
Mukesh is a boy from a bangle-making family in Firozabad. He wants to become a motor mechanic and insists he will walk to a garage and learn the work, though he goes silent when asked about dreaming of flying a plane (NCERT, pp. 16, 19).
What is the main theme of Lost Spring?
As the NCERT theme panel states it, the chapter is about the plight of street children forced into labour early in life and denied the opportunity of schooling. Its sub-theme is the callousness of society and the political class to the sufferings of the poor (NCERT, p. 21).
Is Saheb happy working at the tea stall in Lost Spring?
No. His face loses its carefree look, and the steel canister he carries belongs to the tea-shop owner. The job feeds him, but it ends his freedom — the text marks this with “Saheb is no longer his own master!” (NCERT, p. 16).
What does garbage mean to the children and elders of Seemapuri?
For the elders, garbage is a means of survival — daily bread and a roof over their heads. For the children, it is wrapped in wonder: Saheb sometimes finds a rupee, even a ten-rupee note, and the hope of finding more keeps him scrounging (NCERT, p. 15).
Reference: NCERT Class 12 English (Flamingo) textbook, chapter Lost Spring.
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