Section A

Q.I Explain the reference to the context the following

4 x 5 = 20
(i) He even poured a little paraffin upon the bitten toe and put a match to it. I
watched the flame
feeding on my mother.

Context – These lines are taken from the poem ‘Night of the scorpion’
composed by Nissim Ezekiel.
Explanation –
This poem vividly describes a rainy night of incessant rain when the poet’s
mother was stung by a scorpion that had taken shelter under a sack of rice to
escape the rain. The neighbouring peasants came in large numbers with
candles and lanterns. They chanted the name of God to paralyze the evil one,
they wanted to stop the scorpion from moving. They believed the effect of
poison would increase with the movement of the scorpion. They wanted to kill
it but it wasn’t found anywhere. Mother was writhing in pain at the center of
hectic activity. Poet’s father was a skeptic and rationalist who thought in his
own way, tried and applied everything as far as possible, be it curse or
blessing, powder, mixture, herb or hybrid. Yet, he put the paraffin oil over with
match-stick lighting the fire and the flames feeding upon it to mitigate the
pain, not a very scientific response. The above-mentioned lines show the
anxiety and helplessness of a son waiting for his mother’s recovery. The pain
mitigated after twenty hours and she regained her consciousness. But when
she came to her sense, she thanked God for picking her up and sparing her
children.
This poem originated from a religious foundation to give the impression of
outrage, along with a trace of culture and superstition, a fundamental message
of protective love.
(ii) And the way it carried off three village houses,
One pregnant woman
And a couple of cows
Named Gopi and Brinda, as usual.
Context – These lines are taken from the poem ‘A River’ by A.K. Ramanujan.
Explanation – In this poem, the poet has compared and contrasted the
attitudes of the old poets and those of the new poets to human suffering. He
has concluded that both the groups of the poets are indifferent to human
sorrow and suffering. Their poetry does not reflect the miseries of human
beings. The poet refers to the river Vaikai which flows through the city of
Madurai. In the summer, the river is almost empty. Only a very thin stream of
water flows making the sand ribs on the river bed visible along with the stones
lying on the river bed. We get a vivid picture of the river in the summer season.
There is also a picture of the river in the rainy season. Generally, all kinds of
poets have written about it in their poems. During the rainy season when the
floods come the people observe very anxiously. They remember the rising of
the river inch by inch from time to time. They remember how the stone steps
of the bathing place are submerged one by one. They see how three village
houses were damaged and carried off by the floods. They know how two cows
named Brinda and Gopi were carried away. They also know how a pregnant
woman drowned in the river during the flood. Both the old and new poets
have mentioned these things in their poems. But the way they have described
these things in their poems shows that they were not much alive to or
sympathetic to human suffering. Both the new poets and old poets did not
refer to all these miseries of the woman in their poetic creations. They are
callous and indifferent. This kind of attitude makes their poetry weak and
unappealing, dry and cheerless.
The tone of the poem is based on sarcasm and irony. It is very simple on
account of which the thought sequence of the poem is presented unmistakably
and clearly.
(iii) Fed on God for years
All her feasts were monotonous
For the only dish was always God
And the rest mere condiments.
Context – These lines are taken from the poem ‘Blood’ by Kamala Das.
Explanation – The poetess reveals a scenario of her childhood when her
grandmother, her brother, and she was living together. Grandmother once
says that the house in which they live is as old as three hundred years. It is
dilapidated with cracked walls, moistened by the rains, scattered tiles, and
infested by mice. This condition of the old home attracts the empathy of the
grandmother. The poetess assures her grandmother of getting the repair or
retrofitting of that house when she would grow up. Her grandmother was a
religious lady who will first offer food to God and then the rest is taken by her.
She used to visit the temple of Lord Shiva on an elephant when she was ten or
eleven. The poetess says that she left that dilapidated house and migrated to
another town after the death of her grandmother. She still has an obsession
with the house in her imagination. She thinks the rats would run freely around
the deserted rooms of that house. She repents for not being able. to repair
that dilapidated house for which she had once assured of her grandmother
when she was on her death bed. To secure escape from that guilty feeling, she
says that all virtues told by her grandmother are duly followed by her and she
always remembers her in her private musings. Thus, she derives complacency
by telling that she has given proper maintenance to the abode or house of her
character.
The poetess wants to say that material possessions are mortal while
possession of culture is immortal.
(iv) Bangle sellers are we who bear our shining loads to the temple fair... Who
will buy these delicate,
bright Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
Context – These lines are taken from the poem ‘The Bangle sellers’ by Sarojini
Naidu. It is a poem exploring the life of Indian women, the Indian culture, and
traditions revolving around women. The poem uses the theme of bangles, an
important ornament for Indian women to beautify themselves with, also a
symbol of happiness, peace, and prosperity.
Explanation – The speaker of the poem is one of the bangle sellers who have
come to sell bangles at the temple fair. They call out to the people passing by
and urge them to buy bangles for their daughters and wives. These bangles are
colorful and shining so much that they have been called lustrous. These
bangles have also been compared with rainbows because of their power to
scatter light and colors. This is one of the reasons that they are circles of light
because they are round and colorful. It is also a token of radiant life. It means
that women and girls who are happy in their lives used to decorate themselves
with beautiful bangles and vanity boxes. Thus, it is a token of happiness. A girl
or a woman who is devoid of happiness hardly cares for her looks. The bangle
sellers say that they carry various kinds of bangles for different types of
women with different types of needs. In this poem, Sarojini Naidu has talked
about the three stages of a woman. The first stage is when she is a virgin and
second stage is when she is married and the third stage comes when she
approaches Middle Ages. Sarojini Naidu has said that the choice of colors of
the bangles keeps on changing along with the three stages of women. This
poem is all about the celebration of womanhood. It describes the socially
accepted roles of women in different stages of their life.
Section B
Q. II Answer the following questions in about 350 words each:

