People and Places

The unit opens with three famous Nepali writers and two famous places.

Picture	Who or what	Something to say
A young man with dark hair	Bhupi Sherchan (1937–1989), poet, born in Tukuche, Mustang	His collection Ghumne Mechmathi Andho Manchhe (A Blind Man on a Revolving Chair, 1969) won the Sajha Puraskar; his poems mock injustice in plain, sharp words.
An old man with a long white beard	Lekhnath Paudyal (1885–1966), poet, born near Pokhara	Given the title Kavi Shiromani (the crest-jewel of poets) in 1951; his Pinjadako Suga (A Parrot in a Cage) was read as a hidden protest against the Rana rulers.
An older woman with glasses and a shawl	Parijat (1937–1993), novelist and poet, real name Bishnu Kumari Waiba	Her novel Shirishko Phool (The Blue Mimosa) won the Madan Puraskar in 1965. She was paralyzed from the age of 26 and kept writing.
A small plane on a short, sloping runway among mountains	Tenzing–Hillary Airport, Lukla, Solukhumbu	At about 2,845 meters, with a runway of just 527 meters that slopes uphill, it is the gateway for treks to Everest, and often called the world’s most dangerous airport.
Pagodas and a stone temple in a brick square	Bhaktapur Durbar Square	The old royal square of Bhaktapur, one of the seven World Heritage monument zones of the Kathmandu Valley.

Before you read

What kind of text it is

The text is the opening chapter of an autobiography: a life story written by the person who lived it, in the first person (I, me). Jhamak Ghimire (born 1980, in Kachide, Dhankuta) wrote it in Nepali, and Michael Hutt, a British scholar of Nepali literature, translated it into English. It is not a plain list of events: she writes like a poet, talking to her mother, to Nature and to her grandmother, and asking questions no one could answer. Read it slowly: much of its meaning is in its images.

The chapter, part by part

1. Life, a beautiful flower

She begins with a thought she has reached now, as an adult: life is a beautiful flower of creation. But she does not know whether her own life fits that definition. She survived, she says, because even when her heart wept, laughter was restless (could not stay still) inside the pain. People will hardly believe how hard her life was; the truth is bitter and the reality insipid (tasteless, dull). Turning the pages of her memory, she has often cried. Her bad luck, she says, was inscribed (written) for her the moment she was born.

2. The sixth night

On the sixth day after her birth, her mother bathed her and put an exercise book and a pen under her pillow. It was a folk belief that on that night fortune (bhagya) writes a baby’s fate on its forehead. Speaking to her mother directly, Jhamak says her mother wished for a good line of fate to be drawn across her brow, but that was only a belief: that night, fortune did not write her a good fate.

3. A life robbed by fate

She felt like a girl robbed by fate, with none of the sweetness or joy of life. She had to live, so she did, but in a way she felt was no different from an animal’s, except that she ate rice. Her life had none of the invisible (unseen) feelings and sympathy of a human heart. A poet might write a beautiful poem about escaping such a life, but for her it was a burden that hurt and was hard to endure (bear).

4. The thorn in everyone’s eyes

People saw her as cursed by the gods, paying for sins she had committed in a former life, because her society believed that people are born again and again. So she was a thorn that pricked everyone’s eyes: when they looked at her, they felt no pity and no love, only displeasure and anger. She asks how that could be right towards an innocent child. She had to bear it in silence, though one question kept rising in her heart: How am I to blame for this? She had no way to ask it: no speech, no gestures, no strength. She had life and a little breath tangled (twisted) up with it, and life felt suffocating, as if she could not breathe, with no way out.

5. Nature, her mother

She turns to Nature and thanks it: Nature gave her life to endure people’s cruelty, but also woke her to the meaning of being herself, and wiped her tears like a mother. Her own mother, too, carried her for nine or ten months and gave birth to her; neither of them was at fault, she says: it was fate.

6. What is disability?

Now she asks a sharp question. Is disability only a matter of being born with a body that cannot do some things? If so, why does nobody call Homer, the ancient Greek poet said to have been blind, incomplete? Or Nikolai Ostrovsky, the Russian novelist who wrote How the Steel Was Tempered blind and paralyzed, or Helen Keller, the American writer who was deaf and blind? Their bodies were weak, like hers, but they wrote history, left the world a new perspective (way of seeing), and showed what it means to be human before they passed away (died).

7. Born in a different world

But she was born in a different world and a different geography from theirs (a poor village, with no help for children like her), so her life was so unequal and low that she felt only an animal could have lived it. When she became aware, it felt like a curse: she had no voice to speak, no strength in her legs to walk, and no strength in her hands to fill a basket with flowers (godavari, makhmali, sunakhari). Her mind was full of longing (strong wishes) to run on the hills and to talk with others; because those wishes could never come true, they fell back on her, wounded.

