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Question
Why was all the ‘mystery’ spoilt?
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Solution
The poet Could hear the chatter of the fan, though she could not understand it. But Soon, the Scope to decode and comprehend it was lost as the fan’s motor was oiled by Someone. Thereafter, the talking fan became silent.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Thinking about Language
Here are some sentences from the text. Say which of them tell you, that the author:
(a) was afraid of the snake, (b) was proud of his appearance, (c) had a sense of humour,
(d) was no longer afraid of the snake.
1. I was turned to stone.
2. I was no mere image cut in granite.
3. The arm was beginning to be drained of strength.
4. I tried in my imagination to write in bright letters outside my little heart the words, ‘O
God’.
5. I didn’t tremble. I didn’t cry out.
6. I looked into the mirror and smiled. It was an attractive smile.
7. I was suddenly a man of flesh and blood.
8. I was after all a bachelor, and a doctor too on top of it!
9. The fellow had such a sense of cleanliness…! The rascal could have taken it and used it
after washing it with soap and water.
10. Was it trying to make an important decision about growing a moustache or using eye
shadow and mascara or wearing a vermilion spot on its forehead?
Thinking about the Text
Answer these question.
I said it with bullets.”
(i) Who says this?
(ii) What does it mean?
(iii) Is it the truth? What is the speaker’s reason for saying this?
Thinking about the poem
Where does the traveller find himself? What problem does he face?
Listen to the poem.
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth,
And spotted the perils beneath.
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.
I wish I'd been that much more willin'
When I had more tooth there than fillin'
To pass up gobstoppers.
From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin'.
When I think of the lollies I licked,
And the liquorice all sorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.
My mother, she told me no end.
'If you got a tooth, you got a friend.'
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.
Oh, I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin'
And pokin' and fussin'
Didn't seem worth time-I could bite!
If I'd known, I was paving the way
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fillin's
Injections and drillin's,
I'd have thrown all me sherbet away.
So I lay in the old dentist's chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine,
In these molars of mine.
"Two amalgum," he'll say, "for in there."
How I laughed at my mother's false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath.
But now comes the reckonin'
It's me they are beckonin'
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.
About the Poet
Pam Ayres (1947- ) is a contemporary writer, a great entertainer who writes and performs
comic verse. She started writing poems and verses as a hobby and has appeared in every
major TV show in the U.K. She has published six books of poems, and cut seven record
albums including a collection of 50 best known poems.
Listen to an interview between a radio jockey and a pilot.
The village consisted of less than thirty houses, only one of them built with brick and cement. Painted a brilliant yellow and blue all over with gorgeous carvings of gods and gargoyles on its balustrade, it was known as the Big House. The other houses, distributed in four streets, were generally of bamboo thatch, straw, mud, and other unspecified material. Muni’s was the last house in the fourth street, beyond which stretched the fields. In his prosperous days Muni had owned a flock of forty sheep and goats and sallied forth every morning driving the flock to the highway a couple of miles away.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What did Muni’s wife cook for him in the morning? How did she cook it?
She lighted another match, and then she found herself sitting under a beautiful Christmas-tree. It was larger and more beautifully decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door at the rich merchant’s. Thousands of tapers were burning upon the green branches, and colored pictures, like those she had seen in the show- windows, looked down upon it all. The little one stretched out her hand towards them, and the match went out.
The Christmas lights rose higher and higher, till they looked to her like the stars in the sky. Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind it a bright streak of fire. “Someone is dying,” thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, and who was now dead, had told her that when a star falls, a soul was going up to God.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Why did the girl think that “Someone is dying” ?
Sibia sprang.
