NEB Class 12 · Past paper
The official NEB Class 12 model questions for English, all 329 questions with solved model answers.
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Why did the young couple feel like sojourners in a foreign land when they moved into their new house?
The young couple felt like sojourners in a foreign land because the street they moved into was full of European migrants whose way of life was completely unfamiliar to them. A Macedonian family lived on one side and a Polish widower on the other. The couple had grown up in the expansive outer suburbs, where good neighbours were seldom seen and never heard, so the constant sounds of spitting, washing and day-long shouting struck them as strange and even threatening. They could not understand the languages spoken around them or the habits they observed, and they were watched with open curiosity in return. Being newly married and new to the area, they felt like temporary visitors in someone else's country rather than residents of their own street.
What behaviour of the Macedonian family and the Polish widower puzzled the newcomers, and how was it later explained?
Two kinds of behaviour puzzled the young couple. The Macedonian family shouted, ranted and screamed from morning to night, and the couple, coming from a quiet suburb, assumed that something violent was happening. It took them a full six ...
How did the vegetable garden and the hen house help the couple and their neighbours come closer?
The garden and the hen house were the first projects that gave the couple and their neighbours something to share. In autumn the couple cleared their overgrown backyard, manured the soil and planted vegetables. The Macedonian family, who...
Explain with reference to the context: "It occurred to him that the twentieth century novel had not prepared him for this."
This is the final sentence of Tim Winton's story "Neighbours". It comes at the moment when the young man's wife has just given birth at home after a long labour, and he looks up to see the Macedonian family and the Polish widower gathere...
Trace the change in the attitude of the young couple towards their neighbours over the course of the story.
At the beginning of "Neighbours" the young couple regard their migrant neighbours with suspicion and mild disgust. Having come from the outer suburbs, where good neighbours were seldom seen and never heard, they are shocked by the spitti...
Write a character sketch of the young man in "Neighbours".
The young man in Tim Winton's "Neighbours" is never named, which allows him to stand for any educated newcomer confronted with an unfamiliar community. He is newly married and a postgraduate student writing a thesis on the development of...
Discuss "Neighbours" as a story about multicultural harmony and neighbourliness.
Tim Winton's "Neighbours" is a compact story that dramatises how people of different cultures can move from mutual suspicion to genuine community. It does so not through speeches about tolerance but through the ordinary business of livin...
"Prejudice is born of ignorance and dies with acquaintance." Discuss this statement with reference to Tim Winton's "Neighbours".
The statement that prejudice is born of ignorance and dies with acquaintance could serve as a summary of Tim Winton's "Neighbours". The story follows a young couple whose early judgements of their migrant neighbours are almost entirely wrong, and it shows those judgements dissolving as knowledge and contact replace ignorance and distance.
The couple's prejudice is clearly rooted in ignorance. They arrive from the expansive outer suburbs, where good neighbours were seldom seen and never heard, and they have no experience of the expressive, communal life of European migrants. Because they do not understand the Macedonian family's language or manner, they hear their daily shouting as violence; it takes six months to learn that the family are merely talking. Because they do not know the Polish widower's history or trade, his hammering looks like madness. Because they have never seen food produced at home, the killing of poultry next door seems barbaric. In each case the couple judge what they see by the standards of the world they came from, and the judgement says more about their limited experience than about their neighbours.
Acquaintance then undoes the prejudice, and Winton is careful to show that acquaintance comes through shared activity rather than argument. The garden is the first bridge: the Macedonian family cross the fence to teach the young man how to plant, and the lesson passes through hands rather than words. The hen house is the second: the Polish widower's apparently pointless hammering turns out to be real skill, and it is placed at the couple's service. Food, the most basic form of hospitality, follows in the form of pickled vegetables. As the couple come to know their neighbours through these exchanges, their fear disappears and they even begin to shout across the fence themselves.
The birth completes the process. The people the couple once wished away are the people who stand outside rejoicing when the baby arrives, and the young man weeps at the sight. His final realisation, that the twentieth century novel had not prepared him for this, admits that his sophisticated learning had left him ignorant of what mattered most, while the migrants, who had seemed so strange, understood it perfectly.
