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Question
What was the state of the author’s friend at the last?
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Solution
The author’s friend was completely tired because of his struggle with the bicycle. He was soiled with oil and dirt. He found fixing the parts of the bicycle extremely tough and somehow got those parts in place. He called it quits finally claiming that this is enough.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Answer the following question.
“We all missed him greatly: but in a sense we were relieved.”
(i) Who does ‘we all’ stand for?
(ii) Who did they miss?
(iii) Why did they nevertheless feel relieved?
Activity:
Find Dhanuskodi and Rameswaram on the map. What language(s) do you think are spoken there? What languages do you think the author, his family, his friends and his teachers spoke with one another?
Why does the lost child lose interest in the things that he had wanted earlier?
The athletes had come from all over the country
To run for the gold, for the silver and bronze
Many weeks and months of training
All coming down to these games.
The spectators gathered around the old field
To cheer on all the young women and men
The final event of the day was approaching
Excitement grew high to begin.
Read the lines given above and answer the following question:
Explain with reference to context.
We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe^ and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts’that once filled them and still lover this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
How is every part of the soil sacred to his people?
“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.
Does the attitude of the villagers convey some truth about society at large?
Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:
Richard Parker was so named because of a clerical error.
A panther was terrorizing the Khulna district of Bangladesh, just outside the Sundarbans. It had recently carried off a little girl. She was the seventh person killed in two months by the animal. And it was growing bolder. The previous victim was a man who had been attacked in broad daylight in his field. The beast dragged him off into the forest, and his corpse was later found hanging from a tree. The villagers kept a watch nearby that night, hoping to surprise the panther and kill it, but it never appeared.
The Forest Department hired a professional hunter. He set up a small, hidden platform in a free near a river where two of the attacks had taken place. A goat was tied to a stake on the river’s bank. The hunter waited several nights. He assumed the panther would be an old, wasted male with worn teeth, incapable of catching anything more difficult than a human. But it was a sleek tiger that stepped into the open one night: a female with a single cub. The goat bleated. Oddly, the cub, who looked to be about three months old, paid little attention to the goat. It raced to the water’s edge, where it drank eagerly. Its mother followed it. Of hunger and thirst, thirst is the greater urge. Only once the tiger had quenched her thirst did she turn to the goat to satisfy her hunger.
The hunter had two rifles with him: one with real bullets, the other with immobilizing darts. This animal was not the man-eater, but so close to human habitation she might pose a threat to the villagers, especially as she was with cub. He picked up the gun with the darts. He fired as the tiger was about to attack the goat. The tiger reared up and snarled and raced away. But immobilizing darts don’t bring on sleep gently—they knock the creature out without warning. A burst of activity on the animal’s part makes it act all the faster. The hunter called his assistants on the radio. They found the tiger about two hundred yards from the river. She was still conscious. Her back legs had given way and her balance on her front legs was shaky. When the men got close, she tried to get away but could not manage it. She turned on them, lifting a paw that was meant to kill. It only made her lose her balance. She collapsed and the Pondicherry Zoo had two new tigers. The cub was found in a bush close by, meowing with fear.
The hunter, whose name was Richard Parker, picked it up with his bare hands and, remembering how it had rushed to drink in the river, named it Thirsty. But the shipping clerk at the Howrah train station was evidently a man both confused and diligent. All the papers received with the cub clearly stated that its name was Richard Parker, that the hunter’s first name was Thirsty add that his family name was None Given. Richard Parker’s name stuck. I don’t know if the hunter was ever called Thirsty None Given!
(a) Give the meaning of each of the following words as used in the passage.
One word answers ob short phrases will be accepted.
- corpse (line 6)
- quenched (line 16)
- reared (line 20)
(b) Answer the following questions briefly in your own words.
- Why does the author say that the panther ‘was getting bolder’?
- Why did the Forest Department hire a professional hunter?
- What did the hunter expect to encounter? What did he actually encounter?
- What did the tiger do before turning to attack the goat? Why did it do that?
- Why did the hunter decide to shoot the tiger though he knew it was not the man-eater?
- What name did the hunter give to the cub? Why?
(c)
(i) In not more than 60 words narrrate how the hunter and his assistants captured the tiger and her cub.
(ii) Give a suitable title to your summary in 3(c). Give a reason to justify your choice.
What does the poet mean when lie compares the world to a battlefield? What should our role be in this battle?
Did she repent her hasty action? How does she show her repentance?
How did the king reward the new governor?
What happens when we are asleep?
What made the ghost believe Vijay Singh was dead?
To whom are these instructions being addressed?
Read the lines in which the following phrases occur. Then discuss with your partner the meaning of each phrase in its context.
Drinking straws
What major decision did that Dog take?
Multiple Choice Question:
What makes people dance in the fields?
Multiple Choice Question:
What are the people always eager to hear?
Your partner and you may now be able to answer the question.
Like the child in the poem, you perhaps have your own, wishes for yourself. Talk to your friend, using “I wish I were..
With close reference to Act V, examine how Shakespeare presents the idea of forgiveness and reconciliation at the end of the play.
Complete the following sentence by providing a reason.
In Act V Scene viii of the play Macbeth, Macbeth initially refuses to fight Macduff because ______.
