Class 6 English Chapter 9: Spices that Heal Us

A letter, and who it is for

This chapter is a letter. It is written by a grandmother, called Daadi, and it is addressed to two grandchildren named Vikram and Vaibhavi. Everything in it was meant for those two and nobody else. They had sent her a message to say they were better. She is pleased that cures she had shared earlier helped them, and she writes back with more. Good news first, and then the rest of what she knows.

Where she learnt it

Daadi did not read any of this in a book. She learnt it as a child from her own grandmother, which makes this knowledge at least three generations old. Nothing here was ever written down until now.

What her grandmother could do

Her grandmother found remedies for most common weather-related illnesses without leaving the kitchen. Coughs and colds arrive with the seasons, and so did her answers to them. The shelf was her medicine cupboard.

The request

Daadi asks the children to remember these cures and to share them with their friends. She is not simply informing them. She is handing something on. That request is what makes the letter a chain.

Turmeric

She begins with haldi, which English calls turmeric. She says it improves energy and digestion, and that it helps reduce body pain as well. Three uses from the first jar she opens.

Fenugreek

Next comes methi, or fenugreek. She soaks the seeds overnight and drinks the water in the morning, and says it helps her control her sugar level and her weight. Notice that she describes her own routine, not a rule.

Cumin

Jeera seeds are soaked overnight in the same way. Daadi says they can improve digestion and also help with sleeplessness. The same overnight soaking, for a different pair of troubles.

Asafoetida

Heeng comes with a memory attached. When the children were babies with gas in their tummies, she used to put heeng water on them for relief. It is the warmest sentence in the whole letter.

Cinnamon and clove

Dalchini and laung are named together, for toothache. Notice the careful wording: they give relief until a dentist can be consulted, not instead of one. One small word keeps the dentist in the picture.

Ginger

Adrak is for cough and cold, and for pain. Daadi adds that it has been used in cooking for over four thousand years and still is. Very few remedies have that kind of record behind them.

Black pepper

Kali mirch helps digestion and gives relief from body pain. It is the second spice in the letter named for both of those. Turmeric was the first, which makes them worth comparing.

After a meal

Saunf and ajwain, fennel and carom seeds, are often served at the end of a meal. Daadi explains that this is because they help food digest. An everyday habit, with a reason underneath it.

Cardamom

Elaichi closes the list. It is named for digestion, for breathing troubles, and for curing bad breath. Three uses again, closing the list as it opened.

What keeps repeating

Read the list again and digestion appears five separate times. Body pain appears three. These are everyday complaints, not rare ones. These remedies grew up around what troubles people most.

The rule at the end

Her last instruction is the important one. Go into the kitchen and identify these spices, she says, and you must consult an elder first. Identify first, and ask before anything else.

Why that line matters

A letter that lists cure after cure reads like permission. Daadi ends it with the one sentence that turns a list of remedies back into something to ask about. Neem Baba did exactly the same, one chapter earlier.

Scenario:

Vaibhavi does what Daadi asked and tells her friends about the cures. She lists the spices and what each one helps with, and she is careful to get them right. A week later a friend tells her she has been taking a spice every day for a stomach ache that has not gone away. Vaibhavi is alarmed and cannot say why at first. Then she rereads the letter and finds that she passed on everything in it except the last line.

Analysis:

The list travelled perfectly. The instruction attached to it did not.

Activity:

Write out the cures you would pass on, and put Daadi's rule at the top rather than the bottom.

Title:

Your own kitchen shelf

Safety:

Look and ask only. Do not taste, mix or use any spice as a remedy, which is exactly what Daadi's last line tells you.

What You Notice:

Most of your list will already be starred, because Daadi chose the spices every Indian kitchen keeps. The interesting column is the third one, where your elder will often give a use nobody wrote down anywhere. That unwritten answer is the chain in the letter still working.

The letter mentions that ginger has been in the cooking pot for over four thousand years, and is still used constantly in Indian food.

A spice can come from almost any part of a plant: a seed, a fruit, a root, a bark or a flower bud.

Fennel and carom seeds are often served after a meal, which is a habit built on exactly what Daadi explains.

