. Fill in the blanks by choosing appropriate words from the brackets. (i) All the birds fell silent as the mist came up the hill. (silence, silent) (ii) Strangely, a few hours ago, the trees wit with bird song. (were ringing, ring) the arrival of some seasonal visitors. (heralding, heralded)
(iii) The rains
(iv) Usually there unaccountable leaks in tin roofs. (springing, spring) with a beautiful golden light. (suffuse, were
(v) After the rains, the sky and the hills suffused)
(vi) Bepin Babu felt as if someone was him. (observer/observing)
(vii) Bepin Babu did not the man. (knowing, know) a mistake. (made/ aking)
(viii) So, he told the man that he was
(ix) But the man continued to that they knew each other. (persistent/persist)
(x) This made Bepin Babu really (anxious/anxiously)
Answers
Answer:
The first day of monsoon mist. And it’s strange how all the birds fall silent as the mist comes climbing up the hill. Perhaps that’s what makes the mist so melancholy; not only does it conceal the hills, it blankets them in silence too. Only an hour ago the trees were ringing with birdsong. And now the forest is deathly still as though it were midnight.
Through the mist Bijju is calling to his sister. I can hear him running about on the hillside but I cannot see him.
June 25
Some genuine early-monsoon rain, warm and humid, and not that cold high-altitude stuff we’ve been having all year. The plants seem to know it too, and the first cobra lily rears its head from the ferns as I walk up to the bank and post office.
The mist affords a certain privacy.
A school boy asked me to describe the hill station and valley in one sentence, and all I could say was: “A paradise that might have been.”
June 27
The rains have heralded the arrival of some seasonal visitors—a leopard, and several thousand leeches.
Yesterday afternoon the leopard lifted a dog from near the servants’ quarter below the school. In the evening it attacked one of Bijju’s cows but fled at the approach of Bijju’s mother, who came screaming imprecations.
As for the leeches, I shall soon get used to a little bloodletting every day.
Other new arrivals are the scarlet minivets (the females are yellow), flitting silently among the leaves like brilliant jewels. No matter how leafy the trees, these brightly coloured birds cannot conceal themselves, although, by remaining absolutely silent, they sometimes contrive to go unnoticed. Along come a pair of drongos, unnecessarily aggressive, chasing the minivets away.
A tree creeper moves rapidly up the trunk of the oak tree, snapping up insects all the way. Now that the rains are here, there is no dearth of food for the insectivorous birds.