8. Grandmother

The chapter ends with love. She could not even get out of bed. Her white-haired grandmother, “like the moon over the hill”, must have carried her on her lap and wished that her son’s first offspring (child) would call her grandmother in a baby voice and pull at the wrinkles of her face. Jhamak could not do that; only her other grandchildren could.

The family was so poor that it was hard to find two meals a day, and her parents often went hungry so that the children could eat. Her grandmother went without food herself to feed Jhamak, slept beside her, and gave her something to eat every time she woke in the night: “how good it tasted!” She wrapped her in an old petticoat in a bamboo basket and kept her clean. Without her, Jhamak says, she might still be soiling (dirtying) her bed today, or might have died. Because of her grandmother she came to know the many colors of life. Her grandmother has died now (that is the old woman’s misfortune, she says, to have missed what Jhamak became), but she lives on in Jhamak’s heart and mind.

The writer’s devices:

• Apostrophe: she speaks directly to people and things who can’t answer: Mother, you wanted…, Blessed Nature!, Grandmother, I could not fulfil your wishes.
• Metaphor: life as a flower of creation; herself as a thorn that pricked everyone’s eyes; time that filled her pockets with packages of ill fortune.
• Simile: her grandmother, white-haired like the moon over the hill.
• Rhetorical questions: How am I to blame for all of this? Why do they not consider Homer incomplete? They make the reader think.
• Contrast: the beautiful flower of life against her bitter reality; the cruelty of people against the love of Nature and her grandmother.
• Allusion: Homer, Ostrovsky and Helen Keller, famous people whose bodies were weak but whose work changed the world.

Words from the text

Words linked here open in English Vocabulary, where you can see an example and practice them in the word game.

Word	Meaning here
restless	unable to stay still or calm
insipid	lacking taste; dull
inscribed	written (or cut) in words
endure	to bear pain or difficulty patiently
invisible	impossible to see
tangled	twisted together in a messy way
suffocating	making it hard to breathe
foster	to bring up and care for a child
perspective	a particular way of seeing something
passed away	died (a gentle way to say it)
bereft	without something you need or love
longing	a strong wish for something
offspring	a person’s child or children
soil (verb)	to make dirty
misfortune	bad luck

A. Find the words

B. Complete the sentences

C. True or false?

D. Answer the questions

E. Jhamak’s story in your own words

Some words are spelled the same but said differently, and the sound changes the meaning. They are called heteronyms. You can tell which one is meant only from the sentence.

Word	Meaning	Sound	Example
read	(verb, present) to look at and understand writing	/riːd/, like reed	I read the news every morning.
read	(verb, past) the past of read	/red/, like red	Yesterday I read her autobiography.
live	(verb) to be alive; to have your home	/lɪv/, like give	Rhinos live in Chitwan.
live	(adjective) alive; happening now	/laɪv/, like five	The match is shown live. A live wire is dangerous.
wind	(noun) moving air	/wɪnd/, like pinned	The wind blew the kites away.
wind	(verb) to turn or twist round something	/waɪnd/, like find	Wind the thread round the spool.
wound	(noun) an injury	/wuːnd/, like spooned	The wound on his leg healed.
wound	(verb) the past of wind	/waʊnd/, like found	The road wound up the hill.
tear	(verb) to rip	/teə(r)/, like bear	Don’t tear the page.
tear	(noun) a drop of water from the eye	/tɪə(r)/, like near	A tear ran down her face.
use	(verb) to make use of	/juːz/, ending in a /z/ sound	Can I use your pen?
use	(noun) a purpose; the act of using	/juːs/, ending in an /s/ sound	What is the use of this tool?

When you describe a person, go from the general to the details, in this order, which is also the order a listener can picture:

What	Words to use
age	a young man, a teenager, middle-aged, in her twenties, elderly
height and build	tall, short, of medium height; thin, slim, well-built, stout, plump
skin	fair, wheatish, dark-skinned
face	round, oval, long, square; a beard, a mustache, a scar, a dimple
eyes	big, small, brown, black
hair	long, short, shoulder-length; straight, curly, wavy; black, brown, gray; in a ponytail, a plait, bald
clothes	a half-sleeved gray shirt, faded blue trousers, a kurta suruwal, rubber slippers
manner	walks fast, limps, smiles a lot, speaks softly

A. A bag snatcher

The book’s model conversation: a woman tells a police inspector that someone snatched (grabbed and ran off with) her handbag. Asked to describe him, she gives a clear order: a young man, of medium height; she saw only the side of his face; he is rather dark-skinned, with short black hair; he had on a half-sleeved gray shirt and faded blue trousers; and when he slipped while running, she noticed yellow rubber slippers.