1. Give a character sketch of The Master.

The Master is a fascinating character in the story ‘A Tiger for Malgudi’ by

R.K Narayan. In his early life, the Master, like any ordinary man, studies
in a college, gets a job, marries, begets children, prospers, and becomes
respectable. He also had been arrested for being associated with the
independence movement. But, one day, like the Buddha, he leaves
everything behind, abandoned his family, and renounces the world
because of inner compulsion. He attains the spiritual level of a sanyasi to
free himself of all bondage. He attains serenity and wisdom through
Yoga and meditation. The Master recognizes a kindred soul In Raja, the
tiger, and helps the latter to transform himself – from the subhuman
level to the supramundane level. Raja could understand his speech and
follow his orders. Both travelled throughout India spreading a
philosophy of nonviolence. The final liberation of the tiger is achieved
not by violence but by the sanyasi, a figure who represents Gandhiji and
the tradition of nonviolent resistance.
Further, the Master, despite his attainments, does not allow people to
take “dust from his feet.” He declares:” You must prostrate only before
God. You should seek only God’s darshan...the same God resides within
all of us.” When his wife recognized him and begged him to return to his
family or else allow her to live with him at the ashram, he turned down
both the suggestions and told her that to attain that state he had gone
through great hardship and it was unthinkable to slide back then. The
wife berated him for his callousness, without affecting the Master’s
equanimity, and at last, she left broken heart
The Master’s words are always full of wisdom. Before handing over Raja
to the zoo authorities, he tells him:” No relationship, human or other, or
any association of any kind could last forever. Separation is the law of
 life right from the mother’s womb. One has to accept it if one has to live
in God’s plans.”

