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प्रश्न
What suggestions were made in answer to the third question?
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उत्तर
Different wise men provided varying answers to the third question, suggesting the importance of "science," "fighting," or "religious worship." The king's dissatisfaction with these responses led him to seek guidance from a hermit.
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संबंधित प्रश्न
'Ordeal in the Ocean' is the story of Slava Kurilov, a Russian, who faced a remarkable trial in the water. Slava Kurilov tells his own story. Read on .......
When the liner had finally vanished over the horizon, I was absolutely alone in the stormy night sea. First I thought I had to swim one way, then another. It was not even midnight yet, and I had no hope at all of finding my way in this terrible night time ocean. I began to feel afraid. Waves of fear rolled through me, starting from my hands and feet, attacking my heart and then reaching through my neck to my head. Waves broke over me and water went into my snorkel. I realised I would not be able to last even half an hour in such a condition.
I saw individual stars, but I could not distinguish the constellations they belonged to. Then dawn came and put out all my stars and I felt my solitude more keenly. The sky was grey at first, then blue-violet shades appeared. In a few minutes, the colours became brighter, with dark red strips cutting across the sky!
The rising sun came up over the ocean. I was surrounded by large waves. The clouds turned pink and swept across the sky in all directions. It was a windy day.
There was no land visible. I grew alarmed. Had I made a mistake in my calculations? Perhaps the current had carried me a long a way off the course during the night?
An hour passed, perhaps two. "Landlll" I could not deny myself the pleasure of shouting the magic word aloud and of hearing my own voice. Perhaps it was my ghostly island of Siargao? I almost felt I had succeeded - now at least I had hope.
The sun looked out for the last time, as if it was saying goodbye to me, and hid itself away again. In a few minutes the sky was filled with all the colours of a rainbow, the bright shades changing and merging as I watched. At first the clouds became deep red and then their edges turned bright orange. A little while afterwards, the clouds turned lilac and dark violet. Darkness fell swiftly. My second lonely night in the ocean began. The stars came out unnoticed. I changed course and headed for the south west. As it turned out, this was an unforgivable mistake.
Evening was approaching. The ocean around me was full of life; large fish often leapt out of the water and big birds flew right above my head. I could see the island distinctly now. A line of dancing palms stretched the length of its shore. The sides of the mountain were covered in many different shades of green.
An hour passed, perhaps more. It was extraordinarily quiet. Then suddenly to my horror, I discovered my island had noticeably begun to move north and was drifting further and further in that direction right before my eyes. Before I had worked out what was happening and could sharply change my course towards the north, the southern tip of the island had appeared in front of me and, beyond that, open ocean stretched to the very horizon. I was totally at the mercy of the current and realised to my alarm that it was slowly carrying me past the land.
My third night in the ocean crept up unnoticed. This third night in the ocean was very dark, much darker than the two previous ones. I almost decided to die as I had no hope of seeing another dawn. I was suddenly aware of a quiet voice: "Swim to the sound of the breakers."
Indeed, there had been a distant rumbling for some time, although I had paid no attention to it. Now, I started listening and I thought it sounded like the characteristic noise of jet aeroplanes constantly landing and taking off. The voice inside kept insisting that I should swim towards this thunder of waves.
At last I obeyed. Again I heard an approaching rumble. What I suddenly saw at a distance of about 30 or 40 metres has imprinted itself on my memory forever. It was a gigantic wave with steep, very slowly falling crests. Never in my life had I seen such an enormous wave - it even seemed to be touching the sky. It moved very slowly and was fantastically beautiful.
The wave did not break over me as I assumed it would. An irresistible force dragged me up its steep slope right to the very foot of the falling crest. Instinctively I clutched my mask snorkel and managed to take a deep breath. The crest started to break over me and pulled me under it. For a moment, I found myself in the air
under the crest as ifin a cave. Then my body was in a swirling current of water; the inner power of the wave made me recover several times, twisting me in all directions before it subsided.
I realised that I had to try to keep my body on the crest and I quickly took up a horizontal position. This time the wave quickly grabbed me and carried me at great speed for quite a long distance on its crest.
