Glimpses of India Class 10 (First Flight) PDF and Chapter Guide

Glimpses of India is Chapter 5 of the NCERT Class 10 English First Flight textbook, printed on pages 63–79. It holds three prose pieces — ‘A Baker from Goa’ by Lucio Rodrigues, ‘Coorg’ by Lokesh Abrol and ‘Tea from Assam’ by Arup Kumar Datta — and ends with Adrienne Rich’s poem ‘The Trees’.

The official Glimpses of India Class 10 chapter PDF is linked right below, followed by a guide to what the unit contains.

Download the official Glimpses of India Class 10 chapter PDF

NCERT publishes this chapter of First Flight as a free PDF on its official website. The Glimpses of India Class 10 chapter PDF is the official NCERT edition of the chapter, so it carries the same page numbers, margin glosses and exercises as the printed book — open it for a clean copy to read on any device.

The same file holds the poem ‘The Trees’ and the unit activities too, so you do not need a second download to read the whole unit.

The chapter at a glance: three prose pieces and a poem

Before you read, it helps to know the shape of the unit. It opens with a class discussion (Activity, p. 63), then moves through three prose pieces and a poem, with comprehension checks, language exercises and writing tasks between them.

‘A Baker from Goa’ (pp. 64–67) is a memory piece about the village baker. ‘Coorg’ (pp. 68–71) is a travel description of the smallest district of Karnataka. ‘Tea from Assam’ (pp. 72–76) is a story set in a tea garden. The poem ‘The Trees’ (pp. 77–78) closes the unit.

The chapter table on this page shows how many sections, figures and questions the unit holds.

What this chapter covers: Goa, Coorg, Assam and the poem

Know what each part is before you start, and the reading becomes far easier. The table below sets the four texts side by side; short descriptions follow.

‘A Baker from Goa’: the baker who never left

Rodrigues remembers the Goan baker of his childhood, still known as the pader (p. 64). The Portuguese eaters of bread have gone, but the makers are still there, and the unit builds its warmth from this affectionate memory.

‘Coorg’: coffee country on rolling hills

Abrol describes Coorg, or Kodagu, the smallest district of Karnataka, famous for its evergreen rainforests, spices and coffee plantations. The people, the Kodavus, are known for valour, and the river Kaveri winds through the district past rafting and rappelling spots.

‘Tea from Assam’: a journey into the tea country

Pranjol, whose father manages a tea garden, invites his classmate Rajvir to Assam. On the way and at the garden, the chapter mixes a boy’s excitement with legends about the discovery of tea — see the tea-garden image in the figure walkthrough below.

‘The Trees’: nature breaking out

The poem shows trees pulling their roots out of a house and moving into a forest that was empty all these days. The exercise block that follows asks you to read it as a metaphor — for nature, and possibly for people, breaking free of confinement.

Activities built into the chapter

The unit is not only reading. Between and after the texts, the book asks for speaking, writing and project work:

• Class discussion (p. 63): what images come to mind for India; which regions show French and Portuguese influence; which states grow tea and coffee.
• Writing (p. 67): complete a table of clues about the author’s childhood days and write a paragraph; then compare the textbook passage with another piece on Goan paders.
• Group Discussion (p. 67): pick a craft-based profession that is dying out — pottery, batik work, dhurri weaving, embroidery, carpentry, bamboo weaving, jute products or handloom — and discuss why it declined and how to revive it.
• Collocations (p. 71): find which nouns naturally ‘keep company’ with given adjectives, and complete phrases from the text.
• Thinking about Language (pp. 74–75): phrasal verbs built from verb + particle, and -ing and -ed adjectives.
• Speaking and Writing (p. 76): a tea role play (planter, sales agent, consumer, physician, tea-shop owner) and an advertisement for tea.
• Homophones (p. 79): words spelled alike but with different meanings — refuse, dove, invalid.

The unit closes with two notes. ‘What We Have Done’ states the aim — a picture of three regions of India, showing how varied and charming the country is. ‘What You Can Do’ (p. 76) suggests arranging a classroom photo exhibition of different places in India.

