English

The Question in this Section is Based on What is Stated Or Implied in the Passage Given Below. for the Question, Choose the Option that Most Accurately and Completely Answers the Question.

Advertisements
Advertisements

Question

The question in this section is based on what is stated or implied in the passage given below. For the question, choose the option that most accurately and completely answers the question. 

The words invention and Innovation are closely linked, but they are not interchangeable. The inventor is a genius who uses his intellect, imagination, time and resources to create something that does not exist. But this invention may or may not be of utility to the masses. It is the enterprising innovator who uses various resources, skills and time to make the invention available for use. The innovator might use the invention as it is, modifies it or even blend two or more inventions to make one marketable product. A great example is that of the iPhone which is a combination of various inventions. If an invention is the result of countless trials and errors, so can be the case with innovation. Not every attempt to make an invention is successful. Not every innovation sees the light of the day. Benjamin Franklin had the belief that success doesn‘t come without challenge, mistake, and in a few cases failure.  

One of the world‘s most famous innovators, Steve Jobs says, ―Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations.‖ Thus, inventors and innovators have to be intrepid enough to take risks; consider failures as stepping stones and not stumbling blocks. Some inventions are the result of a keen observation or a simple discovery. The inventor of Velcro, also called the zipless zipper, is the Swiss engineer George de Mestral. He was hiking in the woods when he found burrs clinging to his clothes and his dog‘s fur. Back at home, he studied the burrs. He discovered that each burr was a collection of tiny hooks which made it cling on to another object. A few years later, he made and patented the strips of fabric that came to us like Velcro. The world of inventions and innovations is a competitive one. But the race does not end here; it is also prevalent in the case of getting intellectual property rights. There have been inventors who failed to get a single patent while there have been some who managed to amass numerous patents in their lifetime. Thomas Edison had 1,093 patents to his credit! We relate the telephone with Alexander Graham Bell. It is believed that around the same time, Antonio Meucci had also designed the telephone, but due to a lack of resources and various hardships, he could not proceed with the patent of his invention. It is also believed that Elisha Gray had made a design for the telephone and applied for the patent at the U.S. patent office on the same day as Graham Bell did. By sheer chance, Graham‘s lawyer‘s turn to file the papers came first. Hence, Graham was granted the first patent for the telephone. It is not easy, and at times almost impossible, for an inventor to be an innovator too. There are very few like Thomas Edison who graduated from being an incredible inventor to a successful manufacturer and businessman with brilliant marketing skills. While innovations that have helped to enhance the quality of life are laudable, equally laudable are the inventions that laid the foundation of these very innovations. 

It is believed that Graham Bell became the first patent holder of the telephone because of 

Options

  • his ingenuity and good fortune. 

  • the carelessness of Elisha‘s lawyer. 

  • the clever trick played by his lawyer. 

  • the biased officials in the patent office.

MCQ
Advertisements

Solution

It is believed that Graham Bell became the first patent holder of the telephone because of his ingenuity and good fortune. 

shaalaa.com
Comprehension Passages (Entrance Exams)
  Is there an error in this question or solution?
2018-2019 (May) Set 1

RELATED QUESTIONS

In Mann Joseph's debut novel Serious Men, the protagonist, Ayyan Mani, is a U1, scheming Dalit-Buddhist who almost gets away with passing off his partially deaf son, Adi, as a prodigy, a genius who can recite the first 1,000 prime numbers. The garb of satire-where almost every character cuts a sorry figure-gives the author the licence to offer one' of the most bleak and pessimistic portrayals of urban Dalits. Despite his savage portrayal of Dalit (and female) characters-or perhaps because of it? Serious Men has won critical appreciation front a cross-section of readers and critics.

