Question

Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow. 

(8 marks)

1. I am not an environmentalist in the fashionable sense of the term. I support dams or water harvesting, if either will solve the drinking water crises. I will eschew plastic and carry my groceries in bags of natural fibres. If the ozone layer is to be protected, or if unleaded petrol and CNG will clear our lungs and ensure a better quality of life, I will root for it.

2. My generation had a glimpse of an era when the resourceful use of resources was a creed. When we were in school, we were taught to eke out our pencil stubs by fitting them into old fountain pen holders. The eraser had to virtually become non- existent before it was replaced. One instrument box saw us through school. Uniform hems were carefully let down or handed down to younger siblings, as were textbooks. You did not have to be on the bread line to observe financial stringency. It was not in good taste to flaunt wealth and the parents sincerely believed that a little deprivation honed the spirit.

3. They had their own tales of deprivation. They walked many miles to school, while we were privileged to have buses, bicycles and even cars to ferry us to and fro. In their youth they studied by lamplight and cooled themselves with Palmyra fans and cooked on firewood, while we could not manage without electric lights and fans and gas stoves. Our children in turn need central airconditioning, computers and microwaves to make life livable. So do we, now. But sometimes I worry that our minds will atrophy with all the software programmes available to us today. We can safely stop thinking for months and years and not even know it.

4. Our parents read no books on lateral thinking, but they were most innovative. Many years ago, my sisters-in-law and I mixed the batter for a fancy cake, full of fruits and nuts. But a power cut rendered the oven impotent. Powerless, we abandoned the cake baking.

5. However, after two hours there came the mouth-watering aroma of freshly baked cake. My mother-in-law was holding aloft a beautiful specimen. She had put together a makeshift oven with bricks and fuelled it with coconut shell and wood from the backyard, with the baking tray sandwiched between hot sand and coconut shell embers to maintain an even temperature. And this without resorting to self-help books.

6. I find that I have become a part of a new consumer society that is choking on its own glut. Where we know the price of everything but value nothing.

 Based on your reading of the passage, answer the following questions.

a. What were the methods of conservation adopted by the narrator?       (1)

b. What do we know about the older people?

                                                                                                                           (1)

c. How are we more privileged than the earlier generations?                                                                                                   (1)

d. Why does the narrator think that we are a part of new consumer society?                                                                                                               (1)

e. Which of the following means ‘delicious smell’? (para5)                                                                       (1)

(i) Makeshift

(ii)Backyard

(iii) Specimen

(iv) Mouth-watering

f.  Which of the following means ‘pressed between two things’? (para 5)                   (1)

(i) Sandwiched

(ii)Embers

(iii) Specimen

(iv) Aloft

g.   Which of the following means ‘not having anything’ (para 3)          (1)

(i) Lamplight

(ii) Deprivation

(iii) Atrophy

(iv) privileged

h.  Which of the following means ‘lack of water’ (para 1)

(i) Unleaded

(ii) Water-crises

(iii) Water-harvesting

(iv) Eschew                                          
​

Answer 1

Answer:-

e. Specimen

f.(ii)Embers

g.privileged

h.Water-crises

plz mark me brilliance:-