The story therefore supports the statement fully. Prejudice in "Neighbours" is never presented as wickedness; it is presented as a natural consequence of not knowing, and it dies naturally once knowing begins. Winton's quiet message is that the cure for prejudice is not lecturing but living alongside one another, sharing gardens, tools, food and, finally, joy.
What do the Macedonian family and the Polish widower represent in the story? Describe them briefly.
The Macedonian family and the Polish widower are the migrant neighbours of the young couple in "Neighbours", and together they represent the warmth, skill and generosity of a community that outsiders misjudge. The Macedonian family are l...
Why was Mrs. Baroda provoked at the beginning of the story?
Mrs. Baroda was a little provoked because her husband Gaston had invited his old college friend Gouvernail to spend a week or two with them on the plantation. She and Gaston had entertained a great deal during the winter in New Orleans, and she had been looking forward to a period of unbroken rest and quiet conversation alone with her husband. A guest, especially a stranger, meant that this private time would be lost. Her irritation was increased by the picture she had already formed of Gouvernail without ever meeting him: she imagined him tall, slim and cynical, with eye-glasses and his hands in his pockets, and she had decided in advance that she would not like him. Her provocation, then, came partly from the interruption of her plans and partly from prejudice against a man she did not yet know.
How had Mrs. Baroda pictured Gouvernail, and how did he actually turn out to be?
Before Gouvernail arrived, Mrs. Baroda had built up an unflattering picture of him from the little she knew. He was a journalist rather than a society man, so she imagined him as tall, slim and cynical, wearing eye-glasses and keeping hi...
Why did Mrs. Baroda decide to go to the city to stay with her aunt?
Mrs. Baroda gave her husband a simple reason for going to the city: she was tired of Gouvernail's company and wanted a change. She told Gaston she would have liked the guest better if he gave her some trouble or were more like other men,...
Explain with reference to the context: "there are some battles in life which a human being must fight alone."
This line comes from Kate Chopin's "A Respectable Woman", at the moment after Mrs. Baroda has fled from the bench under the live oak where she sat beside Gouvernail. She has just felt a powerful and unexpected attraction to her husband's...
Describe the scene beneath the live oak and explain its importance in the story.
The scene beneath the live oak is the emotional centre of "A Respectable Woman". On the evening before she plans to leave for the city, Mrs. Baroda sits alone on a bench under the tree at the edge of the gravel walk, troubled by feelings...
How does the story end? What does Mrs. Baroda mean when she says, "I have overcome everything"?
After the night under the live oak, Mrs. Baroda leaves for the city early the next morning and does not return until Gouvernail has gone. When Gaston later proposes that his friend should visit again the following summer, she firmly oppo...
Write a character sketch of Mrs. Baroda. Does she deserve to be called a respectable woman?
Mrs. Baroda, the central character of Kate Chopin's "A Respectable Woman", is a wealthy planter's wife in late nineteenth century Louisiana. Her first name is never given, which keeps her defined by her married role, yet Chopin gives her...
Discuss the theme of desire and social respectability in "A Respectable Woman".
Kate Chopin's "A Respectable Woman" is a brief but penetrating study of what happens when an unexpected desire arises inside a conventional marriage and confronts the code of respectability that a woman of the 1890s was expected to live by. The story's title announces the theme, and its final sentence turns the title into a question.
Chopin first establishes the social world in which respectability operates. Mrs. Baroda is the wife of a prosperous Louisiana sugar planter, mistress of a plantation house with a wide portico and Corinthian pillars, and an accomplished hostess. Her life is orderly and comfortable, and her marriage is a happy one; Gaston is described as her husband who was also her friend. Nothing in this world prepares her for the feeling that Gouvernail awakens.
Desire enters not through a charming seducer but through a quiet, tired man who asks nothing of her. Gouvernail's reserve unsettles Mrs. Baroda because it gives her nothing to manage, and her attempts to penetrate it draw her steadily closer to him. Chopin shows that attraction can grow out of curiosity and frustration, and that it can take a woman by surprise. Under the live oak, as Gouvernail murmurs Whitman and speaks of wanting only to exist, she stops hearing his words and becomes aware only of his voice and his nearness. The impulse to touch his face and whisper against his cheek is presented as natural, physical and involuntary. Chopin does not moralise about it.