At a time when a formidable body of Dalit literature writing by Dalits about Dalit lives has created a distinct space for itself, how and why is it that a novel such as Serious Men, with its gleefully skewed portrayal of an angry Dalit man, manages to win such accolades? In American literature and particularly in the case of African- American authors and characters these issues of representation have been debated for decades. But in India, the sustained refusal to address issues related to caste in everyday life and the continued and unquestioned predominance of a Brahminical stranglehold over cultural production have led us to a place where non-Dalit portrayal of Dalits in literature, cinema and art remains the norm. The journey of modem Dalit literature has been a difficult one. But even though it has not necessarily enjoyed the support of numbers, we must engage with what Dalits are writing not simply for reasons of authenticity, or as a concession to identity politics, but simply because of the aesthetic value of this body of writing, and for the insights it offers into the human condition. In a society that is still largely unwilling to recognise Dalits as equal, rights bearing human beings, in a society that is inherently indifferent to the everyday violence against Dalits, in a society unwilling to share social and cultural resources equitably with Dalits unless mandated by law (as seen in the anti-reservation discourse), Dalit literature has the potential to humanise non- Dalits and sensitise them to a world into which they have no insight. But before we can understand what Dalit literature is seeking to accomplish, we need first to come to terms with the stranglehold of non-Dalit representations of Dalits.

Rohinton Miary's (A Fine Balance), published 15 years ago, chronicles the travails of two Dalit characters uncle Ishvar and nephew Omprakash who migrate to Bombay and yet cannot escape brutality. While the present of the novel is set at the time of the Emergency, Ishvar's father Dukhy belongs to the era of the anti-colonial nationalist movement. During one of Dukhi's visits to the town, he chances upon a meeting of the Indian National Congress, where speakers spread the "Mahatma's message regarding the freedom struggle, the struggle for justice," and wiping out "the disease of untouchability; ravaging us for centuries, denying dignity to our fellow human beings."

Neither in the 1940s, where the novel's past is set nor in the Emergency period of the 1970swhen the minds and bodies Ishvar and Omprakash, are savaged by the state-do we find any mention of a figure like BR Ambedkar or of Dalit movements. In his 'nationalist' understanding of modem Indian history, Mistry seems to have not veered too far from the road charted by predecessors like Mulk Raj Anand and Premchand. Sixty years after Premchand, Mistry's literary imagination seems stuck in the empathy realism mode, trapping Dalits in abjection. Mistry happily continues the broad stereotype of the Dalit as a passive sufferer, without consciousness of caste politics.

Which of the following statement cannot be inferred from the passage:


If religion and community are associated with global violence in the trends of many people, then so are global poverty and inequality. There has, in fact, been an increasing tendency in recent years to justify policies of poverty removal on the ground that this is the surest way to prevent political strife and turmoil. Basing public policy - international as well as domestic- on such an understanding has some evident attractions. Given the public anxiety about wars and disorders in the rich countries in the world, the indirect justification of poverty removal -not for its own sake but for the sake of peace and quiet in the world - provides an argument that appeals to self-interest for helping the needy. It presents an argument for allocating more resources on poverty removal because of its presumed political, rather than moral, relevance.

While the temptation to go in that direction is easy to understand, it is a perilous route to take even for a worthy cause. Part of the difficulty lies in the possibility that if wrong, economic reductionism would not only impair our understanding of the world but would also tend to undermine the declared rationale of the public commitment to remove poverty. This is a particularly serious concern, since poverty and massive inequality are terrible enough in themselves, and deserve priority even if there were no connection whatsoever with violence. Just as virtue is its own reward, poverty is at least its own penalty. This is not to deny that poverty and inequality can - and do - have far-reaching consequences with conflict and strife, but these connections have to be examined and investigated with appropriate care and empirical scrutiny, rather than being casually invoked with unreasoned rapidity in support of a `good cause."

Destitution can, of course, produce provocation for defying established laws and rules. But it need not give people the initiative, courage, and actual ability to do anything very violent. Destitution can be accompanied not only by economic debility but also by political helplessness. A starving wretch can be too frail and too dejected to fight and battle, and even te protest and holler. It is thus not surprising that often enough intense and widespread suffering and misery have been accompanied by unusual peace and silence.

Indeed, many famines have occurred without there being much political rebellion or civil strife or intergroup warfare. For example, the famine years in the 1840s in Ireland were among the most peaceful, and there was little attempt by the hungry masses to intervene even as ship after ship sailed down the river Shannon with rich food. Looking elsewhere, my own childhood memories in Calcutta during the Bengal famine of 1943 include the sight of starving people dying in front of sweetshops with various layers of luscious food displayed behind the glass windows, without a single glass being broken, or law or order being disrupted.