How the knowledge travels — Grandmother - Daadi - the children - their friends — Four steps, and the letter is the third one. Daadi asks the children to make the fourth.

The commonest use in the letter — When in doubt, digestion — Cumin, black pepper, fennel, carom and cardamom are all named for it. No other use appears so often.

Small words, large changes

Look at two sentences from the letter. You should try to remember these cures. You must consult an elder first. Only one word is different between them. Only one word is different, and the force of the whole sentence changed with it. One is a recommendation. The other leaves no room at all.

Helping verbs

Words like should and must are helping verbs. They never carry the action themselves. They sit in front of the verb that does. The main verb keeps all the meaning and none of the force.

Their proper name

Helping verbs of this kind are called modal verbs, or modals. There are not many of them, and each one has its own job. Learning the jobs is quicker than learning a rule.

The six in this letter

Daadi uses may, should, can, must, need to and used to. Five of them appear in a single page, doing five different things. That is a lot of work for six short words.

May, for a suggestion

You may share them with your friends. She is not instructing them. She is opening a door and leaving it for the children to walk through. They may share the cures, and they may not.

Should, for advice

You should try to remember these cures. This is stronger than a suggestion. It is what she thinks is best for them. Advice, and still something they could set aside.

Can, for ability

It can help control cough and cold. Nobody is being told to do anything here. The sentence is about what the spice is able to do. Ability, and no instruction anywhere in it.

Must, for compulsion

You must consult an elder first. There is no room in this one at all, which is exactly why she chose it for that sentence. It is the only compulsion in her whole letter.

Need to, for necessity

I need to soak the seeds overnight. The soaking is not optional, because the remedy does not work without it. Necessity comes from the thing itself, not from the speaker.

Used to, for a past habit

I used to put heeng water there. Something done regularly, and finished. There is no matching form for a habit you still have. That is why it stands slightly apart from the rest.

The pair to separate

Should and must are the two that get confused. Advice you are free to ignore. Compulsion you are not. Daadi means precisely what each one says. Swap them and the last line of her letter loses its weight.

One rule that never bends

After a modal the main verb stays plain. Must consult, not must consults. Can help, not can helps. No -s ever survives a modal. The modal itself never takes one either.

Now the other job

The chapter also asks you to describe a spice, and it gives you a table with four columns to fill in. Each column answers a different question.

The four questions

Which part of the plant is it? What colour is it? What is its texture? What does it taste of? Three you can answer by looking and touching, and one you must ask about.

Where the answers come from

A spice may be a root, a bark, a leaf, a flower bud, a fruit or a seed. Textures are rough, soft or silky. Tastes are bitter, sweet, sour, salty or spicy. The table gives you the words, so you only choose.

Why all four

Answer one column and you have described half the shelf. Answer all four and somebody could pick your jar out of a row of them without being told. That is the test of a description worth writing.

Scenario:

A teacher writes one sentence on the board with a gap in it. The gap comes before the words ask an elder before you use it. She asks four pupils to fill it. Meera puts in may. Sohan puts in should. Farida puts in must. Ravi puts in can. The teacher says all four sentences are correct English. She then asks which one a person could ignore without doing anything wrong, and which one Daadi actually chose at the end of her letter. The class works out that the four sentences do not mean the same thing at all.

Analysis:

The verb never moved and the sentence never changed length. Only the force changed, four times over.

Activity:

Write one instruction of your own four times, once with each of those modals, and read all four aloud to a partner.

Title:

Four columns, one jar

Safety:

Look and touch, and take your taste answers from your elder rather than by eating anything. Nothing here is a remedy.

What You Notice:

The row somebody guesses fastest will be the one where all four columns are filled. When a row is guessed wrongly, look at which column you left thin. It is almost always texture, because it is the only one you cannot answer by looking at the jar.

Modal verbs never take an -s, even after he or she. Nobody writes she musts, though everybody writes she wants.

Used to belongs only to the past. There is no matching form for something you do now, which is why it stands slightly apart from the others.

Should against must — Should you may ignore. Must you may not. — Advice and compulsion. Daadi says you should remember the cures, and that you must consult an elder.

