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Question
The Shehnai of Bismillah Khan Thinking about the text :
Tick the right answer.
Bismillah Khan’s paternal ancestors were (barbers, professional musicians).
Solution
Bismillah Khan’s paternal ancestors were professional musicians.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Match the meanings with the words/expressions in italic, and write the appropriate
meaning next to the sentence.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw the bull coming towards him.
Now read the poem.
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No nightingale did ever chant
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt.
Among Arabian Sands
A voice so thrilling ne' er was heard
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day ?
Same natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
that has been, and may be again ?
Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;
I listen'd, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
About the Poet
William Wordsworth was born on 7th April 1770, in Cockermouth in the Lake District,
England. When many poets still wrote about ancient heroes in their grandiloquent
style, Wordsworth focused on nature, children, the poor, common people and used
ordinary words to express his feelings. He defined poetry as "the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings" arising from "emotions recollected in tranquility". He
died at Rydal Mount on April 23, 1850.
'All right!' you 'll cry.'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children?Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Read the lines given above and answer the question given below.
How according to the poet, can children benefit from reading books?
He flungs himself down in a corner to recoup from the fatigue of his visit to the shop. His wife said, “You are getting no sauce today, nor anything else. I can’t find anything to give you to eat. Fast till the evening, it’ll do you good. Take the goats and be gone now,” she cried and added, “Don’t come back before the sun is down.”
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What lie did Muni tell the shopkeeper?
Unleashing the goats from the drumstick tree, Muni started out, driving them ahead and uttering weird cries from time to time in order to urge them on. Me passed through the village with his head bowed in thought. He did not want to look at anyone or be accosted. A couple of cronies lounging in the temple corridor hailed him, but he ignored their call. They had known him in the days of affluence when he lorded over a flock of fleecy sheep, not the miserable grawky goats that he had today.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Describe Muni’s prosperous times.
At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound B. & M. express. In one coach there sat a very pretty young woman dressed in elegant taste and surrounded by all the luxurious comforts of an experienced traveler. Among the newcomers were two young men, one of handsome presence with a bold, frank countenance and manner; the other a ruffled, glum-faced person, heavily built and roughly dressed. The two were handcuffed together.
As they passed down the aisle of the coach the only vacant seat offered was a reversed one facing the attractive young woman. Here the linked couple seated themselves. The young woman’s glance fell upon them with a distant, swift disinterest; then with a lovely smile brightening her countenance and a tender pink tingeing her rounded cheeks, she held out a little gray-gloved hand. When she spoke her voice, full, sweet, and deliberate, proclaimed that its owner was accustomed to speak and be heard.
“Well, Mr. Easton, if you will make me speak first, 1 suppose 1 must. Don’t vou ever recognize old friends when you meet them in the West?”
The younger man roused himself sharply at the sound of her voice, seemed to struggle with a slight embarrassment which he threw off instantly, and then clasped her fingers with his left hand.
He slightly raised his right hand, bound at the wrist by the shining “bracelet” to the left one of his companion.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Why does the author call the two men as the ‘linked couple?’
From the day, perhaps a hundred years ago when he sun had hatched him in a sandbank, and he had broken his shell, and got his head out and looked around, ready to snap at anything, before he was even fully hatched-from that day, when he had at once made for the water, ready to fend for himself immediately, he had lived by his brainless craft and ferocity. Escaping the birds of prey and the great carnivorous fishes that eat baby crocodiles, he has prospered, catching all the food he needed, and storing it till putrid in holes in the bank. Tepid water to live in and plenty of rotted food grew him to his great length. Now nothing could pierce the inch-?thick armoured hide. Not even rifle bullets,
which would bounce off. Only the eyes and the soft underarms offered a place. He lived well in the river, sunning himself sometimes with other crocodiles-muggers, as well as the long-? snouted fish-?eating gharials-on warm rocks and sandbanks where the sun dried the clay on them quite white, and where they could plop off into the water in a moment if alarmed. The big crocodile fed mostly on fish, but also on deer and monkeys come to drink, perhaps a duck or two.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What did the big crocodile feed on?
Beside him in the shoals as he lay waiting glimmered a blue gem. It was not a gem, though: it was sand—?worn glass that had been rolling about in the river for a long time. By chance, it was perforated right through—the neck of a bottle perhaps?—a blue bead. In the shrill noisy village above the ford, out of a mud house the same colour as the ground came a little girl, a thin starveling child dressed in an earth—?coloured rag. She had torn the rag in two to make skirt and sari. Sibia was eating the last of her meal, chupatti wrapped round a smear of green chilli and rancid butter; and she divided this also, to make
it seem more, and bit it, showing straight white teeth. With her ebony hair and great eyes, and her skin of oiled brown cream, she was a happy immature child—?woman about twelve years old. Bare foot, of course, and often goosey—?cold on a winter morning, and born to toil. In all her life, she had never owned anything but a rag. She had never owned even one anna—not a pice.
Why does the writer mention the blue bead at the same time that the crocodile is introduced?
Ans. The author mentions the blue bead at the same time that the crocodile is introduced to create suspense and a foreshadowing of the events’to happen.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Describe Sibia’s home.
Answer the following question.
“We have orders to let them shout”.What is the policeman referring to?
What do you think the mechanical hand was trying to do?
The following sentence has two blanks. Fill in the blanks with appropriate forms of the word given in brackets.
The____________ said that only fresh evidence would make him change his___________. (judge)
Complete the following sentence.
The beggar said that the kind ladies of the household___________________________________.
Which ways did Soapy try to reach the prison in vain?
What do you think the man said to his friend who waited at the door?
‘The monkey was scared and depressed’. Why? .
What was troubling the talking fan?
Multiple Choice Question:
Who is the poet of this poem?
Answer the question.
What does he imagine about
where teachers live?
Study the following phrases and their meanings. Use them appropriately to complete the sentences that follow.
The police are …………… the matter thoroughly.
What does Banquo’s soliloquy in Act III Scene i of the play Macbeth, reveal about him?