The author asserts that basing anti-poverty measures on the avowed connections between poverty and violence has certain apparent benefits because:


Direction: The passage given below is followed by a set of question. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

Ahmedabad’s Sunday market that sells junk is this 35-year-old artist’s favourite hunting ground. That’s where he picks saw-blades, printer toners, monitors, busted VCDs and hard disks, video players and other castaway gems. Back home, he painstakingly dismantles his treasure of scrap and segregates it into big pieces (the video player's outer case), mid-sized (the insides of a hard disk) and small pieces (innards of a mobile). This is art you can get up, close and personal with. The works grab the viewer’s attention at several levels. Aesthetically, the creations themselves - such as Frivolity which uses feathers and terracotta diyas painted in dark fossil green that give it a strange life - appeal in a live-and-kicking sort of way. Look a little closer and hey, you spot a zipper. Then it’s a journey all your own. Your eyes identify hairpins, spray spouts that hairdressers use, paper clips, thread, computer ribbons and the insides of everything from watches to the sliding metal bits that support drawers. You can almost hear the works whirr. So Hashissh, constructed from paper clips, backpack clips, a shining CD and twirled thread, may invite you to study its water-blue, pinks and green or Nelumbeshwar may beckon, bathed in acrylic pink and grey-black. But once you’re standing in front of a piece, you spot the zips and the hairpins. Then you simply visually dismantle Har’s work and rebuild it all over again. Zoom in, zoom out. It’s great fun. Visualising the colour of his work demands a lot of attention, says Har. “During creation, the material is all differently coloured. So there’s a red switch next to a white panel next to a black clip. It can distract. I don’t sketch, so I have to keep a sharp focus on the final look I am working towards.” As his work evolved, Har discovered laser-cutting on a visit to a factory where he had gone to sand-blast one of his pieces. Hooked by the zingy shapes laser-cutting offered, Har promptly used it to speed up a scooter and lend an unbearable lightness of being to a flighty autorickshaw, his latest works. The NID-trained animation designer’s scrap quest was first inspired by a spider in his bathroom in Chennai when he was a teenager. He used a table-tennis ball (for the head), a bigger plastic ball (for the body) and twisted clothes hangers to form the legs. His next idea was to create a crab, and his mother obligingly brought one home from the market so that he could study and copy it. Winning the first Art Positive fellowship offered by Bajaj Capital Arthouse last year gave Har the confidence to believe that he could make it as an artist or ‘aesthete’ as he likes to call himself.

What is the Central idea of the given passage?


In view of the passage given below. Choose the best option for question.

When talks come to how India has done for itself in 50 years of Independence, the world has nothing but praise for our success in remaining a democracy. On other fronts, the applause is less loud. In absolute terms, India has not done too badly, of course, life expectancy has increased. So has literacy. Industry, which was barely a fledging, has grown tremendously. And as far as agriculture is concerned, India has been transformed from a country perpetually on the edge of starvation into a success story held up for others to emulate. But these are competitive times when change is rapid, and to walk slowly when the rest of the world is running is almost as bad as standing still on walking backwards.

Compared with large chunks of what was then the developing 'world South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia. China and what was till lately a separate Hong Kong-India has fared abysmally. It began with a far better infrastructure than most of these countries had. It suffered hardly or not at all during the Second World War. It had advantages like an English speaking elite, quality scientific manpower (including a Nobel laureate and others who could be ranked among the world's best) and excellent business acumen. Yet, today, when countries are ranked according to their global competitiveness. it is tiny Singapore that figures at the top. Hong Kong is an export powerhouse. So is Taiwan. If a symbol were needed of how far we have fallen back. note that while Korean Cielos are sold in India, no one in South Korea is rushing to buy an Indian car. The reasons list themselves. Topmost is economic isolationism.

The government discouraged imports and encouraged self-sufficiency. Whatever the aim was, the result was the creation of a totally inefficient industry that failed to keep pace with global trends and, therefore. became absolutely uncompetitive. only when the trade gates were opened a little did this become apparent. The years since then have been spent merely trying to catch up. That the government actually sheltered its industrialists from foreign competition is a little strange. For in all other respects, it operated under the conviction that businessmen were little more than crookS how were to be prevented from entering the most important areas of the economy, how we're to be hamstrung in as many ways as possible, how we're to be tolerated in the same way as an inexcusable wan. The high expropriation rates of taxation. the licensing Jaws, the reservation of whole swathes of the industry for the public sector, and the granting of monopolies to the public sector firms were the principal manifestations of this attitude. The government forgot that before wealth could be distributed, it had to be created.

