Answer the following questions:

1. Why did the villagers pray to God to paralyse the scorpion?

2. Explain why the peasants call the world “unreal”.

3. What does the narrator mean when he says, ‘the peace of understanding on each face’?

4. Explain, ‘I watched the flame feeding on my mother’.

5. What do you understand about the mother from her utterance in the last two lines?

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Solution

1. The villagers prayed to God to paralyse the scorpion because they believed that with every movement that the scorpion made, the poison moved in the blood of the narrator’s mother.

2. The peasants called the world “unreal” because they were superstitious. They believed that this life is a cycle of births, deaths and re-births, wherein the balance of sins and virtues of one birth decides the good fortune or misfortunes in the next birth.

3. The villagers believed that the narrator’s mother was suffering because the scorpion was moving. They felt her suffering would erase the sins of her previous birth and decrease her suffering in her next birth. On the basis of their irrational beliefs, the villagers arrived at an understanding of what had happened to the narrator’s mother, and it was the “peace of (this) understanding” that was reflected on their faces.

4. The narrator’s father burned the bitten toe with paraffin. The narrator thus watched the “flame feeding on (his) mother”. The “flame” can also be a symbol of the pain his mother was suffering from.

5. From the last two lines we know that the mother cared for her children’s well being more than she cared for herself.

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Similar questions

Read the lines given below and answer the following questions:

(a) I cannot remember my mother

only sometimes is the midst of my play

a tune seems to hover over my playthings,

(i) What is the poet doing when he remembers his mother?

(ii) What reminds him of her?

(iii) When did his mother hum that song?

(b) When in the early autumn morning

the smell of shiuli flowers floats in the air

the scent of the morning service in the temple

comes to me as the scent of my mother.

(i) What happens in autumn which reminds the poet of his mother?

(ii) What do you think the poet’s mother did with the shiuli flowers?

(iii) What do you think would constitute “the scent of the morning service in the temple”?

Answer the following questions.

1. Where was Kalpana Chawla born? Why is she called an Indian-American? (3)

2. When and why did she go to the U.S.? Who did she marry? (2, 3)

3. How did she become an astronaut? What gave her the idea that she could be an

astronaut? (3)

4. What abilities must an astronaut have, according to the journalist? (6)

5. Describe Kalpana Chawla’s first mission in space. (5)

6. What does Kalpana Chawla say about pursuing a dream? Do you agree with her

that success is possible? (7)

Answer the following questions:

(a) Why do you think the poet does not remember his mother?

(b) How old is the poet at the time of his mother’s death? Give reasons to support your answer.

(i) Only sometimes in the midst of my play a tune seems to hover over my playthings.

(ii) I feel that the stillness of my mother’s gaze on my face has spread all over the sky.

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