Précis Writing (II Sem Additional English)

Précis Writing

A Précis means a brief summary of a given passage. Business executives, politicians and VIPs who have little time to spare to go through long reports depend upon their secretaries to make a précis of such things.

Some guidelines for writing a précis:

1.     Read the passage rapidly to find out

a.     What the passage is about

b.     What its tone is

c.     What type of writing it is

2.     Find a title for the passage.

The title should be brief. Every word in the title, except prepositions and conjunctions, should begin with a Capital Letter.

3.   Read the passage again slowly and try to understand the main idea. The irrelevant ideas should be omitted.

4.     Cut out repetitions, examples, quotations, metaphors, similes etc.

5.     The précis should be written in the third person.

6.     Don’t add your comments or criticism.

7.     Make a rough sketch of your précis.

8.     Revise and rewrite the passage.

9.     Check up the length of your précis.

Exercise – 1

1.     Make a précis of the following passage:

A fuel is a material that is burned in order to get heat and light and also to generate power. The process of burning or combustion is a chemical reaction. A material combines with oxygen from the air and gives off energy. The energy is released in the form of heat and light. Fuels can be classified as solid, liquid or gaseous or they can be classified according to their origin, ⎯ natural, chemical or metal based.

Wood was one of the first fuels used by man and was his most important one for many centuries. It was the easiest to get and the cheapest. But during the sixteenth century, the wood started to become scarce in Europe, and coal began to replace it.

Coal itself is made of the remains of the ancient trees and plants that grew in swampy jungles in warm, moist climates hundreds of millions of years ago. These trees and plants fell into the swamp waters, Bacteria changed some parts of the wood into gases that escaped, leaving behind a black mixture, mostly carbon. In the course time the pressure from mud and sand above squeezed out most of the liquid, leaving behind a pasty mass that slowly hardened into coal.

Peat is the youngest of all coals. The vegetation from which it came was buried a shorter time than that of other coals. It has the least value of all solid fuels. Lignite, also called brown coal, is a little older than peat and has more heating value. Bituminous coal has the highest heating value of all solid fuels. Anthracite is the hardest of all coals and the oldest in nature.

Title: Coal – A Fuel

Main points:

1.     A Fuel is a material that is burned to get heat, light and to generate power.

2.     Fuels can be classified as solid, liquid or gaseous.

3.     Fuels can be classified according to their origin natural, chemical or metal based.

4.     Wood was one of the first fuels, it was easy to get and cheap.

5.     Coal is made of the remains of trees that grew in swampy jungles hundreds of millions of years ago.

Précis:

Coal – A Fuel

A fuel is a material that is burned to get heat, light and to generate power. Fuels can be classified as solid, liquid or gaseous. Fuels can be classified according to their origin, natural, chemical or metal based. Wood was one of the first fuels, it was easy to get and it was cheap coal is made of the remains of the trees that grew in swampy jungles hundreds of millions of years ago.

Exercise – 2

2.     Make a précis of the following passage:

Very few persons have the misfortune of reading their own obituary in a newspaper. It happened with Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. In 1888, when Alfred’s brother died, a French newspaper, under the mistaken belief that Alfred had died, published an obituary. In this obituary, the newspaper described him as a man who had made it possible to kill more people more quickly than anyone else who had ever lived. Alfred Nobel was horrified by what he read. 

It was not entirely correct that the invention of dynamite had brought only death and destruction. In fact, it had served humanity in a far larger way by its age in the construction industry.

Alfred Nobel realized, at that moment, that this was not how he wanted to be remembered. Soon after, he established the Nobel Trust with an endowment annually to those who had done outstanding worked in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and in espousing peace.

A hundred years later the Nobel Prize remains the most prestigious award in the world. A sixth prize, for economics, was recently instituted.

