Lost Spring by Anees Jung
Quick answer: Lost Spring by Anees Jung, CBSE Class 12 Flamingo chapter 2: Saheb the ragpicker of Seemapuri, Mukesh and the bangle makers of Firozabad, themes, characters and exam answers.
A boy scrounges through garbage on the edge of Delhi every morning, and when the writer asks why, he says he is looking for gold.
Anees Jung's two-part chapter, from her book on stolen childhoods, is the second prose piece in Class 12 Flamingo.
The chapter in brief
Saheb-e-Alam, whose name means lord of the universe, is a ragpicker in Seemapuri, a settlement of squatters whose families left Dhaka after storms swept away their fields. Ragpicking is their livelihood and, for the children, a game with chances of finding a coin. Saheb dreams of school. Later he takes a job at a tea stall for 800 rupees and meals; the steel canister he carries seems heavier than his plastic bag, because it is not his own.
In Firozabad, the bangle-making town, Mukesh says he will be a motor mechanic. Around him, families have made bangles for generations in dark hutments beside hot furnaces; children lose their eyesight before adulthood. Savita solders bangles without knowing they mark a bride's suhaag. The people are trapped in a circle of sahukars, middlemen, policemen, bureaucrats and politicians, and dare not organise. Mukesh's garage is far away, but he says he will walk.
The people in it
Two boys, two towns.
Themes and meaning
Exam readings include child labour, poverty as inheritance, the failure of promised schooling, and the two grinding worlds of caste and exploitation. The sharper point is the contrast between the boys' endings: Saheb loses his freedom to a job, while Mukesh keeps his dream by refusing the family trade. Jung asks which is the greater loss.
The craft: two portraits, one argument
Jung reports rather than pleads, and each section ends on one object: the canister that is not Saheb's, the garage Mukesh will walk to. The turn in each half is a quoted hope set against a fact. Writers can steal the paired portrait and the discipline of ending on a thing, not a moral.
For the exam
Quick material for the Class 12 exam.
What writers can take from this
- Structure answers around the two boys and the two towns; name Seemapuri and Firozabad.
- Explain the canister contrast in one sentence; it is the most examined image.
- List the five links in Firozabad's chain of exploitation exactly as the chapter gives them.
- Writers, end a section on an object instead of a judgement; Jung's canister carries the argument.
- Set a quoted hope beside a hard fact and let the gap do the work.
Try it yourself
Write a two-part story about two children in different towns who both want an ordinary thing, and give each part a single object that says whether they will get it. Do not comment on the injustice; place the facts and the hopes side by side.
Questions
What is the theme of Lost Spring?
The theft of childhood by poverty and child labour. Through Saheb the ragpicker and Mukesh the bangle maker's son, Anees Jung shows how promised schooling fails, how caste and debt pass from generation to generation, and how one boy's small dream survives.
Why does Anees Jung call Seemapuri a place on the periphery of Delhi yet miles away from it?
It lies at the city's edge but shares none of its comforts: mud houses with tin roofs, no sewage or running water, and families who survive by ragpicking while holding ration cards that let them vote.
What is Mukesh's dream in Lost Spring?
He wants to be a motor mechanic and learn to drive a car, rejecting the bangle trade his family has followed for generations. The garage is far from his home, but he says he will walk there.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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