Chapter 3 — Nurturing Nature

The unit contains three main texts: a dialogue called "Neem Baba" (adapted from S. I. Farooqi) in which Amber speaks with a personified neem tree; a poem "What a Bird Thought" by an anonymous poet; and a letter called "Spices that Heal Us" written by a grandmother to her grandchildren about healing kitchen spices. There are also listening transcripts about Peepal Baba and a parrot named Paro.

Amber learns that the neem tree originated millions of years ago somewhere in North India or Myanmar, has Sanskrit names such as Arishta (meaning 'the one who cures diseases'), Nimba, and Nimbaca, and received the name 'Neem' from Iranians. She also learns about the tree's medicinal uses (leaves, bark, flowers, fruits, and roots all yield medicines), its agricultural uses (seed powder repels locusts, stops mosquito breeding, protects stored grain, guards crops against termites), and everyday uses such as neem oil in soaps and toothpaste and neem wood furniture that resists termites.

According to Neem Baba, scientists call the neem tree 'bitter grace of God', 'nature's gift to man', and 'cleanliness-parting tree'. Others call it 'magic tree' and 'the tree of the twentieth century'.

Neem seed powder mixed in water and sprayed on plants stops locusts from eating them. Used in rice fields where water stands still, it stops mosquito breeding and helps increase crop yield. It also protects crops from termites that eat roots and from other insects that damage crops.

The scientific name in Latin is Azadirachta indica. The unit explains that when people from Persia came to India and saw the tree common in their own country growing freely there, they started calling it Azad Darakhte Hindi, which became the basis for this Latin name.

The anonymous poem is about a baby bird's expanding view of the world. In the first stanza it lives in an eggshell and thinks the world is small, round, and pale blue. In the second stanza it lives in a straw nest with its mother. In the third stanza it flutters out of the nest and discovers the world is made of leaves, realising it had been blind before. In the fourth stanza it flies beyond the tree as an adult and admits it no longer knows how the world is made — and neither do its neighbours.

Daadi describes turmeric (haldi) as improving energy, digestion, and reducing body pain. Fenugreek (methi) seeds soaked overnight help control sugar levels and body weight. Cumin (jeera) soaked in water improves digestion and helps cure sleeplessness. Asafoetida (heeng) relieves gas and can help control cough and cold. Cinnamon (dalchini) and clove (laung) give relief from toothache. Ginger (adrak) relieves cough, cold, and pain, and has been used in cooking for more than 4000 years. Black pepper (kali mirch) aids digestion and relieves body pain. Fennel seeds (saunf) and carom seeds (ajwain) aid digestion after meals. Cardamom (elaichi) helps with digestion, respiratory troubles, and bad breath.

According to the listening transcript in the unit, Peepal Baba is a man who plants trees along with his team and started a movement to plant and save trees. He was born to an army officer's family in Chandigarh and got the idea to plant trees when he was 11 years old, from his English teacher in a school in Pune. As his family moved to new cities he continued planting peepal and neem trees. People initially mocked him by calling him Peepal Baba, but he continued his work and the name became one of affection.

The unit identifies this figure of speech as personification — treating a non-human thing (the neem tree) as though it can speak and think like a person. The unit gives additional examples such as 'The leaves whispered in the wind' and 'The flowers danced merrily in the breeze'.

The unit covers compound words (open, closed, and hyphenated), irregular past tense verbs (such as become/became, find/found, make/made, tell/told), and modal verbs (may, should, can, must, need to, used to) and their functions such as ability, advice, compulsion, necessity, past habit, and suggestion.

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