The government forgot that it itself could not create, but only squander wealth. some of the manifestations of the old attitude have changed. Tax rates have fallen. Licensing has been a but abolished. And the gates of global trade have been opened wide. But most of these Changes were first by circumstances partly by the foreign exchange bankruptcy of 1991 ana the recognition that the government could no longer muster the funds of support the public sector, leave alone expand it. Whether the attitude of the government itself. or that of more than handful of ministers has changed, is open to question. In many other ways, however, the government has not changed one with. Business still has to negotiate a welter of negotiations. Transparency is still a long way off. And there is no exit policy. In defending the existing policy, politicians betray an inability to see beyond their noses. A no-exit policy for labour is equivalent to a no-entry policy for new business If one industry is not allowed to retrench labour, other industries will think a hundred times before employing new labour. In other way too, the government hurts industries.

Public sector monopolies like the department of telecommunications and Yidesh sanchar Nigam Ltd. make it possible for Indian business to operate only at a cost several times that of their counterparts abroad The infrastructure is in a shambles partly because it is unable to formulate a sufficiently remunerative policy for private business, and partly because it does not have the stomach to change market rates for services. After a burst of activity in the early nineties, the government iS dragging itS feet. At the rate, it is going. it will be another fifty years before the government realizes that a pro-business policy is the best pro-people policy By then, of course, the world would have moved even further ahead. 

The example of the Korean Cielo has been presented to highlight..


Read the given passage carefully and choose the most appropriate option to the questions given below.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since negotiation was an attempt at a ‘constitutional reform’ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s?One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late in the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was a product of a series of trade­offs between principal actors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organization, the disputed settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and more legal dispute settlement system. For the Europeans, who by the 1990s had come to view GATT dispute settlement less in political terms add more as a regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted by the expansion of a rule­based system and by the symbolic value of a trade organization, both of which inherently support the weak against the strong. The developing countries were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. Finally, and perhaps most important, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains than on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rule­based system with those gains. This reasoning – replicated in many countries – was contained in U. S. Ambassador Kantor’s defense of the WTO, and it announced to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rule­based environment.A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organizations based on rules, and it is inevitable that an organization creating a further rule will, in turn, be influenced by legal process. Robert Hudee has written of the‘momentum of legal development’, but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of the technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximize. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof a whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather­rights and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rule­based system of co­operation since without these value rules would be meaningless in the first place, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment.The moment of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in the European Union (EU). Over the past two decades, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU’sinternal market, in which the doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ handed down in Cassis de Dijon case in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognized as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. One means the Court used to expand integration was the ‘teleological method of interpretation’, whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against ‘the accomplishment of the most elementary goals set forth in the Preamble to the (Rome) treaty. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent with stated goals, and it is analogous to the effort in GATT to keep contracting party trade practices consistent with slated rules. In both cases, legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further co­operation.In the large part, the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near­revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, that is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules from becoming a sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.

The most likely reason for the acceptance of the WTO package by nations was that:


Direction: Read the passage given below. Choose the best options for the Question.

IOT has had an impact across all fields, be it industries, government, small or large businesses and even for Personal Consumption. What is IOT (Internet of things) you might ask? It’s been a growing topic of conversation for some time now. Put in the simplest term it means anything that has an on and off button and is connected to the internet for receiving, analyzing, storing or sending data. This could mean anything, from the watch that you wear to airplanes that can be controlled from a remote location. According to the analyst firm Gartner, by the year 2020, we’ll have over 26 billion connected devices. That could mean people to people, people connected to things and things connected to things. The new rule of the future is going to be “Anything that can be connected will be connected”. Take for example that when you set an alarm to wake up and that alarm goes off it not only wakes you up but also brews your coffee, sets the right temperature of water for your bath, puts on the television to bring you the latest updates from around the globe and all this before you even put a foot out of your bed. This is all done by simply getting the network of interconnected things/devices that have embedded sensors, network connectivity, software and necessary electronics that collect and exchange data. 