2. Discuss the theme of feminism in the novel The Binding Vine.

Feminism in reality may be described as a socio-financial political motion

that started in the west in the 18th and 19th centuries. The movement
demanded equal rights for women and raised several other issues
concerning women’s status in society.
Sashi Deshpande’s works deal with the problems and issues of
contemporary middle-class women. Her heroines are sensitive,
intelligent, and career-oriented. She poignantly expresses the frustration
and disappointments of women and describes their bitter experiences in
the male-dominated society.
This novel ‘The Binding Vine’ shows how a woman of good education
and earning could react to the so-called issues against women in the
male chauvinistic society, thereby inculcating the spirit of solidarity
among women and ushering in an assured secure world for all women.
While depicting the agony of a wife, who is the victim of marital rape,
she portrays the plight of women raped outside marriage and those who
would rather suffer in silence in the name of the family honor. Though
men are not absent in the novel, they could make their presence felt
only by the power they exercise over women, especially their wives and
daughters. Women outshine men in terms of their clear perception of
things around them.
Their infinite courage to cope with their surroundings and their ability to
come to terms with their losses and forge an alliance among themselves
and learn to live on in the most hostile situations is evidence of their
supremacy over the male characters.
This novel revolves circuitously around 3 primary ladies’ characters and
directly around Akka, Inni, Shakutai, and Sulu. The narrator-protagonist
Urmila (called Urmi) highlights the despair of two women – Mira, who
may be a victim of marital rape, and Kalpana, who is brutally raped out
of wedlock and is now on her death – bed. 
 
3. Critically analyze the poem ‘A River’.
In the poem, A River the poet A.K.Ramanujan makes a rich evocation of
the river Vaikai flowing through the ancient city of Madurai.
‘A city of temples and poets’ This is an ironic reference to Madurai as a
seat of Tamilian culture for three thousand years, which according to
him is in a state of decadence.
The river dries every summer in the sand baring the sand ribs, straw, and
women’s hair. At the rusty bars under the bridges with patches of repair
all over them shines the wet stones like sleepy crocodiles. But none sings
of the dried and enacted river.
The narrator remarks wryly that the poets who sang and they, who now
imitate them, see only the symbolism of vitality when the river is in
flood. With a few stark images, the poet completes the picture of the
river and its complexities which have been glossed over and ignored. Yet
not to stress merely the grim, unlovely angle, the poet brings alive the
beauty too, which lies open in the summer. This has been lost on the
sensibilities of the past poets:
the wet stones glistening like sleepy crocodiles, the dry ones shaven
water-buffaloes lounging in the sun…. (13-15)
Using vivid similes, he refers to a lack of imagination of the old poets
who ‘only sang of the floods’.
In stanza two, the poet speaks of the river in flood in the rains. He was
there once and saw what happened. The river in spate destroys
everything in its wake from livestock to houses to human life. This
happens once a year and has been continuing for years in the same
pattern. He notes the casual approach of the townspeople. Anxiously
they talk of the rising level of water and enumerate mechanically the
‘precise’ number of steps as the water brims over the bathing places.
The river carries off:
‘three village houses, one pregnant woman, and a couple of cows named
Gopi and Brinda as usual.’
These are itemized, mentioned cursorily as in a list—three, one, two.
The early poets and their successors tick off the losses as mere statistics,
unheeding the destruction, suffering, and human pain left in the wake of
the flood. Their aim, according to the speaker, is simply to record a
sensational event to arrest the momentary attention of the people. He
finds this attitude shocking and callous.
Imagery is the remarkable landmark of ‘A River.
 the poets deemed it enough to versify and exalt the river only when it
flooded once a year. While they sang of the river as a creative force
giving birth to new life, the paradox of the pregnant woman who
drowned with twins in her eludes them. Embracing only the glory of the
floods, they fail to realize its more complex repercussions on human life.
The narrator gives us a more complete impression of the river as a
destroyer as well as a preserver. He is sarcastic about the poets of yore
who seize only the floods to write about and that too merely once a
year.
‘the river has water enough
to be poetic
about only once a year’
The above lines satirize and debunk the traditional romantic view of the
river Vaikai in Madurai, by the ancient poets. He is derisive too, of the
new poets who have no wit but to blindly copy their predecessors.
Humor is presented in the names of the cows and the colored diapers of
the twins to help tell them apart. Yet this too is an attack on the
orthodoxy of Hinduism. While cows are given names, no one knows who
the pregnant woman is nor are they concerned. Human sacrifices were
performed to appease the gods because of droughts in Tamil Nadu, and
the drowned twin babies may be a reference to such cruel and orthodox
rituals.
This is an unusual poem with many layers of meaning and is a
commentary on the indifference of the old and modern poets to the
ravages caused by the river in flood and the pain and suffering caused to
humans.