Respectability answers with equal force. The stronger the impulse grows, the further Mrs. Baroda draws away, until she leaves the bench altogether. She considers confessing to her husband but decides against it, because she is a respectable woman and a sensible one, and she knows there are some battles a human being must fight alone. She escapes to the city and stays away until the guest has gone. Respectability here is not hypocrisy; it is a real and costly self-discipline, and Chopin makes us feel both the cost and the loneliness of it.
The ending refuses to declare a winner in this conflict. When Mrs. Baroda herself proposes that Gouvernail return, and tells Gaston, "I have overcome everything! you will see. This time I shall be very nice to him," the words can mean that desire has been defeated or that scruple has. Chopin leaves both readings open, and in doing so she exposes how thin the line between respectability and its opposite can be. The story's achievement is to treat a woman's desire seriously, neither punishing it nor celebrating it, and to show that respectability is a battle fought in private rather than a fixed condition that a woman either has or lacks.
Sketch the character of Gouvernail. Why was Mrs. Baroda drawn to him?
Gouvernail is the guest whose visit disturbs the peace of the Baroda plantation in Kate Chopin's "A Respectable Woman". He is Gaston's friend from college, now a journalist, and, as Gaston explains, a brilliant man who has been overworke...
Why does Rakesh touch his father's feet at the beginning of the story? What does this act show?
On the morning the results are published, Rakesh learns that he has stood first in the medical examination in the whole country. Instead of celebrating with his friends, he goes straight to the veranda where his father Varma is drinking tea and bows down to touch his feet. In Indian culture touching the feet of an elder is a gesture of deep respect and gratitude, and it acknowledges that one's success is owed to one's parents. The act shows Rakesh's humility and his strong sense of filial duty even at the moment of his greatest personal triumph. It also sets up the title, because Varma tells every visitor that his son's first thought was for his father. Later in the story this same devotion, transformed into medical control, will make the father miserable, so the opening gesture is the beginning of the story's irony.
How do the neighbours respond to Rakesh's success, and how do they react later when Varma complains about his son?
When Rakesh's result appears in the papers, the neighbours pour into the house to congratulate Varma. They are impressed by the marks, but even more by Rakesh's modesty in touching his father's feet, and they praise the family for produc...
Why does Varma feel that his son's care has become a punishment?
After his retirement and the death of his wife, Varma falls ill frequently and Rakesh takes charge of his health. As a doctor, Rakesh forbids everything the old man enjoys: fried snacks, sweets such as jalebis and halwa, rich curries and...
Write a character sketch of Rakesh. Is he truly a devoted son?
Rakesh is the central figure of Anita Desai's story, and the title describes him as the neighbours see him. From the first page he is brilliant, disciplined and modest. He tops the medical examination for the whole country, yet his first...
Sketch the character of Varma, the old father, showing how he changes over the course of the story.
Varma is Rakesh's father and, in many ways, the true centre of the story, since it is his experience that gives the title its irony. He comes from a modest background, and his son's triumph in the medical examination is the proudest mome...
Discuss the irony in the title "A Devoted Son" and the major themes of the story.
The title of Anita Desai's story is a phrase spoken with admiration by the neighbours, and the story's whole design is to make the reader hear it in two ways at once. On the surface Rakesh is exactly what the title says. He tops the country in the medical examination and touches his father's feet before doing anything else. He returns from America to his parents, marries the girl his mother chooses, and when his father falls ill he nurses him personally. The neighbours never tire of telling Varma how fortunate he is.
The irony emerges as the story shifts from the neighbours' view to Varma's. The devotion that everyone praises is, from the inside, an unbearable regime. Rakesh the doctor decides what his father may eat and forbids sweets, fried food and rich curries. Varma is not neglected; he is over-managed, and when he complains to Bhatia that his famous son is starving him, nobody listens, because a devoted son cannot, by definition, be doing wrong. The final scene completes the irony: the devoted son arrives with a fresh tonic and the father, in despair, smashes it and begs to be allowed to die. The very word "devoted" has come to mean control, deprivation and the denial of a dying man's wishes.