I got up to the surface easily and swam in the direction the waves were heading. "Somewhere there, beyond the reef, there should be a lagoon," I hoped.
Suddenly, I felt something hard under my feet. I could stand up to my chest in water! Around me I could see random currents of water, splashes of foam and phosphorescent spray, all swirling about. Before I fully came to my senses, another large wave approached and carried me some distance further. I was up to my waist in water when a new wave picked me up, taldng me several metres forward. Now the depth of the water was only up to my knees. I had enough time to take a few tentative steps, to catch my breath and look around.
I surfaced at the foot of very tall palm trees. I left a trail of luminous water and my body glittered like some princess's ball-gown. Only now did I feel completely safe. The ocean was behind me ....
Here's a glimpse of a naughty child whose life is full of fun and frolic .
One of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from ita secret troubles was that it bad found a new and weighty matter to interest itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom bad struggled with his pride a few days and tried to "whistle her down the wind," but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's house all night and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she should die! There was distraction in the thought. Tom Sawyer no longer took an interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat; there was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to try all manners of remedies on him. She was one of those people who are Infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in these things. When something fresh in this line came out, she was in a fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing, but on anybody else that came handy.
2. She tried every remedy she could. Yet, not with standing all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the boy with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-plaster&. She calculated his capacity as she would judge and filled him up every day with quack cure-alls.
3. Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith on Pain-killer. She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again; for the 'indifference' was broken up. The boy could not have shown a wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.
4. Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he thought over various plans for relief and finally hit upon that of professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he became a nuisance and his aunt ended up by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting-room floor with it.
5. One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along, purring, eyeing the teaspoon avariciously and begging for a taste. Tom said: "Peter, now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't blame anybody but your own self."
6. Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few double summersaults, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor hysterical with laughter.
"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?"
"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy.
7. The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized by anxiety. Too late he divined her 'drift'. The handle of the telltale teaspoon was visible under the sofa. Aunt Polly took it, held it up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the usual handle - his ear - and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.
"Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?"
"I done it out of pity for him - because he hadn't any aunt."
"Hadn't any aunt! -you numskull. What has that got to do with it?"
"Heaps. Because if he'd had one, she'd a burnt him out herself! She'd a roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a human!"
Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping through his gravity.
"I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter. It done him good, too. I never see him get around so-"
It was my business to cross the bridge, explore the bridge head 3 beyond and find out to what point the enemy had advanced. I did this and returned over the bridge. There were not so many carts now and very few people on foot, but the old man was still there.’’Where do you come from?” I asked him.
“From San Carlos,” he said, and smiled.
That was his native town and so it gave him pleasure to mention it and he smiled.
“I was taking care of animals,” he explained.
“Oh,” I said, not quite understanding.
“Yes,” he said, “I stayed, you see, taking care of animals. I was the last one to leave the town of San Carlos.”
He did not look like a shepherd nor a herdsman and I looked at his black dusty clothes and his gray dusty face and his steel rimmed spectacles and said, “What animals were they?”
“Various animals,” he said, and shook his head. “I had to leave them.”
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What is the narrator’s job?
“You haven’t brought home that sick brat!” Anger and astonishment were in the tones of Mrs. Joe Thompson; her face was in a flame.
“I think women’s hearts are sometimes very hard,” said Joe. Usually Joe Thompson got out of his wife’s way, or kept rigidly silent and non-combative when she fired up on any subject; it was with some surprise, therefore, that she now encountered a firmly-set countenance and a resolute pair of eyes.
“Women’s hearts are not half so hard as men’s!”
Joe saw, by a quick intuition, that his resolute bearing h«d impressed his wife and he answered quickly, and with real indignation, “Be that as it may, every woman at the funeral turned her eyes steadily from the sick child’s face, and when the cart went off with her dead mother, hurried away, and left her alone in that old hut, with the sun not an hour in the sky.”
“Where were John and Kate?” asked Mrs. Thompson.
“Farmer Jones tossed John into his wagon, and drove off. Katie went home with Mrs. Ellis; but nobody wanted the poor sick one. ‘Send her to the poorhouse,’ was the cry.”