Title: Alfred Nobel’s Misfortune

Main Points:

1.     Alfred Nobel’s obituary appeared in Newspaper instead of his brother’s.

2.     Alfred Nobel felt it unfortunate.

3.     He was described as the man who killed many people.

4.     The invention of dynamite not only brought destruction but also saved humanity.

5.     Nobel established Nobel Trust with a million dollars.

6.     He declared five prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace and economics.

Précis

Alfred Nobel’s Misfortune

Sir Alfred Nobel had the misfortune of reading his own obituary in a newspaper, which was published by mistake when his brother died. He was described as a destroyer of human beings. Nobel was shocked and established Nobel trust with a noble mission. He believed that dynamite was invented to serve humanity. Initially, five prizes were given to physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace.

Exercise – 3

3.     Make a précis of the following passage.

Do you ever worry about memory? Perhaps you go into a room and forget what you came for, go blanks on names, mislay things? Or there may be something on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t get it off. Don’t worry you are perfectly normal. It is the nature of the mind to forget and the nature of the man to worry about forgetfulness.

Human beings have a prodigious memory. In a few cubic centimeters the train stores more information that can be stored in a large computer. Today neurologists, psychologists, biologists are studying the different aspects of memory.

There are two types of memory. Short-term memory lasts only seconds. Long-term memory is stored probably for life.  

Title: Memory

Main points:

1.     Forgetfulness is quite natural for human beings.

2.     We have an excellent memory.

3.     The brain can store a lot of information.

4.     There are two types of memory: short-term and long-term.

Précis

Memory

Forgetfulness is quite natural for human beings. In fact, human beings have an excellent memory. A brain can store a lot of information in a little space. There are two types of memory. They are a short-term memory and long-term memory.

Exercise – 4

5.     Make a précis of following passage:

Sleep is as important to a healthy lifestyle as eating properly and exercising. On an average, a healthy adult requires just over eight hours of sleep at night. Yet, polls show that increasing numbers of people are suffering from sleep disorders or significant sleep loss (6½ hours or less of sleep a night). A study shows that 29% of Indians went to sleep only after midnight and 61% slept for seven hours or less.

Sleep is crucial for maintaining your health. Without it, you increase your susceptibility to a wide range of health problems, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity and depression. Not sleeping enough can affect the immune system. The immune system works best when you are asleep. That is when natural killer cells help in protecting the body against viruses, bacteria and even cancer. The killer cells do not work properly when there is sleep deprivation

Title: Important of sleep

Main points:

1.     Sleep is very important for health.

2.     Statistics indicate sleep disorders of some people in India

3.     Sleeplessness causes health problems, which include heart disease, diabetes, obesity and depression.

4.     It affects the immune system.

5.     Killer cells do not work properly when there is sleep deprivation.

Précis:

Importance of Sleep

Sleep is very important for good health. Everyone must sleep for required hours. Sleeplessness causes many health problems, which include heart stroke, diabetes, obesity, and depression. It also affects the human immune system. Sleep deprivation leads to non-functioning of killer cells.

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don’t call me indo-anglian – syed amanuddin (Summary)

don’t call me indo-anglian – syed amanuddin 

Syed Amanuddin was born and brought up in Mysore, South India, and later he migrated to America. This is the reason that his poetry unifies the Indian clarity and American modernity. Syed Amanuddin is a poet with a blend of Indian essence and American flavor in his writings. His works capture the essence of the human experience like joy, happiness, love, pain, suffering and death. He has a very distinguished style of writing, which resembles to E. E. Cummings style of writing. Both of them introduced the Avant-grade style in writing poetry, which experiments the conventional rules of syntax and punctuation. His poem ‘don’t call me indo-anglian’ is the best example, which unfolds the liberty to use his syntactic structures. His usage of negative words like ‘hotchpotch’, ‘confusion’, ‘nullity’ and ‘abortive’ unveil his disgust as he was put in the category of Indo-Anglian men of letters.

Syed Amanuddin denounces being addressed as an Indo-Anglian. In a staccato speech pattern, he designates the word ‘Indo-Anglian’ as a ‘hotchpotch of culture’, which suggests lack of belongingness to either of cultures. It seems he feels himself illegitimate when somebody assigns him as Indo-Anglian and it ‘aborts’ his identity as an individual. The complete absence of punctuation in the entire poem shows strongly the urgency to vent out his aggression and frustration or of the repression of anger that he has been undergoing for a long time.