From boulder to boulder she came leaping like a rock goat. Sometimes it had seemed difficult to cross these stones, especially the big gap in the middle where the river coursed through like a bulge of glass. But now she came on wings, choosing her footing in midair without even thinking about it, and in one moment she was beside the shrieking woman. In the boiling bloody water, the face of the crocodile, fastened round her leg, was tugging to and fro, and smiling. His eyes rolled on to Sibia. One slap of the tail could kill her. He struck. Up shot the water, twenty feet, and fell like a silver chain. Again! The rock jumped under the blow. But in the daily heroism of the jungle, as common as a thorn tree, Sibia did not hesitate. She aimed at the reptile’s eyes. With all the force of her little body, she drove the hayfork at the eyes, and one prong went in—right in— while its pair scratched past on the horny cheek. The crocodile reared up in convulsion, till half his lizard body was out of the river, the tail and nose nearly meeting over his stony back. Then he crashed back, exploding the water, and in an uproar of bloody foam he disappeared. He would die. Not yet, but presently, though his death would not be known for days; not till his stomach, blown with gas, floated him. Then perhaps he would be found upside down among the logs at the timber boom, with pus in his eye. Sibia got arms round the fainting woman, and somehow dragged her from the water.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
How does Sibia save the woman?
Suddenly all the tension seemed to ebb out of my body as the truth of what he said hit me. Confidently, I drew a line a full foot in back of the board and proceeded to jump from there. I qualified with almost a foot to spare.
That night I walked over to Luz Long’s room in the Olympic village to thank him. I knew that if it hadn’t been for him I probably wouldn’t be jumping in the finals the following day. We sat in his quarters and talked for two hours—about track and field, ourselves, the world situation, a dozen other things.
When I finally got up to leave, we both knew that a real friendship had been formed. Luz would go out to the field the next day trying to beat me if he could. But I knew that he wanted me to do my best—even if that meant my winning.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Suddenly all the tension seemed to ebb out of my body as the truth of what he said hit me.
Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls (Where the Mind is Without Fear: Rabindranath Tagore)
(i) To whom is the poet praying? Whose mind is the poet referring to at the beginning of the poem? Why?
(ii) In which situation is the lead held high? What does he mean by 'knowledge is free'? What are 'narrow domestic walls'?
(iii) What does the poet mean by 'tireless striving'? What does 'clear stream' refer to? Explain.
(iv) What is meant by 'dead habit'? What is 'dead habits' compared to and why?
(v) What does ti» poet wish for al the end ~f the poem? What does tl1e poem tell the readers about the poet? Give a reason to justify yow· answer.
Why did Chandni refuse to join the group of wild goats?
What did the beggar feel about the ladies of the household?
The author didn’t go for the bicycle ride he had planned with his friend why?
What was the farmer’s comment on his wife’s fears?
How did the ghost make a plan to trick Vijay Singh finally?
What are some of the notable features told about snakes in the lesson?
What must be the main motto of a rebel, in your opinion?
Write ‘True’ or ‘False’ against each of the following sentences.
Gopal was a clever man. ________
Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow:
|
Bassanio: Portia: |
- Who is on trial?
Why is this person on trial? [3] - Explain in your own words Bassanio’s request to portia in the given extract.
What reason does he give for his request? [3] - How does Portia respond to Bassanio's request? What TWO reasons does she give for her response? [3]
- Who does Bassanio refer to as ‘this cruel devil’? What is this person's response to Portia’s words in the given extract? [3]
- How is the ‘cruel devil’ punished at the end of the trial?
How fair, in your opinion, is this punishment? Justify your response. [4]
Read the following extract from H.W. Longfellow’s poem, ‘Haunted Houses' and answer the questions that follow:
| The stranger at my fireside cannot see The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear; He but perceives what is; while unto me All that has been is visible and clear. |
- What makes the poet-narrator different from the stranger at his fireside? [3]
- What, according to the poet, turns a house into a ‘haunted’ house? [3]
- Where is one likely to meet the ‘phantoms’ in a haunted house? [3]
- What are the poet-narrator’s views on owning property? [3]
- How do the poet’s views of ghosts differ from the traditional perception of ghosts? How would you describe the mood that the poem evokes? Give ONE reason for your answer. [4]