Key ideas: tone, pen-portrait, travelogue, legend and metaphor

Five ideas carry most of the exercises in this unit. Each one is explained plainly below so you can recognise it while you read.

Tone and nostalgia in ‘A Baker from Goa’

Tone is the feeling a writer’s words carry. The tone exercise (p. 66) asks you to choose the emotion behind each quoted line, and your answer must come from the words of the line itself, not from a guess about the author’s moods.

Worked example — line (iii): ‘I still recall the typical fragrance of those loaves.’ (nostalgic, hopeful, naughty) Step 1: Read the line for its feeling. The writer is remembering a detail from his childhood. Step 2: Find the evidence. The phrase ‘still recall’ shows the memory has not faded, and ‘typical fragrance’ presents the smell as familiar and dear.

Step 3: Match the evidence to the options. A fond, long-kept memory is nostalgic — not hopeful, which looks forward, and not naughty, which plays a trick.

Apply the same method to the tiger line — ‘The tiger never brushed his teeth. Hot tea could wash and clean up everything so nicely, after all.’ The mock-serious excuse is a child’s playful logic, so it reads as naughty rather than angry.

Pen-portrait

A pen-portrait is a written sketch of a person drawn from memory and observation, not a formal biography. ‘A Baker from Goa’ builds the pader through small details — his bamboo staff, his knee-length dress, his monthly accounts — so the reader can picture him and his place in village life.

Travelogue: description, history and practical fact

‘Coorg’ is a travelogue, writing about a place the author knows.

Notice how it mixes three kinds of content: description (rolling hills, coffee estates, wildlife), history (the possible Greek and Arab descent of the Kodavus) and practical information in the ‘How to Reach’ box (pp. 70–71) — the nearest airports at Mangalore and Bangalore, the railheads at Mysore, Mangalore and Hassan, and two road routes from Bangalore.

Legend and history in ‘Tea from Assam’

Rajvir tells Pranjol two legends about the discovery of tea (pp. 72–73). In the Chinese story, a few leaves from twigs burning under the emperor’s pot fell into his boiled water and gave it a delicious flavour. In the Indian story, the ascetic Bodhidharma cut off his eyelids to stay awake in meditation, and ten tea plants grew from them.

Rajvir then adds historical detail: tea was first drunk in China as far back as 2700 B.C., and it reached Europe only in the sixteenth century. The difference between legend and fact is exactly what the chapter wants you to notice.

Metaphor in ‘The Trees’

‘The Trees’ works as a metaphor. The poem shows trees freeing their roots and moving into a forest that was empty until now, and the exercise itself (p. 78) suggests reading the trees as nature — and possibly as human beings — breaking out of confinement.

The house and the forest are not just a house and a forest: they stand for imprisonment and freedom.

Figure walkthrough: tea gardens, a photo exhibition and homophones

The unit carries three images worth reading rather than skipping. Each one is explained below.

This image sits inside ‘Tea from Assam’ (p. 73), at the moment Rajvir enters Dhekiabari Tea Estate. The caption quotes Rajvir’s own line, and the picture shows why the view was magnificent: bushes pruned to the same height stretch as far as the eye can see.

The pruning detail matters because it is part of what makes the second-flush crop even — which is why Rajvir’s question about the season impresses Pranjol’s father.

This second image belongs to the note ‘What You Can Do’ (p. 76). It shows the unit’s closing idea being carried out: students bring two or three photographs of places in India, write a short caption for each, and arrange them on the classroom walls. It is a prompt for the project, not part of the reading text itself.

The third image illustrates the homophones exercise (p. 79). The two words look identical but differ in meaning and pronunciation: invalid (not valid) and invalid (a sick person). The other pairs in the same exercise work the same way — refuse (to say no) and refuse (waste), and dove (a bird) and dove (dived).

Reading the sentences aloud is the quickest way to hear the difference.

Key words in the chapter, explained

The book glosses these words in the margins. This table puts them in one place with plain meanings and the page where each appears.

Common mistakes to avoid in this chapter

These five errors appear again and again in classwork on this unit. Know them before they cost you marks.

The quick mnemonic for the third row: the thing causes the feeling, the person feels it.

