Compare the piece from the text (on the left below) with the other piece on Goan bakers (on the right). What makes the two texts so different? Are the facts the same? Do both writers give you a picture of the baker?

Our elders are often heard reminiscing nostalgically about those good old Portuguese days, the Portuguese and their famous loaves of bread. Those eaters of loaves might have vanished but the makers are still there. We still have amongst us the mixers, the moulders and those who bake the loaves. Those age-old, time-tested furnaces still exist. The fire in the furnaces had not yet been extinguished. The thud and the jingle of the traditional baker’s bamboo, heralding his arrival in the morning, can still be heard in some places. May be the father is not alive but the son still carries on the family profession.

After Goa’s liberation, people used to say nostalgically that the Portuguese bread vanished with the paders. But the paders have managed to survive because they have perfected the art of door-todoor delivery service. The paders pick up the knowledge of breadmaking from traditions in the family. The leavened, oven-baked bread is a gift of the Portuguese to India. [Adapted from Nandakumar Kamat’s ‘The Unsung Lives of Goan Paders’]

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow.
Then we did not even care to brush our teeth or wash our mouths properly. And why should we? Who would take the trouble of plucking the mango-leaf for the toothbrush? And why was it necessary at all? The tiger never brushed his teeth.

1. Who does ‘We’ here stand for?
2. Why didn’t they care much about brushing and cleaning teeth and mouths?
3. Find the word in the passage that means ‘to pick out or remove’.

Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow:
Marriage gifts are meaningless without the sweet bread known as the bol, just as a party or a feast loses its charm without bread. Not enough can be said to show how important a baker can be for a village.

1. What was the role of bread in the life of the Goans?
2. Why is a baker important to the people of the village?
3. Find the word in the passage that means opposite to ‘significant’.

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:
The baker and his family never starved. He, his family and his servants always looked happy and prosperous. Their plump physique was an open testimony to this.

1. What does the phrase: “The baker and his family never starved” mean?
2. What proves the baker’s prosperity?
3. Find out a word in the passage that is opposite to ‘thin or slender’.

How do the Goan people react to their colonial past?

Is bread-making still popular in Goa? How do you know?

Why would the baker come everyday? What announced his arrival?

What would the baker do after his musical entry?

How did he treat the kids who surrounded him?

How did the children get along with the baker?

Or

Why would the children run to meet the baker as soon as he arrived?

How do you know the kids were excited about the bread?