Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow : I was one of many children - a short boy with rather undistinguished looks, born to tall and handsome parents. We lived in our ancestral house, which was built in the middle of the 19th century. It was a fairly large pucca house, made of limestone and brick, on the Mosque Street in Rameswaram. My austere father used to avoid all inessential comforts and luxuries. However, all necessities were provided for, in terms of food, medicine or clothes. In fact, I would say mine was a very secure childhood, both materially and emotionally. I normally ate with my mother, sitting on the floor of the kitchen. She would place a banana leaf before me, on which she then ladled rice and aromatic sambhar, a variety of sharp, home-made pickles and a dollop of fresh coconut chutney. The famous Shiva temple, which made Rameswaram so sacred to pilgrims, was about a ten-minute walk from our house. Our locality was predominantly Muslim, but there were quite a few Hindu families too, living amicably with their Muslim neighbours. There was a very old mosque in our locality where my father would take me for evening prayers. When my father came out of the mosque after the prayers, people of different religions would be sitting outside, waiting for him. Many of them offered bowls of water to my father who would dip his fingertips in them and say a prayer. This water was then carried home for invalids. I also remember people visiting our home to offer thanks after being cured. My father always smiled and asked them to thank Allah, the benevolent and merciful. (a) What kind of a person was the narrator’s father ? Quote two qualities of character. (b) What were the narrator’s childhood experiences that would have shaped his later life ? (c) Can you say that there was religious harmony in Rameswaram ? Give 2 points in support of your answer. (d) Which words in the passage mean the same as - (i) Sweet smelling (ii) In a friendly manner
Answers
(b) Unity between people of all religions without any kind of discrimination...
(c) Yes I. Famous shiva temple II. Unity between people of all religions..
(d) i. aromatic
ii. amicably
Answer:
. I WAS born into a middle-class Tamil family in the
island town of Rameswaram in the erstwhile Madras
State. My father, Jainulabdeen, had neither much
formal education nor much wealth; despite these
disadvantages, he possessed great innate wisdom
and a true generosity of spirit. He had an ideal
helpmate in my mother, Ashiamma. I do not recall
the exact number of people she fed every day, but I
am quite certain that far more outsiders ate with
us than all the members of our own family
put together.
2. I was one of many children — a short boy with
rather undistinguished looks, born to tall and
handsome parents. We lived in our ancestral house,
which was built in the middle of the nineteenth
century. It was a fairly large pucca house, made of
limestone and brick, on the Mosque Street in
Rameswaram. My austere father used to avoid all
inessential comforts and luxuries. However, all
necessities were provided for, in terms of food,
medicine or clothes. In fact, I would say mine
was a very secure childhood, both materially
and emotionally.
Explanation:
The Second World War broke out in 1939, when I
was eight years old. For reasons I have never been
able to understand, a sudden demand for tamarind
seeds erupted in the market. I used to collect the
seeds and sell them to a provision shop on Mosque
Street. A day’s collection would fetch me the princely
sum of one anna. My brother-in-law Jallaluddin
would tell me stories about the War which I would
later attempt to trace in the headlines in Dinamani.
Our area, being isolated, was completely unaffected
by the War. But soon India was forced to join the
Allied Forces and something like a state of
emergency was declared. The first casualty came
in the form of the suspension of the train halt at
Rameswaram station. The newspapers now had to
be bundled and thrown out from the moving train
on the Rameswaram Road between Rameswaram
and Dhanuskodi. That forced my cousin Samsuddin,
who distributed newspapers in Rameswarm, to look
for a helping hand to catch the bundles and, as if
naturally, I filled the slot. Samsuddin helped me
earn my first wages. Half a century later, I can still
feel the surge of pride in earning my own money for
the first time.
4. Every child is born, with some inherited
characteristics, into a specific socio-economic and
emotional environment, and trained in certain ways
by figures of authority. I inherited honesty and selfdiscipline from my father; from my mother, I
inherited faith in goodness and deep kindness and
so did my three brothers and sister. I had three
close friends in my childhood — Ramanadha Sastry,
Aravindan and Sivaprakasan. All these boys were
from orthodox Hindu Brahmin families. As children,
none of us ever felt any difference amongst ourselves
because of our religious differences and upbringing.
In fact, Ramanadha Sastry was the son of Pakshi
Lakshmana Sastry, the high priest of the
Rameswaram temple. Later, he took over the
priesthood of the Rameswaram temple from his
princely sum:
generous amount
(here, ironic)
anna: an old Indian
coin, worth about six
paise
Allied Forces:the
armies of U.K.,
U.S.A. and Russia
during the Second
World War
My Childhood /69
2018-19
father; Aravindan went into the business of
arranging transport for visiting pilgrims; and
Sivaprakasan became a catering contractor for the
Southern Railways.
5. During the annual Shri Sita Rama Kalyanam
ceremony, our family used to arrange boats with a
special platform for carrying idols of the Lord from
the temple to the marriage site, situated in the
middle of the pond called Rama Tirtha which was
near our house. Events from the Ramayana and
from the life of the Prophet were the bedtime stories
my mother and grandmother would tell the children
in our family.
6. One day when I was in the fifth standard at the
Rameswaram Elementary School, a new teacher
came to our class. I used to wear a cap which
marked me as a Muslim, and I always sat in the
front row next to Ramanadha Sastry,
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