Challenge #1 Directions: Use the map to answer the questions below

Transcription

1 Challenge #1 Directions: Use the map to answer the questions below 1. From what direction do the monsoons come? 2. The color of the monsoon arrow gets lighter as the monsoon heads north. What do you think this indicates? 1

2 DIRECTIONS: For each source, make an inference about how rainfall and the monsoons (seasonal winds) have affected Indian history, civilization, and culture Traditional Poem: The sky has been torn open, The grindstone and oven are ruined, Our portion of poverty has come. The river became flooded, The crop is destroyed, The cattle died from hunger. My sister-in-law s corn is submerged, My sister-in-law s rice and My father-in-law s mustard are damaged. Millets, lentils and corn are ruined. And how is your peace my husband? I do not have any happiness. Inferences: from Chasing the Monsoon: A Modern Pilgrimage Through India, by Alexander Frater Hindus believe the purest way of invoking rain is by song. The ancient rain-making chants, sung by masters, could even move the gods especially Indra who, riding a white elephant with four tusks, is charged with dispensing or withholding the rains. I met with T.V.A. Seshan, a man who now acts as temple consultant to Hindu communities in North America and Australia to ask him about the rain-making songs. You are interested in rain and you probably wish to know if a devout, temple-going congregation is more likely to invoke heavy showers than a lazy, shiftless one. The answer is yes. Take Kerala, for example, where the people are extremely devout and, as a consequence, very, very good at rain. They achieve it through patient chanting and the lighting of cloud-seeding fires; you will see them in villages all over the place. At Kanniyakumari they can even do chants that reverse floods! By contrast the citizens of Madras town, who are not so devout, haven t seen a drop for five years. I asked him to describe his own experience. He paused. I sang Raining Nectar, a famous rain chant I began beneath a perfectly clear blue sky. After a while clouds appeared from nowhere and gathered above our heads. I was astonished, of course, but managed to sing on. Then, moments later, it happened. You made rain? I made a full-blooded thunderstorm I must admit I walked around for the next few days feeling very proud of myself Inferences: ****Your challenge is to create a rain chant. We will share these at the end of class and the funniest, most creative will win. 2

3 Challenge #2 As the summer heats up and it seems to get hotter and hotter every day we all wait eagerly for the monsoons, scanning the newspapers to see if the monsoons will arrive on time. They have just hit southwest India and are now slowly moving northwards. Once the rains come to Mumbai the newspapers carry information on how much rain has fallen and if the water reservoirs that store water for the city are close to becoming full. Scientists attempt to predict what the monsoon will be like and what effect it will have on the country. The monsoon rains are very important to both farmers (for their crops) and to city people for drinking water. In countries like India, which has a monsoon, these cycles are deeply important in our culture and economy (economy is the word that describes the way people make and spend money). In fact, the economy can be said to rely on the monsoon because our farmers and their crops depend on the monsoon and India is a country whose economy depends on farms and crops. In fact, two-thirds of people in our country earn a living from farming. 60% of the people who earn a living from farming need the monsoon rains to grow their crops and so if there is no monsoon, many, many people will not be able to grow crops and make money. It s mostly June and July that need good steady rains since that is the when most farmers plant their crops. A late monsoon will affect the planting of crops, such as rice and cotton. If it rains for a little while at the beginning of the monsoon then ends quickly, most of these plants will die. However, if there are large gaps between heavy rains then some plants weaken and drown or start rotting when it rains heavily again. Another crop that illustrates the importance of the rains is sugarcane, the plant that sugar comes from. In a year with bad monsoons, India can go from selling sugar to other places to make money, to buying it from other countries and, as such, lose money. For sugarcane, a late monsoon can be devastating even if the total quantity of rain is enough. A bad monsoon especially hurts those who live in the countryside. During a bad monsoon, farmers know they will make less money, so they spend less money. They buy fewer things and pay less money to the people who work their fields. As such, when the farmers spend less money, other people get paid less money and, as such, many, many people become poorer all because of the monsoon! So a bad monsoon can have a very large effect on the entire economy. 3

4 **** Your challenge at the end of this section is to complete the questions below. When you have answered the questions, you need to create a picture and slogan that states whether your group thinks monsoons are a friend or foe. Need to have a two sentence description at the bottom with text evidence to support you side. Comprehension Questions: 1. How can monsoons affect the sugarcane crop? 2. How can monsoons affect more people than just the farmers of India? 3. Why are monsoons important to the people of India? Inference Questions: 1. What would life be like for people in India if there was no monsoon at all? 2. How would people s lives change in India if there was a bad monsoon? 3. The author said that the monsoon is very important to the culture of India, or the way people in India live their lives every day. Why do you think the monsoons might be important to the culture of India? 4. Forrest Gump Video (In order to answer this question, click the link below) How do you think the kind of rainfall Forrest describes would affect countries and people in the region? 4

5 Ancient India Challenge #3 1) What continent is India a part of? 2) Which bodies of water surround India? a) b) c) 3) In ancient Egypt, what important place did people settle near? Why did they settle there? 4) What were most of all the earliest settlements in ancient India located near? Why do you think people settled in these areas? 5) What were the three rivers that people settled near most? a) b) c) 6) Besides being a river and a source of freshwater, why else do you think people settled along the Saraswati River in ancient times? (Hint: Pay attention to where the river is located, what it is located near and between, and where the river flows). 7) Ancient India was surrounded on three sides by water, and to the north, there are the Himalayan Mountains (the tallest and longest mountain chain in the world). What effects, positive and negative, do you think this had on civilization in ancient India? 5

6 6

7 7

8 8

9 9

10 10

11 ****Watch the second video on my website, your challenge for this section is to design a city layout like Harappa/Mohenjo-daro, design a house that could be used in their city, and design a seal that can be used to trade. 11