Several themes flow from this central irony. The first is the conflict between duty and love. Rakesh performs every duty a son can perform, yet he never asks what would make his father happy. Desai suggests that duty without empathy is hollow and can even be cruel. The second theme is the reversal of roles between parent and child. Varma begins as the honoured patriarch and ends as a helpless patient, and the story shows how humiliating this natural reversal becomes when the child does not soften it with tenderness.
A third theme is the clash between modern medical knowledge and traditional family life: Rakesh's scientific correctness leaves no room for the small pleasures that make old age bearable. A fourth is appearance versus reality, the neighbours' public verdict against the private truth of the sickroom. Finally, Varma's cry that he does not want to live only to eat medicines raises the question of dignity in death.
Desai does not condemn Rakesh, who is sincere and genuinely attached to his father. That is what makes the irony painful: good intentions and social approval are not enough, and real devotion must include listening to the person one claims to serve.
Comment on the ending of the story. Why does Varma refuse the tonic, and what does the ending suggest?
The story ends in Varma's sickroom. Rakesh, the celebrated doctor and devoted son, arrives with a new tonic and tells his father cheerfully that it will make him feel better. For most of the story Varma has grumbled, sulked and schemed f...
What roles do Veena and Bhatia play in the story?
Veena and Bhatia are minor characters, but each represents one side of the household conflict. Veena is Rakesh's wife, the plump, uneducated but placid and old-fashioned girl his mother chose for him. She turns out to be a good wife and ...
Who are Evans and Hooker, and why have they come to the forest?
Evans and Hooker are two Englishmen who arrive by canoe at a tropical shore at the beginning of H. G. Wells's story. They are not honest explorers but treasure hunters who have already committed a crime. Some time before, a Chinese man n...
What is the significance of Evans's dream in the canoe?
As the canoe approaches the shore, the exhausted Evans falls asleep and dreams. The dream serves several purposes at once. First, it supplies the back-story that Wells does not narrate directly: we see the jungle camp, the firelight, Chang-hi telling of the gold from a wrecked Spanish galleon, and the moment when Evans and Hooker attacked him, killed him and seized the map. In this way the reader learns that the two men are murderers without the narrator ever having to say so.
Second, the dream reveals Evans's troubled conscience. What haunts him is not the violence but Chang-hi's face, which wore a sly, knowing grin as he died. Evans cannot understand why a dying man should look triumphant, and the puzzle refuses to leave him.
Third, the dream is the story's most important piece of foreshadowing. The grin is the key to the ending: Chang-hi knew that the gold was guarded by poisoned thorns and that anyone who stole it would die. The dream plants this mystery early so that the final revelation strikes with full force.
What do Evans and Hooker find when they reach the treasure spot in the forest? How do they react?
Following the map along the stream and then through the trees, the two men come upon a disturbed clearing. The first thing they see is a dead man lying face down among the ferns. He is Chinese, one of Chang-hi's companions, and he has be...
Compare and contrast the characters of Evans and Hooker.
Evans and Hooker are the two Englishmen at the centre of Wells's story, partners in crime who share the same greed but differ in temperament, and the difference is used by the author to structure the plot. Evans is the more impulsive and...
Discuss the theme of greed and its consequences in "The Treasure in the Forest".
Greed is the driving force of Wells's story, and the plot can be read as a demonstration of what greed does to the human mind and what it finally costs. From the first page the two Englishmen are shown to be men who will do anything for ...
Write a critical appreciation of "The Treasure in the Forest", showing how Wells builds suspense and brings the story to its ironic ending.
"The Treasure in the Forest" is a short adventure story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1894, and it is a fine example of how much can be achieved in a few pages when every detail is made to work. Two Englishmen, Evans and Hooker, follow a stolen map to gold hidden in a tropical forest and die of the poisoned thorns that guard it. What makes the story memorable is the craftsmanship with which Wells keeps the reader guessing and then strikes with the justice of the ending.