To show how far we have come with technology and connectivity, we have smartwatches such as Fitbit, Garmin to name a few that have changed the way we look at time. We have one device that not only tells us the time but also tracks the number of steps, calories, and our heart rate. This watch is actually connected to our phone so with just one turn of the wrist, one can tell who is calling or what messages have been received without having to dig through pockets or handbags. IOT is making its presence felt in health care as well. Doctors can now remotely monitor and communicate with their patients and health care providers can benefit from this. Whether data comes from foetal monitors, electrocardiograms, temperature monitors or blood glucose levels, tracking this information is vital for some patients. Many of this requires to follow up interaction with healthcare professionals. With smarter devices that deliver more valuable data, it can reduce the need for direct patient-physician interaction. Take for instance in the sporting field, minute chips are being attached to balls and bats which will transmit information of how fast the ball is travelling and a batsman’s moves, the time, the angles, the pressure on the bat at different positions, data of the muscle stretch if he’s hit a six so on and so forth. Formula one cars are also being fitted with these sensors which relays information on the minute moves being made by the driver. Chips are also being put into wearable devices of sportsmen to detect suboptimal action of any body parts to show signs of stress or strain which will help in the early detection of injuries and take preventive measures. IOT has had an impact across all fields, be it industries, government, small or large business and even for personal consumption. IBM, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco are some of the top players in the IOT spectrum. With billions of devices connected security becomes a big issue. How can people make sure that their data is safe and secure? This is one of the major concerns in the IOT that becomes a hot topic. Another issue is with all these billions of devices sharing data companies will be faced with the problem of how to store, track, analyse and make vast sense of the information being generated. Companies are monitoring the network segment to identify anomalous traffic and to take action if necessary. Now that we have a fair understanding of IOT let’s see what impact it’s had on the education sector. The only constant in our lives is change and learning. From the get-go, we learn, be it to the walk, talk or run. We adapt to the changing times and constantly learn from them. Education or learning as we know it in the broader sense is the most important of all and the one that decides which way we handle those changes to impact us and the world. Today’s world is fast-paced and to keep up with this we need an infusion of speed with learning. From the classroom assignments, lectures, blackboards, and chalk we have come a long way to what is now known as e-learning (electronic learning) or m-learning (mobile learning). With the GenNext it is imperative to provide the right kind of education. The rise of technology and IOT allows schools to improve the safety of their campuses, keep track of resources and enhance access to information. It ensures data quality being the top priority but also facilitates the development of content allowing teachers to use this technology to create smart lesson plans and ensuring the reach of this content to any corner of the world.

Teachers can use this data:


Read the following passage carefully and then answer the question that follows.

Surajendu Kumar’s study on the effect of the modernization of a Government Printing Press on Press maintenance work and workers is a solid contribution to a debate that encompasses two lively issues in the history and sociology of technology: technological determinism and social constructivism.

Kumar makes the point that the characteristics of a technology have a decisive influence on job skills and work organization. Put more strongly, technology can be a primary determinant of social and managerial organization. Kumar believes this possibility has been obscured by the recent sociological fashion, exemplified by Cravman’s analysis, that emphasizes the way machinery reflects social choices. For Cravman, the shape of a technological system is subordinate to the manager’s desire to wrest control of the labor process from the workers. Technological change is construed as the outcome of negotiations among interested parties who seek to incorporate their own interests into the design and configuration of the machinery. This position represents the new mainstream called social constructivism. The constructivists gain acceptance by misrepresenting technological determinism: technological determinists are supposed to believe, for example, that machinery imposes appropriate forms of order on society. The alternative to constructivism, in other words, is to view technology as existing outside society, capable of directly influencing skills and work organization. Kumar refutes the extremes of the constructivists by both theoretical and empirical arguments. Theoretically, he defines “technology” in terms of relationship between social and technical variables. Attempts to reduce the meaning of technology to cold, hard metal are bound to fail, for machinery is just scrap unless it is organized functionally and supported by appropriate systems of operation and maintenance. At the empirical level, Kumar shows how a change at the Printing Press from maintenance-intensive electromechanical devices to semi-electronic devices altered work tasks, skills, training opportunities, administration, and organization of workers. Some changes Kumar attributes to the particular way management and labor unions negotiated the introduction of the technology, whereas others are seen as arising from the capabilities and nature of the technology itself. Thus, Kumar helps answer the question: “When is social choice decisive and when are concrete characteristics of technology more important ?”