Describing a spice — PART - COLOUR - TEXTURE - TASTE — Four questions in a fixed order. Answer all four and nobody could confuse your spice with another.

Becoming a spice

The first task asks you to choose a spice and introduce yourself to the class as that spice. You speak as it, in the first person. Not about the spice, but as the spice.

Six points

Your name. Which part of the plant you are. Your colour. Your texture. Your taste. And your benefits. Six points, and they are given to you in order.

Five and one

The first five describe you. The sixth says what you do for people, and that is the one the class will still remember afterwards. Colour goes within the hour. Use does not.

The headband

You also make a paper band with your spice drawn on a small card and fixed to it. The class can then see who you are while you talk. A drawing does in a second what a sentence would need.

Why that helps

A listener who already knows you are cardamom can spend the whole minute on what you say. Nobody has to work out your name first. Every second of your minute goes on what you say.

The listening task

Next you listen to a short passage about tulsi and fill in a fact sheet as you go. The gaps are single facts, not whole ideas. One word missed is one answer lost.

Catching one fact at a time

This is a different kind of listening. You are not following a story. You are waiting for one exact piece of information and then waiting again. Reading the gaps first tells your ear what to wait for.

What the fact sheet holds

Tulsi belongs to the basil family and was first found in north central India. It is called the Queen of Herbs and now grows almost everywhere in the country. A title like that is a record of usefulness.

More of it

The sheet records what it is said to help with, and what it is used to make. It also gives two ways of taking it. The leaves may be washed and eaten raw, or added to tea.

Then a paragraph

Now comes the interesting part. You have to turn that fact sheet into a paragraph about tulsi. The facts are all there, and none of the joins are.

Notes are not prose

A fact sheet is a list with all the joins taken out. Writing a paragraph means putting the joins back, and deciding which facts belong beside which. A list with full stops added is still a list.

How to group them

Where it comes from goes together. What it is said to help with goes together. What it is made into goes together. That is three sentences before you have written anything. Grouping does most of the work for you.

The other writing job

There is also a remedy to complete, where rain had washed some words off the page. Ginger is grated, its juice taken, honey added and the mixture warmed. Five steps, and every one of them in a fixed place.

Order and amounts

Both matter here. Two teaspoons is not roughly two teaspoons, and warming the mixture after mixing is not the same as warming it before. An instruction has to be repeatable by a stranger.

The line at the end

The remedy itself says to have patience, because natural cures may take time to show results. That honesty is part of writing instructions properly. Promising a quick result would be easier and worse.

And a riddle

Last, you write one. A riddle describes without naming, moves from puzzling towards obvious, and saves its question for the final line. The name is the one thing it must never give away.

Scenario:

Two pupils introduce themselves to the class as spices. Anita says she is dalchini, that she is brown, and that she comes from a tree. She sits down after about twenty seconds. Zoya says she is laung, or clove in English. She says she is the dried flower bud of a tree. She describes herself as dark brown and hard, with a sharp warm taste that numbs the tongue. She then says her class may have met her when somebody had toothache. Their teacher says only one of them finished the task, and asks the class to work out which points are missing from the other.

Analysis:

Anita gave three of the six points. Zoya gave all six, and put the benefit last, where the class was still listening.

Activity:

Give your own spice talk to a partner and ask them to hold up a finger for each of the six points they heard.

Title:

Write a riddle nobody can guess too soon

What You Notice:

A riddle guessed on the first line has its clues in the wrong order, and a riddle nobody guesses at all has no obvious clue in it anywhere. The pleasure sits between those two. Moving one line is usually enough to find it, which is why the second reader matters so much.

Tulsi is called the Queen of Herbs, and the fact sheet puts its first home in north central India before spreading across the country.

Because tulsi has anti-bacterial properties, it is used as a base in herbal hand sanitisers, mouthwashes and toothpastes.

The six speaking points — NAME - PART - COLOUR - TEXTURE - TASTE - BENEFIT — Five describe you and one says what you do. The last is the one the class will remember.

Notes into a paragraph — Group, then join — Put facts that belong together side by side first. Only then look for the joining words.