“Why didn’t you let her go, then. What did you bring her here for?”
“She can’t walk to the poorhouse,” said Joe; “somebody’s arms must carry her, and mine are strong enough for that task.”
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What does Mr Thompson feel about the other women who had left Maggie alone and gone away?
Then there it lay in her wet palm, perfect, even pierced ready for use, with the sunset shuffled about inside it like gold—?dust. All her heart went up in flames of joy. After a bit she twisted it into the top of her skirt against her tummy so she would know if it burst through the poor cloth and fell. Then she picked up her fork and sickle and the heavy grass and set off home. Ai! Ai! What a day! Her barefeet smudged out the wriggle— ?mark of snakes in the dust; there was the thin singing of malaria mosquitoes among the trees now; and this track was much used at night by a morose old makna elephant—the Tuskless One; but Sibia was not thinking of any of them. The stars came out: she did not notice. On the way back she met her mother, out of breath, come to look for her, and scolding. “I did not see till I was home, that you were not there. I thought something must have happened to you.” And Sibia, bursting with her story, cried “Something did). I found a blue bead for my necklace, look!”
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What all did Sibia not notice as she went home?
Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass. “What’re you looking at ?” said William. Margot said nothing. “Speak when you’re spoken to.” He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself be moved only by him and nothing else. They edged away from her, they would not look at her. She felt them go away. And this was because she would play no games with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Why was Margot sad?
What, according to this speaker, is the only true religion in the world? What human qualities have I been highlighted through 'his' speech?
Write ‘True’ or ‘False’ against each of the following
(i) Soapy did not want to go to prison. ______
(ii) Soapy had been to prison several times. _____
(iii) It was not possible for Soapy to survive in the city through the winter. _____
(iv) Soapy hated to answer questions of a personal nature. ______
On which planet do Tilloo and his parents live?
(i) What makes Mridu conclude that the beggar has no money to buy chappals?
(ii) What does she suggest to show her concern?
Read the following sentence.
(a) If she knows we have a cat, Paati will leave the house.
(b) She won’t be so upset if she knows about the poor beggar with sores on his feet.
(c) If the chappals do fit, will you really not mind?
Notice that the sentence consists of two parts. The first part begins with ‘if’. It is known as if-clause. Rewrite each of the following pairs of sentences as a single sentence. Use ‘if’ at the beginning of the sentence.
Don’t tire yourself now. You won’t be able to work in the evening.
How have we learnt to control fire?
What surprised Mr. Purcell one day?
Who do you think or understand what the talking fan wished to convey?
Read the newspaper report to find the following facts about Columbia’s ill-fated voyage.
Number of astronauts on board: ____________
Multiple Choice Question:
The child in this poem seems to be ____________.
Look at the following phrases and their meanings. Use the phrase to fill in the blank in the sentence given below.
A fund has been _____________ for the soldiers’ families.
Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow:
| Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the presence in the room he said, "What writest thou?" |
- To whom did Ben Adhem address these words? Mention the context in which he said this. [2]
- What was the ‘presence’ doing in Ben Adhem’s room? What did the presence say in response to Ben Adhem’s question? [2]
- What did Abou ben Adhem say after this exchange? How did the presence respond to his words? [3]
- Describe the events of the following night. [3]
What aspect of shylock's nature is revealed in his words, "To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed any revenge"?
Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow:
| Portia: Away then! I am lock'd in one of them: If you do love me, you will find me out. Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof. Let music sound while he doth make his choice; Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, Fading in music: |
- Where does the scene take place?
What does Portia mean when she says, If you do love me, you will find me out? [3] - What TWO words would you use to describe Portia's feelings at this point? Give a reason for your answer. [3]
- Explain Portia’s reference to ‘swan-like end'. [3]
- Later in the scene, Portia gives Bassanio gift.
What does she give him? What does this gift symbolise? [3] - What is the theme of the song sung in the background when Bassanio makes his choice?
How is the theme reflected in the choice he makes?
What does Bassanio find in the casket that he chooses? [4]
