Chapter 2 Lost Spring Class 12: Official NCERT PDF and Guide

Chapter 2 Lost Spring Class 12 is an excerpt from Anees Jung’s book Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood, in the NCERT Class 12 English Flamingo textbook. It runs 10 printed pages and follows two boys — Saheb, a ragpicker on the edge of Delhi, and Mukesh, whose family makes bangles in Firozabad.

The official NCERT PDF of the chapter is right below.

Download the Chapter 2 Lost Spring Class 12 PDF

The chapter is published by NCERT as an official file on its own portal, and this is the same text that appears in the printed Flamingo book. Open the NCERT Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 2 Lost Spring PDF directly from ncert.nic.in, free of charge, to read the full excerpt with the book’s original layout.

Reference: NCERT Class 12 English Flamingo textbook, chapter 2, official edition on ncert.nic.in.

Chapter 2 Lost Spring Class 12 at a Glance

The chapter is a prose excerpt in two named parts, with in-text questions after each part, four exercise blocks, and the closing About the Unit pages. The table below lists the chapter’s contents.

What the Lost Spring Chapter Contains: Saheb and Mukesh

The chapter is an excerpt from Anees Jung’s book Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood, in which she analyses the grinding poverty and traditions that condemn children to a life of exploitation (NCERT, About the author). Two named parts give the chapter its shape.

Part 1, ‘Sometimes I find a Rupee in the garbage’, follows Saheb, a barefoot ragpicker in Seemapuri, a settlement on the periphery of Delhi. It shows what garbage means to a child, and it ends with Saheb taking a job that costs him his freedom (NCERT, ‘Sometimes I find a Rupee in the garbage’).

Part 2, “I want to drive a car”, follows Mukesh, whose family makes bangles in Firozabad, the centre of India’s glass-blowing industry. It shows a web of poverty, caste and exploitation that one boy refuses to accept (NCERT, ‘I want to drive a car’).

The two parts sit side by side to make one point: poverty takes childhood itself. The opening image, the book’s subtitle ‘Stories of Stolen Childhood’, names that idea before the text begins.

Key Ideas in Lost Spring

These are the ideas the chapter keeps returning to. Each section below says where the idea lives in the text, so you can find it quickly while reading.

Saheb’s World: a Name, a Tradition, and Garbage as Gold

Saheb’s part works through three contrasts. First, his name. Saheb-e-Alam means ‘lord of the universe’, but the boy is a barefoot ragpicker who does not know what his name means; the narrator says that if he knew, he would have a hard time believing it (NCERT, ‘Sometimes I find a Rupee in the garbage’).

Second, footwear. The author has seen children walking barefoot in cities and on village roads. One explanation is that it is a tradition to stay barefoot; she adds that she wonders whether this is only an excuse to explain away a perpetual state of poverty.

Third, garbage. In Seemapuri, where 10,000 ragpickers live without identity or permits, garbage is survival — ‘Garbage to them is gold’. For children it is different: wrapped in wonder, with the hope of finding a rupee or a ten-rupee note; for elders it is simply a means of survival.

The part closes with Saheb at a tea stall. Paid 800 rupees and all his meals, he has lost his carefree look — the narrator’s final line is that Saheb is no longer his own master.

Mukesh’s World: Furnaces, Karam, and a Dream of Cars

Mukesh’s part opens with a refusal: ‘I will be a motor mechanic.’ The narrator calls his dream a mirage in the dust of Firozabad, a town where every other family is engaged in making bangles (NCERT, ‘I want to drive a car’).

The glass furnaces are the heart of the danger. Children work in high temperatures, in dingy cells without air and light, and the law that makes this illegal is simply not enforced — the narrator notes that it could get all those 20,000 children out of the furnaces.

Their eyes adjust to the dark, which is why they often lose their eyesight before they become adults.

The family’s answer is fatalism. Mukesh’s grandmother, who watched her husband go blind polishing glass, says it is his karam, his destiny, and asks whether a god-given lineage can ever be broken.