Syed Amanuddin, in his poem ‘don’t call me indo-anglian’ vehemently rejected his identity as an Indo-Anglian. He hated ‘hyphens’ that play as bridges between artificial values in the name of race, religion and languages. He denounced all pseudo labels and label makers. He declared that his writings are not be a ‘moon rock specimen’ to be analyzed, labeled and stored for another curious gloomy fellow to reanalyze and reclassify and put them back into the shelves of the book racks again.

He said that they called him Indo-Anglian that he did not understand what it exactly mean. Though he was migrated to America he nostalgically recalled his hometown Mysore and its important landmarks like Cauvery river, Chamundi hills, Deity Chamundi who slain the demon and haunting music of Brindavan fountains. But he did not want to confine himself to his childhood scenes. He had flown across the universe on the wings of his thought in search of the truth by knowing languages and their creeds and kindled the candles of wisdom in the dark caves of prejudice.

Even then they called him Indo-Anglian by the mistaken misfortuned folk classify him with a small group of writers, which made him cloistered and crippled. Though he was able to roam with Kalidasa and Kabir. He could go on a spiritual journey with Dante and meditate with Khayyam on the mathematics of existence. He could sing the songs with anguish of love with Galib or even he could drown with Li Po kissing the moon’s reflection in the river.

In fact, he was not Anglo but he could write in English surely in the language of Shakespeare and Keats. But his name was categorized as Indo-Anglian, which was just confined to a few men of letters. He did not digest this type of segregation.

The poem begins with utter dissatisfaction and disappointment.  The most remarkable thing in this poem that marks the poet’s style is his audacity to challenge the linguistic norms. It seems like he exploits them in a rage against their non-acceptability. It is he does not belong to them then their rules do not belong to him.  Amanuddin presented in his poem ‘don’t call me indo-anglian’ a clear picture of what he feels about his hybridized identity. The sense of loss of belongingness haunts his identity, which finds no satisfaction but ends in victorious chant when Amanuddin finds his identity as “POET”. His diasporic identity vanishes with this declaration which makes him universal and every where, when he says:

i am a POET

i have lived forty centuries under various names

i am now amanuddin

Thus Amanuddin revolt against the conservative ideas of the literary world.

                                                             

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The Heritage of India – A. L. Basham (Summary)

The Heritage of India – A. L. Basham

According to A. L. Basham’s essay “The Heritage of India” deals with innate cultural traditions of Ancient India, which remain unchanged though India had gone through many phases of historical and cultural bouts. In the Medieval times, India suffered from many social evils like sati, child marriages and the most inhuman practice of untouchablity, which were not known to Ancient India. All such evil practices in India were posing a substantial threat to its progress. Raja Ram Mohan Roy was initially sounded the theme of social reform against such social evils. He fought against ignorant and religious fanatics of that time to eradicate the inhuman practice of sati. Swami Vivekananda continued the tradition of social reform on various issues, which was initiated by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and declared that the highest form of service to Great Mother India was social service. Later on, there were many other great Indians served the nation, who believed in social service. Among those Mahatma Gandhi was the greatest of all who developed the theme of social service as a religious duty and his theme of social service was being followed by many of his successors.  

Both Indians and Europeans wrongly judged that Gandhi was the epitome of Hindu tradition. But he was greatly influenced by the Western ideas and strongly believed in the fundamentals of ancient Indian culture. He had great sympathy for underdog and his antipathy to caste though not unprecedented in ancient India.  Gandhi was greatly influenced from European 19^th century liberalism than to anything in India to uphold the issue of untouchability in terms of its eradication. He might have inspired his faith in non-violence and pacifism from ‘Sermon on the Mount’ and Tolstoy.  His championing of women’s rights is also the result of Western influence. Gandhi was always an innovator rather than a conservative.  With this background of perception Gandhi and his followers of the Indian National Congress had given new orientation and a new life to Hindu Culture, after many centuries of its stagnation.