Suspense begins with the setting: the white surf of the reef, the river mouth, the dark forest and the cloud-like mountains, beautiful but remote and unknown, while the careful matching of map to coastline conveys the men's tension. Wells then withholds information. We are not told who the men are or how they came by the map; instead we enter Evans's dream and learn the truth in fragments: the jungle camp, Chang-hi's account of gold from a Spanish galleon, the killing, and above all the grin on the dying man's face. That grin is the story's central mystery, and Wells makes sure we cannot forget it.
In the clearing Wells presents the clues in quick succession: a swollen corpse, a half-dug pit, the gold ingots, thorns lying on the ground, and a small prick in Evans's thumb. The reader senses danger before the characters do, and this gap between what we suspect and what they ignore creates powerful dramatic irony. Their greed, which blinds them, is what keeps us anxious.
The climax is swift and physical. Evans staggers, drops the coat full of ingots and dies in convulsions while Hooker watches helplessly. Only now does Hooker understand that Chang-hi guarded his treasure with poisoned thorns, and the final stroke is the thorn in his own hand: the story ends not with a survivor but with a man who knows he is about to die. The grin is explained at last.
The ending is ironic in several ways. The treasure the men killed for causes their death; the map they trusted said nothing of the danger; the dead man they despised has the last laugh; and Hooker's intelligence brings understanding only when it is useless. This is poetic justice achieved without a single moralising sentence.
Stylistically, the story is compact, concrete and visual, with short scenes and a single day's action, and every element planted early pays off later. Wells also quietly reverses the colonial adventure pattern in which European explorers triumph over exotic lands. In sum, the story is a small masterpiece of suspense whose ironic ending turns a treasure hunt into a fable about greed and its reward.
Explain the significance of Chang-hi's grin in the story.
Chang-hi's grin is the most important single image in the story and the key to its ending. Chang-hi was the Chinese man who, with his companions, had recovered gold from a wrecked Spanish galleon and hidden it in the forest. Evans and Ho...
Comment on the ending of the story. Do you think it delivers poetic justice?
The ending of "The Treasure in the Forest" is sudden, grim and carefully prepared. Having loaded Evans's coat with gold ingots, the two men set off for their canoe. Within a short distance Evans begins to sway, complains of pain in his t...
Why does the narrator return to his old home after more than twenty years?
The narrator returns after more than twenty years for a purpose that gives him no joy. The old house, which the clan had shared for generations, has been sold to another family, and it has to be handed over before the end of the year. He...
Describe Runtu as the narrator remembers him from boyhood.
The narrator remembers Runtu as a boy of a little over ten, the son of a part-time labourer who came to the house in the year of the great ancestral sacrifice to look after the vessels. He had a round purple face, wore a small felt cap, ...
Who is Mrs Yang? What does her behaviour reveal about her?
Mrs Yang is a neighbour of about fifty with thin lips and prominent cheekbones who stands with her legs apart like a pair of compasses, which earns her the nickname the "Compass". In her youth she sat all day in the bean-curd shop across...
What does the narrator mean when he says a "thick wall" had grown between him and Runtu?
When Runtu finally greets his boyhood friend with the respectful cry "Master!", the narrator shivers and realizes that a "lamentable thick wall" has grown between them. The wall is the barrier of class and custom. As children they were s...
What does Runtu ask for from the old house, and what does the request suggest?
Before he leaves, Runtu asks for a few household items that the family will not carry away: two long tables, four chairs, an incense burner and candlesticks, and a balance. He also asks for all the ashes from the kitchen stove, because on the sandy soil of his fields they serve as fertilizer. The request is a quiet but painful measure of his poverty. A man who once shared everything freely with his friend must now ask for cast-off furniture and kitchen waste, and the incense burner and candlesticks suggest that, worn down by hardship, he turns to the worship of idols for consolation.
How has Runtu changed since childhood, and what does Lu Xun identify as the causes of his decline?
The Runtu of the narrator's memory and the Runtu who walks into the old house are almost two different people. As a boy he had a round purple face, wore a felt cap and a shining silver necklet, and his hands were plump and red. He spoke ...