B. Describe someone you know

C. Describe your village or town

The book’s model: Sukumaya describes her village. She starts with a general sentence (a very beautiful place), then gives details one by one: a big lake near her house where the full moon is reflected in the calm water, snowcapped mountains to see, a forest full of animals (wild pigs, leopards, tigers, deer), and pleasant evenings.

A relative clause gives more information about a noun. It starts with a relative word: who, which, that, whose, whom, where, when. It comes straight after the noun it describes:

• the girl who plays the piano
• the book which / that she wrote
• the writer whose autobiography won the Madan Puraskar
• the village where she was born
• the year when the earthquake struck

Which relative word?

Word	For	Example
who	a person (subject of the clause)	the woman who cooked our dinner
whom	a person (object of the clause, or after a preposition)	the guide whom we hired; the friend with whom I traveled
which	a thing or an animal	the bus which goes to Pokhara
that	a person or a thing, only without commas	the bus that goes to Pokhara; the man that I met
whose	belonging to (his, her, its, their)	a writer whose books are read in schools
where	a place	the village where my grandmother was born
when	a time	the morning when we saw the rhino

When the relative word is the object of the clause, it can be left out: the book (that) she wrote; the guide (whom) we hired. When it is the subject, it can’t: the woman who cooked our dinner.

Two kinds: with and without commas

• A defining clause tells you which one is meant; without it, the sentence wouldn’t say who: The girl who won the singing competition is Reema. No commas. That is allowed.
• A non-defining clause adds an extra fact about someone or something already clear: Jhamak Ghimire, who was born in Dhankuta, writes with her foot. Commas round it; never that.

The commas can change the meaning: My brother who lives in Dharan is a teacher (I have more than one brother: the one in Dharan); My brother, who lives in Dharan, is a teacher (I have one brother, and by the way he lives in Dharan).

A. Find the relative clauses

B. Fill in the relative words

C. Join the sentences

How to write a biography

A biography is the story of someone’s life written by someone else (an autobiography, like Jhamak Ghimire’s, is written by the person herself).

1. Title: the person’s name.
2. Opening: who the person is and why they matter, with their birth date and place.
3. Early life and education.
4. Work and achievements, in time order, with the most important ones explained.
5. Honors and awards.
6. Ending: what they are remembered for (and, for someone who has died, when).

Use the third person (he, she), mostly the past tense, and linking words of time (in 1939, as a boy, later, in the early 1960s, after that). Turn notes into full sentences: never copy the notes as a list.

Before you read

What kind of text it is

The text is a travel guide’s fact list from a website about Brazil’s culture and travel: a short introduction, then five paragraphs labeled A to E, each giving one interesting fact. Exercise C asks you to give each paragraph a heading.

The text, part by part

Introduction

Sugarloaf Mountain, in Portuguese Pão de Açúcar, is a striking natural landmark that looks over the city of Rio de Janeiro in south-eastern Brazil, at the entrance to Guanabara Bay. It is named for its shape: a tall cone of bare rock with a rounded top, like the cones of hard refined sugar, called sugarloaves, in which sugar used to be sold. It rises 396 meters (1,299 feet).

A. Rock climbing

Sugarloaf is one of the largest and most popular urban (in a city) rock-climbing places in the world, with 270 different routes to the top, high above the Atlantic and the sprawling city (spread out over a large area). You can try it yourself, or watch other climbers conquer the famous mountain.

B. Its neighbors

It is not the only landmark there. Two neighboring hills add to the calm beauty of the peninsula (land almost surrounded by water): Morro da Babilônia (Babylon Hill) and Morro da Urca (Urca Hill). Both are open to the public and to climbers; Morro da Urca has a play area for children and a restaurant.

C. In the movies

Sugarloaf has appeared in Hollywood blockbusters (very successful films). Its first appearance was in Now, Voyager (1942), with Bette Davis. In the James Bond film Moonraker (1979), a scene takes place in its cable car, and it has even been mentioned in the cartoon series The Simpsons.

D. Guanabara Bay

The historic Guanabara Bay stretches in front of the mountain. Its name is often translated as “the bosom of the sea”. In the 16th century the colonial government (Portugal ruled Brazil until 1822) built several fortifications (forts and walls against attack) around it. The bay has more than 130 islands, and you can see them from high above as you tour the mountain.

E. The cable cars

Two cable cars carry visitors to the summit, from which the view over Rio is stunning. The cars have glass walls, so as they climb, the views open up below you. Because the mountain sits on a peninsula reaching into the Atlantic, it offers a rare mix: a bustling (busy and lively) city, a tranquil bay and a sparkling ocean. The writer says the journey up is as enjoyable as the summit.