Today, India is a composition of people who do not look back with pride on their ancient culture as well as people who are not willing to sacrifice some of its effete elements so that India may develop and progress, economically and politically. But people of India will be deeply rooted in the tradition and aware of the continuity of their culture.

It was only seven years after independence the extremes of national self-denigration and fanatical cultural chauvinism were gradually disappearing. Although the Indian culture came into the contact of many other cultures of the world somehow it was changed and influenced. Now it is well on the way to assimilating the culture of the West. Hindu civilization will remain intact and retain its continuity. Even in the modern times the Bhagawad Gita will never cease to inspire men of action and the Upanishads men of thought. The labour-saving devices of the West may not affect the Indian way life and that will continue forever.  People in India will still love the tales of the heroes of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and the love stories of Dushyanta and Shakuntala and Pururava and Urvasi. The quite and gentle happiness pervades all-times in Indian life where oppression, disease and poverty have overclouded.

The extravagant and barbarous hecatombs of the Vedic age have been forgotten long ago however some animal sacrifices are still continuing in some sects. Widows have long ceased to be burnt on their husband’s pyres.  Girls may not be married in their childhood. Now a days Brahmans rub their shoulders with the lowest castes while travelling in buses and trains without consciousness of grave pollution. Temples are open to all by law. Disappearance of caste is slowly begun long ago. In fact the whole face of India is altering but the cultural tradition continues and it will never be lost.

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Laugh and be Merry – John Masefield

Laugh and be Merry – John Masefield (Summary)

The poem “Laugh and be Merry” by John Masefield examines the theme of living ‘Life’ to the full. In this poem he urges us to be cheerful and be merry and live the ‘Life’ to the fullest. The primary idea of the creation of entire universe is for happiness of man. The poet reminds us that life is not a bed of roses. There may be challenges and sufferings and the moments of sorrow or unhappiness in the life of each person but they are all passing things. The joy that we derive from the universe and from the Nature of the Earth is everlasting. Men will not do well to have recourse to Nature, which is an embodiment of God’s beauty and grandeur. So, the poet advises us to laugh and be merry.

The poet says:

Laugh and be merry: remember, in olden time,

God made heaven and earth for joy He took in a rhyme,

Made them, and filled them full with the strong red wine of His mirth;

The splendid joy of the stars, the joy of the earth.

Life is brief and it is not to be wasted away in sorrow and despair. He advocates us to get pleasure from our lives in this world, since the universe itself is a manifestation of the joy of God. Each moment of our life should be cherished and rejoiced. The celestial bodies like moon and stars are created for the happiness of man. So we should be enlivened by God’s purposeful creation. The poet compares the world with an inn where all human beings are temporary guests. We should enjoy life till it comes to an end and the lilt of music of life ends. So man should make use of his short and brief stay on Earth by laughing away his troubles and sorrows. The entire universe is created with the sweet pattern of music and filled them with intoxicating red wine that is His extreme joy and delight. He must draw happiness and inspiration from everything around him. The joy of life is very basis of our brotherhood and mutual love. Man must live happily with fellow men like brothers residing in an inn. He must play game of life cheerfully and pass through the journey of joy till he reaches his ultimate goal or destination. Similarly, we should enjoy our life to the last breath; and the song finishes. Life is compared to a game also. While playing we must enjoy the game without fretting about victory or defeat. Let us play the game of life cheerfully till to the end.

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The Accompanist - Anitha Desai (Summary)

The Accompanist - Anitha Desai

Anitha Desai is one of the literary luminaries of the contemporary Indian fiction writing in English and being honoured with Padma Shri for her literary forte. She is prolific post-colonial writer who is like Virginia Woolf deals with the psychology of souls and goes down-reaching into the hearts of her characters to expose their inner affection and dig out the concealed questions that spring at the core of their hearts. Her short stories are known for their witty, suggestive, tender and perceptive, and perfect in revealing  her skill and style.

