Reference to context
2. And now our lives were turned upside down, each one of us trying to cope with the changed
circumstances as best as we
best as we could
av What did the narrator mean by the phrase turned upside down?
b. Why had such a situation arisen?
c What were the problems faced by the narrator due to her changed circumstances?
3. I tried to shake off my feeling of certain disaster.
a. What does the expression'shake off' mean?
b. What disaster was the narrator referring to?
c. How did the narrator try to shake off the feeling?
this is the chapter of suvira
Answers
Admiration In Plato’s dialogue, The Symposium, the playwright Aristophanes suggests that the origins of love lie in a desire to complete ourselves by finding a long lost ‘other half’. At the beginning of time, he ventures in playful conjecture, all human beings were hermaphrodites with double backs and flanks, four hands and four legs and two faces turned in opposite directions on the same head. These hermaphrodites were so powerful and their pride so overweening that Zeus was forced to cut them in two, into a male and female half – and from that day, each one of us has nostalgically yearned to rejoin the part from which he or she was once severed. We don’t need to buy into the literal story to recognise a symbolic truth: we fall in love with people who promise that they will in some way help to make us whole. At the centre of our ecstatic feelings in the early days of love, there is a gratitude at having found someone who seems to complement our qualities and dispositions. Unlike us, they have (perhaps) a remarkable patience with administrative detail or an invigorating habit of rebelling against officialdom. They may have an ability to keep things in proportion and to avoid hysteria. Or it might be that they have a particularly melancholy and sensitive nature and are in touch with deeper currents of thought and feeling. We do not all fall in love with the same people because we are not all missing the same things. The aspects we find desirable in our partners speak of what we admire but do not have secure possession of in ourselves. We may be powerfully drawn to the competent person because we know how our own lives are held up by tendencies to panic around bureaucratic complications. Or our love may zero in on the comedic sides of a partner because we’re only too aware of our tendencies to sterile despair and cynicism. Or we may be drawn to an atmosphere of thoughtful concentration in a partner as a relief from our own skittish minds. We love at least in part in the hope of being helped and redeemed by our lovers. There is an underlying desire for education and growth. We hope to change a little in their presence, becoming – through their help – better versions of ourselves. Love contains just below the surface a hope for reparation and education. We usually think of education as something harsh imposed upon us against our will. Love promises to educate us in a gentler, more seductive way.
b) This situation has arisen because her father had resigned from his job and started to change tracks in his career.
c) The problems faced by the narrator due to the changed circumstances were that she had to leave her hometown and it was awful for her to say goodbye to her friends, especially anu. She has to adjust herself in her new school . She was unprepared for the Delhi's chilled mornings as she lived in Calcutta with a warmer climate.