Explain the significance of the friendship between Hong'er and Shuisheng and of the closing image of the road.
The two boys appear only briefly, but they carry the meaning of the ending. Hong'er, the narrator's eight-year-old nephew, and Shuisheng, Runtu's shy fifth child, meet as strangers in the old house and are soon playing together freely, j...
"My Old Home" is a story about the impossibility of returning to the past. Discuss with reference to the text.
"My Old Home" opens as a homecoming and ends as a farewell, and the movement between the two shows that the past to which the narrator wishes to return no longer exists. From the moment his boat approaches, the village under the grey winter sky fails to match the beautiful old home of memory. He tries to comfort himself with the thought that only his mood has changed, but every encounter that follows shows that time has genuinely altered both people and place.
The house itself is the first sign. It has been sold to another family, its rooms must be emptied by the year's end, and withered grass trembles on the roof tiles. The narrator has not come to live there but to dismantle it. The people are the second sign. Mrs Yang, whom he barely remembers as the Beancurd Beauty, has become the shrill and thieving "Compass", and she treats him not as a neighbour's child but as a rich stranger to be flattered and robbed. Most painfully, Runtu, the hero of his boyhood, has become a grey, wrinkled man with hands like pine bark who calls him "Master". Memory offers the narrator a purple-faced boy in a silver necklet, full of stories of birds and shells; reality gives him a silent figure who sits like a wooden image. When the mother urges Runtu to speak as he used to, he cannot. The "thick wall" that rises between the two men is the clearest proof that childhood equality cannot be recovered in an adult world of rank and poverty.
Lu Xun also shows that memory itself is unreliable. The narrator admits that when asked to describe the charms of his beautiful old home he could find no words; the image that sustained him was less a record than a longing. Once it is shattered, he feels no regret at leaving, only a sense of being walled off on every side.
Yet the story does not end in despair. If the past cannot be recovered, the future may still be created. Hong'er and Shuisheng repeat the old friendship, and the narrator hopes they will have a new life, one not measured against a lost golden age. His closing image of hope as a road made by many feet redirects longing from the past to the future. The old home can never be returned to; a new home can only be built.
Who are the two speakers in the text, and how are they connected?
The text is made of two monologues spoken by two very different men. The first speaker is a Western tourist who has come to Nepal to see its mountains, temples and people and who addresses his companion again and again as "Oh guide". The...
What impressions of Nepal does the tourist share with the guide?
The tourist is enchanted by almost everything. He describes the beauty of the sun rising over the eastern hills and lighting the snow peaks, and a sky cleaner than any he has seen. He admires the terraced fields, the farmer at his plough...
How does the tourist interpret the half-closed eyes of the Buddha?
For the tourist the half-closed eyes of the Buddha are the key to Nepal. Well travelled and familiar with the art of many countries, he has never seen an expression like this. The lids are neither open nor shut; they seem to look inward ...
Describe the paralysed child and the state of his parents.
In the courtyard of a village farmer's house lies a boy who is completely paralysed. He cannot move his body or speak; the only part of him that moves is his eyes, which follow whatever passes and rest, as evening comes, on the sinking sun. His mother tends him with unfailing devotion. Both parents live on hope. Having heard that a foreigner is coming, they take the tourist for a doctor and greet him with the reverence owed to a god-like guest, searching his face for a sign that their son can be cured. Their hope is sincere and entirely misplaced, and the guide, who brought the visitor to their door, knows it.
Why does the guide take the tourist to the farmer's house?
The guide takes the tourist to the farmer's house partly because the visitor has asked to see a real Nepali home beyond the temples, but mainly to correct his way of seeing. All morning the tourist has praised the beauty of the land, the...
Explain the significance of the title "Half-closed Eyes of the Buddha and the Slowly Sinking Sun".
The title joins two images that the essay builds up separately and then brings together in a single face. The half-closed eyes of the Buddha belong first to the tourist's morning. On stupas and statues across the valley he sees the Buddh...
Contrast the tourist's view of Nepal with the guide's.