Anitha Desai’s “The Accompanist” is an extract of her collection of short stories “Games At Twilight” published in 1978 portrays the emotional state of a tanpura artist who proves as a true disciple and accompanist to his master Ustad Rahim Khan.

The short story “The Accompanist” deals with the lives of the Accompanist and Ustad Rahim Khan who feel happy to pursue the path of virtue and commitment. The Accompanist (Bhaiyya) and Ustad Rahim Khan are two major characters around whom the whole story revolves. The Accompanist is a  truly devoted follower of his master. He is a tanpura player to his master Ustad Rahim Khan, a noted classical musician. The Accompanist is now thirty years of age who had come to his master just as a boy of fifteen years. As a boy, The Accompanist gets a lot of elementary knowledge of music as well as training from his own father, who himself was a musical instrument maker. The Accompanist (Bhaiyya) remains a life-long tanpura accompanist to his master. He admires his master very profoundly with unbounded love for his master and does not see any blemish in him (master) as a true and obedient pupil strictly in the traditional sense of the teacher-taught relationship. 

The Accompanist recollects his childhood memories when his trust was shaken out due to the provoking of his childhood friends, Ajit and Bhola. 

They said “Bhai, go back to the sitar. You even know how to play the sarod and the veena. You could be great Ustad yourself, with some practice. We are telling you this for your own good. When you become famous and go to America, you will thank us for this advice why do you spend your life sitting at the back of the stage and playing that idiotic tanpura while someone else takes all the fame and all the money from you?”

On hearing this provocation he cried continuously. Everything appeared to be unpleasant and evil and then he recollected the past incidents of his life when he was a vagrant or a vagabond who was without hope, with out aim and without destination and was passing a meaningless life. He goes back to his childhood days and reminiscences how other things were of importance to him. 

The Accompanist was brought up under humble surroundings where his family carried the tradition of making musical instruments. His father, Mishraji, as a maker of musical instruments, expected him to play a wide range of instruments to keep the family tradition to continue. Music was worshipped in his family. The central hall of his house was famous for the musical instruments made by both his father and his grand father. But The accompanist felt that it was not his desire to carry his family tradition to be continued further. Initially, the accompanist himself had strong likeness for music and also started learning all ragas and raginis from his father while he was at the age of four. His father sternly tested his knowledge in music with rapid persistent questioning in his unmusical grating voice and frequently grabbed his ears pulled them during his teaching. He felt the need to escape from such harsh and intense musical classes.  Frequently, he bunked off his musical classes to play gulli-danda, kho, and marbles with mischievous boys of his mohalla. When, he had grown up into a teenage boy he engulfed in the bustling life-style of the city by moving around in the bazar and watching as many as six cinema shows for a week. Nargis and Meena Kumari were the queens of heaven for him.  In order to fulfil his desires he never hesitated to steal money from his father’s pockets or from his mother’s savings. Not only cinemas but also he was fond of sweets. His mouth watered for halwa or jelebi made by his mother. He considered that his mother was wonderful cook. He used to steal his brother’s and sister’s share of sweets for which he was beaten and cursed by the whole family. Stealing the shares of his brother and sister proved him unkindly, irresponsible, unsociable and naughty boy. 

When the accompanist first met Ustad, as he was boy of fifteen at his father’s instructions to deliver him a newly ordered tanpura. On seeing him, who came with a tanpura in his both hands, Ustad asked him that he could play tanpura for the concert in the place of his regular old accompanist. From that moment the accompanist changed himself completely. The love for music and Ustad Rahim Khan changed everything in his life and he gave up all his childhood pranks and pleasures. All his attractions regarding playing with mischievous boys of mohalla and cinemas disappeared from his life. Music had taken their place and it had become the goal of his life. Ustad Rahim Khan’s company brought several changes in his life and gave birth to him as Bhaiya, the tanpura player.  Thus he devoted his whole life to Ustad and became his true friend and accompanist to his master. 

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