Paragraph :- The tree was young and strong and it took a long time to kill. It took two workmen with
axes, two days including tea breaks. Which without conscious irony, they took in the shade of the
leafy branches of the tree they were chopping down. It was a Gulmohar I had planted 13 years ago,
along with several other saplings, when Bunny and I moved into the National Media Centre. The
NMC is built on a little over 22 acres and many hundreds of the local babul trees that used to cloak
that part of the Haryana countryside like smoke from evening chullas must have been cut down to
make way for the brick and cement of our colony. I’m not a tree hugger but still felt that some
restitution was due. So Bunny and I planted several saplings. The two Gulmohars at the rear were
foot high saplings when we put them in the floor window, flooding the room with afterglow and
screening from view the ugly scars of new construction in what had once been open fields behind
our house. I felt the smugness of satisfaction of having done the right thing, I’d given back, in
however small a way a little bit of what we take away from the earth every day, everywhere.
Righteousness invites its own revenge. The roots of one of the trees had spread, crushing the sewage
system. The handy man gave us the choice of either cutting down the tree or its roots would endanger
the foundation of the house.
Questions :-
1) What is the irony in the first para?
2)What did the author decide to do?
3)What sort of feelings evoked in the author when he visualizes newly grown Gulmohar trees?
4)Why did the writer had to get free felled?
5)What is meant by “being righteous”?
Answers
ALL ANSWERS ARE IN THIS
Paragraph :- The tree was young and strong and it took a long time to kill. It took two workmen with
axes, two days including tea breaks. Which without conscious irony, they took in the shade of the
leafy branches of the tree they were chopping down. It was a Gulmohar I had planted 13 years ago,
along with several other saplings, when Bunny and I moved into the National Media Centre. The
NMC is built on a little over 22 acres and many hundreds of the local babul trees that used to cloak
that part of the Haryana countryside like smoke from evening chullas must have been cut down to
make way for the brick and cement of our colony. I’m not a tree hugger but still felt that some
restitution was due. So Bunny and I planted several saplings. The two Gulmohars at the rear were
foot high saplings when we put them in the floor window, flooding the room with afterglow and
screening from view the ugly scars of new construction in what had once been open fields behind
our house. I felt the smugness of satisfaction of having done the right thing, I’d given back, in
however small a way a little bit of what we take away from the earth every day, everywhere.
Righteousness invites its own revenge. The roots of one of the trees had spread, crushing the sewage
system. The handy man gave us the choice of either cutting down the tree or its roots would endanger
the foundation of the house.