Summary of Journey to the End of the Earth & Lost Spring

Author: Tishani Doshi (from the book Vistas)

This chapter is a travelogue describing the author's educational journey to the coldest, driest, and windiest continent on Earth: Antarctica. She travels aboard a Russian research vessel with a group of high school students under the 'Students on Ice' program. The primary theme of the chapter is the severe impact of Global Warming and climate change.

The author explains that Antarctica is the perfect place to study the Earth's past, present, and future because it has never sustained a human population. By observing the rapidly melting glaciers and collapsing ice shelves, the students realize that the threat of global warming is very real and that human actions (burning fossil fuels, overpopulation) are destroying the fragile ecosystem. The chapter warns that if we don't act now, humanity will face severe consequences.

Author: Anees Jung (from the book Flamingo)

This heartbreaking chapter highlights the miserable lives of poor children in India who are forced into child labor, thereby losing the 'spring' (joy and freedom) of their childhood. The chapter is divided into two parts:

1. Saheb-e-Alam: The story of a young ragpicker from Seemapuri (Delhi) whose family migrated from Bangladesh. He spends his days searching through garbage dumps for coins. Later, he gets a job at a tea stall, but he loses his carefree freedom because he is now a servant to a master.
2. Mukesh: The story of a boy from Firozabad, a town famous for its dangerous glass-bangle industry. Children there work in dark, hot furnaces, often losing their eyesight before they become adults. Unlike his family who accepted this miserable fate, Mukesh dares to dream differently—he wants to break the cycle of poverty and become a motor mechanic.