Against this, the chapter sets the sanctity of the bangle: it symbolises an Indian woman’s suhaag, auspiciousness in marriage. The women who make it have not enjoyed even one full meal in a lifetime.

The narrator names the trap as two worlds: the family caught in a web of poverty and the stigma of caste, and the vicious circle of sahukars, middlemen, policemen, bureaucrats and politicians. Together these have imposed the baggage on the child that he cannot put down.

Mukesh is the one flash of daring — he will walk to the garage, which is a long way from home.

The Theme and Sub-theme the Book Prints

The closing About the Unit pages state what the book itself thinks the chapter is about. The theme is the plight of street children forced into labour early in life and denied the opportunity of schooling. The sub-theme is the callousness of society and the political class to the sufferings of the poor (NCERT, About the Unit).

Both boys are examples of the theme. Saheb is denied schooling — there is no school in his neighbourhood, and the narrator’s half-joking promise to build one was never meant to be kept. The children of Firozabad are forced into labour in furnaces that damage their eyes before adulthood.

The Opening Image: Stories of Stolen Childhood

The chapter’s one opening image carries the subtitle of Anees Jung’s book, and it appears before a word of the text because it states the subject of everything that follows.

The image displays the words ‘Stories of Stolen Childhood’, the subtitle of the book from which the chapter is taken. Read it against both parts: Saheb’s childhood is spent scrounging in garbage dumps when it should be spent in school, and the children of Firozabad spend theirs welding glass in the dark, often losing their eyesight before they become adults.

In both stories, childhood is taken before it can be lived — the image is the chapter’s argument in four words.

Literary Devices and Key Terms Defined in Lost Spring

Near the end of the chapter, the Thinking about language exercise defines three literary devices and asks you to spot them in sentences from the text (NCERT, Thinking about language). The definitions below are in our words; the examples are the book’s.

Hyperbole, Metaphor and Simile

Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration that makes something sound better or more exciting than it really is. A fresh example: ‘I have told you a hundred times.’ The book’s example from this chapter: ‘Garbage to them is gold.’

Metaphor compares two things that are not very similar by transferring a single quality of one onto the other, without ‘like’ or ‘as’. A fresh example: ‘Her voice was velvet.’ The book’s example: ‘The road was a ribbon of light.’

Simile compares one thing with another using ‘like’ or ‘as’. A fresh example: ‘He runs like the wind.’ The book’s example: ‘As white as snow.’

The Eleven Sentences: Which Device Is It?

The textbook poses the eleven items without printing answers to them. Applying the definitions above, the readings come out as follows.

Definitions of Words Used in Context

Some words carry their meanings in the sentence around them. The chapter glosses them in context, and the table collects what the text itself tells you (NCERT, Part 1 and Part 2).

Mistakes Students Make in Lost Spring — and the Correct Reading

These are the readings that most often go wrong, named before you make them. Each row gives the fix and a way to check your answer against the text.

How the Exercises Test Lost Spring: A Question Map

The chapter’s exercises build from recall to opinion to language work. The map below shows which block tests which skill, so you know what each question is really asking.

A complete answer quotes a short phrase from the text and then explains it in your own words; a bare restatement of the story misses the point. The About the Unit pages are the book’s own statement of what the chapter means, so the theme and sub-theme above give a discussed answer its frame.

Model Answer: Why Should Child Labour Be Eliminated and How?

The chapter gives the ‘why’ in its own details. The children of Firozabad work in high temperatures, in dingy cells without air and light, and often lose their eyesight before they become adults; Saheb is denied schooling because no school exists in his neighbourhood.

The ‘how’ is also in the text. Enforce the law that already forbids children working in the furnaces — the narrator says it could get all those 20,000 children out of the hot furnaces.

Build schools, which is all Saheb asks for. Break the vicious circle of the sahukars, the middlemen, the policemen, the bureaucrats and the politicians, so that poverty is not passed from father to son as karam.

Textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical. Check the current official CBSE syllabus to see what the board requires from this chapter in your session.

Lost Spring in One Page: The Two Stories and Their Ideas

A quick recap of the whole arc. Both boys begin in poverty; the difference is what each does with it.