4. Discuss both the surface and deeper meaning of ‘The Lost Child’.

The surface meaning –

The novel The Lost Child beautifully explores the imaginative and curious
mind of a child. The lilt and joyous innocence of his excitement are
contagious. It narrates how the wonders of the World and their beauty
captivate a child’s fancy.
The innocence of a child is exhibited in a soft manner he overcomes the
pain of his unfulfilled dreams and finds beauty in the simple things like
the bounties of Mother Nature.
At the fair, the child is all eyes, all ears, agog at the color of the vast
crowd, at the sound of the hawkers’ cries, at the smell of those mouth-
watering jalebis, at the many things to buy and amusements to enjoy.
Everything he sees, he wants – a burfi, a garland, colored balloons to
owing all the while that he cannot have them. The child relishes the
fluttering of the winged creatures like butterflies and is overjoyed to see
the delightful beauty of flower petals.
Then he realizes he is lost. In that single stroke of separation from his
parents, innocence and security had fallen away, replaced only by dread
and fear and trembling. The poor child struggled to thrust away between
the feet of the crowd. At last, one kind man protectively picks up the boy
and carries him from one stall to another to pacify him. But, now the
child doesn’t want any of the things which his heart has desired earlier.
The happy and excited face of the child at the beginning of the story
stands in deep contrast to the sobbing. Apprehensive face towards the
end.

Deeper meaning –
The child may be taken to represent human consciousness in the early
stages of purity and innocence. The child’s mind does not burden itself
with the irrecoverable past or the unachievable future. It focuses on the
possibilities of the present.
Another theme that the author has touched on is the courage that the
child exhibits. Even after realizing the harsh reality of being lost, he
remembers to do the right thing and look for his parents.
He is also well aware of the natural bond and instinct of parents and
their children and is immune to the allures of fleeting pleasures in
sweetmeats or joyrides offered by the kind man.
Section C
Q. III Answer the following questions in about 600 words each:

1. Discuss the elements of satire, irony, and humor in A Tiger for Malgudi,
quoting examples from the text.

Satire –
Humans generally do not fare very well in the tiger’s story. During his
early days, the tiger enjoys an idyllic life in the jungle, but he soon learns
that humans are not to be trusted. First, his mate and their cubs fall prey
to hunters. Then, left alone, the tiger begins to raid villages and spreads
terror among the inhabitants. Unable to get any official help, the
villagers finally find a circus owner who is willing to capture what they
describe as a man-eating tiger. Narayan takes the opportunity to satirize
Indian bureaucracy as the villagers try unsuccessfully to get government
assistance in ridding their territory of the tiger.

IRONY

HUMOUR
When the Master and the tiger leave Malgudi, they come across a
rioting mob engaged in bloody strife. When people notice the tiger, they
disperse quickly, forgetting their quarrels with one another. And Master
cries to them:
“If I find you fighting again. I’ll be back to stop it. Take care. You should
not need a tiger to keep the peace.”
 Book pg 51

2. The Binding Vine is a stream of consciousness novel. Do you agree? Give

reasons for your answers.

This novel places in a critical perspective the feminist assertion in the

novel of modern living Indian women novelist. While attempting to
determine the shift in general literary sensibility in the novels the study
directs attention to women’s awakening consciousness and her
confrontation against a male-dominated, tradition-oriented society.
Though the methods of interpretation vary in their complexity and also
in accordance with the problem of the novelist, the Indian woman being
at the center emerges as a human being, essentially Indian insensibility
and likely to remain so in the near future. Pg 24 book
http://www.researchscholar.co.in/downloads/63-ms.-ravinder-kaur.pdf

3. Write a detailed note on the rise, development and the main

characteristics of the short story.
Pg 5
4. Why is it important for protagonist to learn swimming in the story
‘Swimming lessons’?