What the exercises test and how to use them

Use this map to revise purposefully. Each block of exercises builds one skill, and the page number tells you where it sits.

For the tone and metaphor questions, a full answer states the choice and supports it with evidence from the line or stanza; a one-word answer alone is rarely enough. Textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical, so check the current official syllabus to see which parts of this unit are assessable in your session.

Quick reread: Glimpses of India in a few lines

‘A Baker from Goa’: the Portuguese have gone, but the Goan pader still bakes the bread he has always baked — the bol, the bolinhas, the loaves for every feast — and the author’s childhood memory of his jingling bamboo staff has not faded. Bread, and the baker, still hold the village together.

‘Coorg’: the smallest district of Karnataka is a land of rolling hills, evergreen rainforests and coffee estates. Its people, the Kodavus, may be of Greek or Arab descent, are known for valour, and open their river to rafting, canoeing and rappelling for visitors.

‘Tea from Assam’: Rajvir and Pranjol travel to the Dhekiabari Tea Estate during the second-flush period (May to July), the season of the best tea. Along the way Rajvir shares the legends of the Chinese emperor and Bodhidharma, and the fact that tea reached Europe only in the sixteenth century.

‘The Trees’: all night the trees work their roots free from a house and move into a forest that was empty until now. By morning the forest is full — the central image of Adrienne Rich’s poem of nature, and possibly people, breaking free.

Related resources: First Flight and Class 10 English

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.

If you are working through the whole book, start from the First Flight Class 10 English book page to move chapter by chapter. For revision help across the subject, see the Class 10 study hub and the CBSE notes home page.

The next chapter after this unit is Mijbil the Otter. If you have read the book and want a condensed version of this same unit, open our Glimpses of India chapter notes.

Sources and data verification

This page describes the NCERT Class 10 English First Flight textbook, Chapter 5, ‘Glimpses of India’, in the official edition available on ncert.nic.in, covering printed pages 63–79 of that edition. It is maintained for the current academic session using the NCERT information available to us.

This page covers only Chapter 5 of that edition; it does not describe other editions or other English textbooks. Page references follow the numbering of the printed NCERT edition. NCERT settles textbook editions and their official PDFs, while CBSE settles the curriculum, syllabus and examinations.

We do not claim a formal expert review of this page beyond the source checks described above.

Reference: NCERT Class 10 English textbook, chapter 5 (Glimpses of India), official edition on ncert.nic.in.

Common questions about Glimpses of India Class 10

Is the poem ‘The Trees’ part of the chapter ‘Glimpses of India’ in First Flight?

Yes. ‘The Trees’ by Adrienne Rich is printed at the end of the same unit (pp. 77–78 of First Flight), right after ‘Tea from Assam’, and the unit gives it its own exercise block, ‘Thinking about the Poem’.

Who wrote the three parts of ‘Glimpses of India’?

‘A Baker from Goa’ is by Lucio Rodrigues, ‘Coorg’ by Lokesh Abrol, and ‘Tea from Assam’ by Arup Kumar Datta; the poem ‘The Trees’ is by Adrienne Rich.

What does ‘pader’ mean in ‘A Baker from Goa’?

A pader is a traditional Goan baker (p. 64). The chapter says bakers are still called pader in Goa, and that anyone wearing a half pant reaching just below the knees is teased as being ‘dressed like a pader’.

What are the legends about the discovery of tea in ‘Tea from Assam’?

Two legends appear (pp. 72–73): a Chinese emperor’s boiled water gained a delicious flavour when tea leaves from the fire fell into it, and the ascetic Bodhidharma grew ten tea plants from the eyelids he cut off to stay awake in meditation. Rajvir adds that tea was first drunk in China around 2700 B.C.

and reached Europe only in the sixteenth century.

How do -ing and -ed adjectives work in this chapter?

The -ing form describes the thing that causes the feeling, and the -ed form describes the person who feels it: a boring book causes boredom, so you are bored. Remember the mnemonic — the thing causes the feeling, the person feels it.

Where can I find the official NCERT Glimpses of India Class 10 PDF?

On the official NCERT website at ncert.nic.in — the Glimpses of India Class 10 chapter PDF is the same file the printed First Flight textbook is set from.