Saheb’s arc runs from Dhaka to Seemapuri and from careless freedom to a tea-stall canister that belongs to someone else. Mukesh’s runs from a caste-fixed life of bangle-making to a dream of driving a car.

The thread that joins them is the one the opening image names: childhood stolen by poverty and custom. The contrast to memorise is simple — Saheb loses the freedom he once had; Mukesh refuses the fate he was given.

Related Class 12 English NCERT Pages

Lost Spring sits between two Flamingo chapters: The Last Lesson comes before it, and Deep Water follows it. The sister book Vistas opens with The Third Level, another story about escape and its costs.

For the wider set, use the Class 12 English hub, the Class 12 hub, or start at the CBSE notes home page. The chapter file and every other NCERT textbook live on NCERT’s official portal.

Reference: NCERT Class 12 English Flamingo textbook, chapter 2, official edition on ncert.nic.in.

Sources and Data Verification

This listing is maintained for the 2026-27 academic session using the NCERT textbook information available to us. NCERT remains the authority for confirming the latest edition.

Four plain statements about where this page’s facts come from.

• This page describes the NCERT Class 12 English Flamingo textbook, Chapter 2, ‘Lost Spring’, an excerpt from Anees Jung’s Lost Spring, Stories of Stolen Childhood.
• The chapter’s official PDF is NCERT’s own file, published on ncert.nic.in.
• The listing is maintained for the current academic session using NCERT’s published edition of the book.
• NCERT settles textbooks, editions and PDFs; CBSE settles the curriculum, syllabus and examinations.

Lost Spring Class 12: Frequently Asked Questions

The questions students ask most about this chapter, answered from the text itself.

What is the theme of Lost Spring?

The theme is the plight of street children forced into labour early in life and denied the opportunity of schooling. The sub-theme is the callousness of society and the political class to the sufferings of the poor — both stated on the chapter’s About the Unit pages.

Saheb and the children of Firozabad both live it: one scrounges garbage where a school should be, the other welds glass in dark furnaces until his eyes give out.

Why is the chapter called Lost Spring?

‘Spring’ stands for the promise of childhood — play, school, growth — and ‘lost’ because poverty and custom take that promise away. The opening image carries the book’s subtitle, Stories of Stolen Childhood, which says the same thing in four words.

Saheb’s childhood is spent scrounging for a rupee in garbage dumps; the children of Firozabad spend theirs at the furnaces, often losing their eyesight before they become adults. Neither childhood reaches the season it should.

Why is the name Saheb-e-Alam ironic?

Saheb-e-Alam means ‘lord of the universe’, and Saheb is a barefoot ragpicker who does not know what his name means. The narrator says that if he knew its meaning, he would have a hard time believing it. That gap between the name and the boy’s reality is the irony.

What happens to Saheb at the end of Lost Spring?

Saheb takes a job at a tea stall down the road, paid 800 rupees and all his meals. The narrator notices that his face has lost its carefree look, and that the steel canister he carries seems heavier than the plastic bag he used to carry — the bag was his, while the canister belongs to the tea-shop owner.

The narrator’s closing line is that Saheb is no longer his own master.

What are the hazards of working in the glass bangles industry of Firozabad?

Children work in high temperatures, in dingy cells without air and light, and the law that forbids it is not enforced. Their eyes become adjusted to the dark, so they often lose their eyesight before they become adults.

The damage is not only physical. Years of mind-numbing toil kill initiative and the ability to dream, and the workers are trapped in a vicious circle of sahukars, middlemen, police, bureaucrats and politicians.

How is Mukesh different from Saheb?

Mukesh insists on being his own master. He announces he will be a motor mechanic and is willing to walk to the garage, which is a long way from home — the narrator reads this as a flash of daring in a world where daring is not part of growing up.

Saheb, by contrast, drifts from rag-picking into the tea-stall job and ends up no longer his own master. One boy refuses the fate he was given; the other loses the freedom he once had.

Reference: NCERT Class 12 English Flamingo textbook, chapter 2, official edition on ncert.nic.in.