The primary purpose of the passage is to –


Choose the word that is opposite to the meaning of the given word.

Colossal


Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.

Teaching, more even than most other professions, has been transformed during the last hundred years from a small, highly skilled profession concerned with a minority of the population, to a large and important branch of public service. The profession has a great and honourable tradition, extending from the dawn of history until recent times, but any teacher in the modern world who allows himself to be inspired by the ideals of his predecessors is likely to be made sharply aware that it is not his function to teach what he thinks, but to instill such beliefs and prejudices as are thought useful by his employers. 

The author seems to be in favour of


Read the given passages and answer the question with the help of the information provided in the passage.

Once upon a time, there was a royal elephant that used to reside in the premises of the king's palace. The elephant was very dear to the king, so he was well-fed and well treated. There was also a Dog who lived near the Elephant's shed. He was very weak and skinny. He was always fascinated by the smell of rich sweet rice being fed to the royal elephant. One day, the Dog could no longer resist the aroma of the rice and somehow managed to sneak into the Elephant's shed. He ate the grains of sweet rice that fell from the Elephant's mouth. He liked the rice so much, that he started going there daily to eat the rice. For days, the huge Elephant didn't notice the small dog as he was busy enjoying the delicious food. Gradually, the Dog grew bigger and stronger eating such rich food. Finally, the Elephant noticed him and allowed him access to the food. The Elephant enjoyed the company of the Dog and started sharing his food with him. They also started spending time with each other and soon became good friends. They ate together, slept together and played together. While playing, the Elephant would hold the Dog in his trunk and swing him back and forth. Soon neither of them was happy without the other. They became great friends and didn't want to be separated from each other.

Then one day, a man saw the Dog and asked the Elephant-keeper, "I want to buy this Dog. What price do you want for it?" The Elephant keeper didn't own the Dog but sold it and extracted a sum of money from this deal. The man took the Dog to his home village, which was quite far away. The King's Elephant became very sad after this incident. He missed his friend a lot and started neglecting everything. He didn't want to do anything without his dear friend, so he stopped eating, drinking and even bathing. Finally, the Elephant-keeper reported this to the King; however, he didn't mention anything about the Dog. The King had a wise minister, who was known for his keen understanding of animals. The King ordered the minister, "Go to the Elephant shed and find out the reason for the Elephant's condition". The intelligent minister went to the Elephant's shed and found the Elephant very sad. He examined the Elephant and asked the Elephant keeper, "There is nothing wrong with this Elephant's body, then why does he look so sad?" I think this Elephant is grief-stricken, possibly due to the loss of a dear friend.

Do you know if this Elephant shared a close friendship with anyone? The Elephant-keeper said, "There was a Dog who used to eat, sleep and play with the Elephant. He was taken by a stranger three days ago''. The minister went back to the King and said, "Your majesty, in my opinion, the royal Elephant is not sick, but he is lonesome without his dear friend, the Dog". The King said, "You're right, friendship is one of the most wonderful things of life. Do you know where that ·Dog is?" The Minister replied, "Elephant keeper has informed me that a stranger took him away and he doesn't know his whereabouts". The King asked, "how can we bring back my Elephant's friend and make him happy again?" The Minister suggested, "Your Majesty, make a declaration that whoever has the dog that used to live at the royal Elephant's shed will be penalised". The King did the same and the man who had taken the dog, instantly turned him loose when he heard the proclamation. As soon as he was freed, the Dog ran back as fast as he could to the Elephant's shed. The Elephant was so delighted to see the Dog that he picked his friend up with his trunk and swung him back and forth. The Dog wagged his tail, while the Elephant's eyes sparkled with happiness. The King was content to see the Elephant happy once again and rewarded the Minister for his wise judgment. 

Which of the following would be the most appropriate title for the passage?


Share
Notifications

Englishहिंदीमराठी


      Forgot password?
Use app×