Mistry’s ‘Swimming Lessons‘ is a short story that focuses on many

elements that are often seen in the life of a new immigrant, through the
use of parallel stories, imagery and effective diction. This interpretation
will aim to explore the use of each of these and their respective
functions in communicating the author’s message to the reader.

5. Discuss the theme of the poem ‘Enterprise’ by Nissim Ezekiel.

Enterprise’ by Nissim Ezekiel is an allegorical poem describing the

journey of life and the poet’s realization at different stages of his journey
suggesting that, in life, the journey is more important than the
destination. The poem is a stark depiction of the condition of men on
this earth who are subjected to such failures, hardships, and
 disillusionment during their course of journey of life. There are many
critics who feel that this poem is a search for the meaning of life’s
journey. The theme of the poem revolves around a metaphorical journey
on a pilgrimage started by some enthusiastic people. The enterprise
though started in high spirit, faced some setbacks in the middle. Finally,
when they reached the destination they doubted the importance of that
troublesome journey. The speaker, part of a group of pilgrims, describes
a long and arduous trip that starts with hope and idealism and ends in
disillusionment and despair. The poem implies that the pilgrims fail to
meaningfully engage with and value the world around them as they
make their way across the land, and that this leads to their
undoing: ironically, their excitement about the glory of their
“enterprise” blinds them to the life directly in front of them.

The word “enterprise” means a big project or undertaking and is often used to
talk about business ventures. It's strange, then, that the speaker also calls this
a “pilgrimage”—a long trek towards a holy site. The spiritual connotations of
the word "pilgrimage" imply that the people setting off on this journey are
seeking some sort of deep fulfillment, but the earthly connotations of the word
"enterprise" suggest that they're looking in the wrong place.

Indeed, as they make their way across the land, the pilgrims get wrapped up in
superficial tasks and observations. They take "copious notes" on things that
don't really seem to matter: transactions made by "the peasants," the behavior
of snakes and goats, and the cities where "a sage" once taught (not the sage’s
actual teachings). Rather than experiencing or trying to find a sense of
connection with their surroundings, they appear to waste their energy
calculating and cataloging material things—on the appearance of progress
rather than actual progress.

This sense that the group’s focus is off reappears when “a friend” with the
most “stylish prose” decides to leave over a squabble about how to “cross a
desert patch.” Despite being ostensibly united in their aim—crossing this
desert—they get so wrapped up in how to do this that the group splinters. The
speaker’s mention of the friend's writing style, rather than its substance, also
mirrors the pilgrims' focus on “where a sage taught” rather than what that
sage taught. In both cases, the pilgrims seem to get distracted from the main
thing that a pilgrimage is typically all about: finding meaning and fulfillment.
They're too focused on achieving some grand feat that they overlook what
matters.

In fact, the further they go the more blinded to their initial purpose they seem
to get. Their leader vaguely promises that he can smell the sea—that is, he
claims to sense that the destination is close at hand—and this spurs them
forward, seemingly enticed by the glory of reaching “the place.” Meanwhile
the pilgrims "notice[] nothing" about the world they actually inhabit, ignoring
bad omens like "thunder" and immediate, basic “needs like soap.” Their
dreams of epic glory blind them to reality.

And even though they do reach their destination, the pilgrims no longer know
"why" they wanted to go there in the first place. They realize that their actions
are "neither great nor rare," but rather hollow and meaningless. Now that
they've reached their goal, the pilgrims intuitively suspect that the goal was
never really the point—and that what it took to get there wasn't worth it.

The journey of life, here, is something deep, personal, and intimate, rather
than a vast, epic trek.

It becomes clear to the readers that this poem isn’t about a mere
journey. It is the story of our life. After reading the poem readers can
understand that chasing the dream is more meaningful than attaining
the result. Our dream is not unique but the path we follow and the
experiences we get are unique. In this way, the poet presents his idea of
an enterprise to the readers.