Words from the text

Word	Meaning
landmark	a building or natural feature that is easy to see and recognize
spectacular	very impressive to look at
sprawling	spreading over a large area, often untidily
tranquil	calm, quiet and peaceful
blockbuster	a very successful film or book
fortification	a wall, fort or tower built to defend a place
peninsula	land almost surrounded by water, joined to a larger land at one end
bustling	full of busy, lively activity
iconic	very famous, a symbol of a place
accessible	easy to reach or enter
ascend	to go up
summit	the top of a mountain
debut	a first appearance in public

A. Match the words and meanings

B. Adjectives with -ing and -ed

Many adjectives are made from verbs with -ing or -ed, and the two mean different things:

• -ing describes the thing or person that causes the feeling: The film was boring. (It made me feel bored.)
• -ed describes how a person feels: I was bored.

So a boring teacher makes the class bored; a bored teacher feels bored. The text has more: sprawling city, bustling city, views unfolding.

Verb	-ing (causes the feeling)	-ed (feels it)
annoy	an annoying noise	I was annoyed.
interest	an interesting book	She is interested in poems.
surprise	a surprising result	We were surprised.
excite	an exciting trip	The students were excited.
terrify	a terrifying flight	He was terrified.
tire	a tiring walk	They were tired.

C. Match the paragraphs with their headings

D. Answer the questions

E. Your favorite fact

A. Before you listen

The textbook’s listening task is a short conversation: a boy has lost his friend in a crowd and asks Emma to help him find her. CDC’s own recording is below: read the sentences in B first, then listen, as many times as you need.

B. The textbook’s audio: answers

A preposition shows how a noun is related to something else: in time (at six), place (in Dharan), movement (to Pokhara), means (by bus), and in fixed pairs with verbs and adjectives (afraid of, pleased to).

Time

Preposition	Use	Examples
at	a clock time, a moment	at 9:15, at noon, at night, at the weekend (British)
on	a day, a date	on Friday, on November 2, on my birthday
in	a month, a year, a season, a part of the day	in 2002, in winter, in the morning
for	a length of time	for two years, for ages
since	from a point in time until now	since 2002, since Monday
after / before	later or earlier than	a few days after his accident

Place and movement

Preposition	Use	Examples
in	inside an area: a country, city, building	in Nepal, in Dharan, in a beautiful house
at	a point, a place where something happens	at the gate, at school, at Tribhuvan University
on	a surface, a line, water	on the wall, on the road, boating on Phewa Lake
to	movement towards	travel to Pokhara
from … to	start and end	from one end of the lake to the other
across	on the other side of; from one side to the other	across the street
as far as / up to	to a certain point and no further	walk as far as the edge of the desert
by	next to; also means of transport	a house by the river; by bus, by plane

Fixed pairs

• afraid of, interested in, pleased with (someone) / pleased to (meet), good at, proud of
• die of an illness or hunger (died of cancer), die from an injury or cause (died from a head injury); both are used, and exams usually expect of
• a girl with long hair, a man in a gray shirt
• by bus, by plane, but on foot, in a car, on a bus (inside it)

A. Choose the prepositions

B. A bus journey

How to write a letter or email to a friend

1. Letter: your address and the date at the top. Email: the To and Subject lines instead (a short, clear subject).
2. Greeting: Dear Emily, (or Hi Emily, in an email).
3. Opening: a friendly line about your friend or their last letter.
4. Body: the place, in two or three paragraphs: where it is, what is special, what to do there, the best time to visit and how to get there.
5. Invitation: ask your friend to come, and offer to help.
6. Closing: Write back soon. Then Love, With best wishes, Your friend, and your name.

Transition words (also called linking words) join ideas in an essay or paragraph and show the reader how they are related: adding, contrasting, giving a reason, an example, a result, a sequence. Choose the one that says the relationship you mean.

To…	Transition words
add information	and, also, too, besides, furthermore, moreover, in addition, what’s more, equally important, nor (after a negative), then, next, first, second, finally, lastly
contrast (show a difference)	but, yet, however, whereas, while, although, nevertheless, on the other hand, on the contrary, in contrast, conversely, by comparison, compared to
show similarity	similarly, likewise, in the same way, equally, by the same token, in like manner
give a reason or support an argument	because, since, for, as, for this reason, indeed, in fact, obviously, evidently
show an exception	except, apart from, yet, still, however, nevertheless, in spite of, despite
show time	immediately, soon, then, later, after a few hours, previously, formerly, meanwhile, finally
repeat an idea	in brief, as mentioned earlier, as I noted before, in other words
clarify	that is (i.e.), namely, specifically, more precisely, in other words
emphasize	indeed, in fact, certainly, definitely, obviously, undeniably, without a doubt, above all
show sequence	first, second, third, next, then, after that, afterwards, following this, subsequently, finally
give an example	for example (e.g.), for instance, such as, in this case, to illustrate, take the case of
show a result	so, therefore, thus, hence, consequently, as a result, accordingly
summarize or conclude	to sum up, in brief, on the whole, in conclusion, to conclude, all in all

SEE-style practice on this unit. Try each one as in the exam, then open the answer.