The essay sets two ways of looking at Nepal side by side. The tourist's view is that of an admiring outsider. He arrives with eyes trained on the art and landscapes of many countries and finds here a fresh feast: the sunrise on the Himal...
"The text is a critique of the way outsiders look at Nepal." Discuss with reference to the two voices.
Lamichhane's essay is one of the earliest Nepali reflections on how the country appears in foreign eyes, and its two-voice structure is designed as a critique. The first monologue gives the outsider a generous hearing. The tourist is cultured and sincere; he loves the morning sun on the peaks, the terraced fields, the carved temples, the union of Aryan and Mongol cultures, and above all the half-closed eyes of the Buddha, in which he reads the peace and contentment of an entire people. Nothing he says is false. Yet the way he speaks turns Nepal into an exhibition. Farmers become figures in a landscape, poverty becomes simplicity and innocence, and the Buddha's eyes become a philosophy that conveniently explains why the poor seem content. He has come to see, and he sees only what confirms his delight.
The second monologue exposes the cost of that gaze. The guide, who stands between the two worlds, leads the tourist to a farmer's house where a paralysed boy lies in the courtyard, able to move nothing but his eyes. The parents believe the foreigner is a doctor, and their hospitality is full of a hope the visitor cannot fulfil. The guide asks him to look at the child's half-closed eyes and at the sun sinking behind the hills. The same images the tourist romanticized in the morning now speak of illness, helplessness and fading hope. The serene philosophy he admired turns out to be, for many Nepalis, endurance without alternative.
The critique works through irony rather than accusation. The guide never scolds; he simply changes what the tourist is looking at and lets the images do the arguing. The repeated motif of eyes, the tourist's trained eyes, the Buddha's meditative eyes and the boy's sick eyes, asks what real seeing means. The visitor who prides himself on vision is blind to suffering; the boy who can barely see becomes the truest picture of the land.
Lamichhane does not make the tourist a villain. His target is a way of looking that consumes a culture as scenery and leaves its people unchanged. Written in the 1960s, when tourism was beginning to shape how Nepal was seen and how it saw itself, the essay warns that a country's beauty must not be allowed to hide its wounds, and that those who show Nepal to the world, like the guide, carry the burden of telling the whole truth.
Summarise the story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" in your own words.
After three days of rain, Pelayo, a village bailiff, finds a very old man lying in the mud of his courtyard, held down by a pair of enormous, dirty wings. The man is bald, almost toothless and speaks an unknown dialect in a sailor's voic...
How do the villagers, the priest and the couple treat the old man with wings? What does their behaviour reveal about human nature?
Garcia Marquez uses the arrival of a supposed angel as a test that almost every character fails. The very first response comes from the neighbour woman, who identifies the old man as an angel and in the same breath advises Pelayo and Eli...
What is magical realism? Show how "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" is an example of it.
Magical realism is a style of fiction in which fantastic or impossible events are presented in a realistic, matter-of-fact manner, within an otherwise ordinary setting. The narrator does not express surprise, does not explain the marvel, and the characters treat it as one more fact of daily life. The style is closely associated with Latin American writers, above all Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The story is a model of the technique. Its setting is thoroughly realistic: a poor coastal village, a house invaded by crabs after three days of rain, a bailiff husband and a wife who sweeps market rubbish, a wire chicken coop and plates of eggplant mush. Into this world drops a winged old man, and nobody reacts with astonishment. The neighbour woman diagnoses him as an angel as calmly as she might diagnose a fever; the couple's first thought is where to keep him; the crowd's first thought is what to feed him. The narrator reports his "consolation miracles" (a blind man who grows three teeth, a leper whose sores sprout sunflowers) in the same even tone used for the price of admission.
The spider woman deepens the effect. A girl changed into a tarantula by lightning is described with the same physical precision as any fairground exhibit, down to the meatballs she eats. Even the doctor, examining the angel, is puzzled only that his wings seem so natural on a human body.
By refusing to separate the miraculous from the everyday, Garcia Marquez forces the reader to see how people really respond to wonder: with habit, commerce and indifference. The magic is not the point; the realism of human behaviour around it is.
Why does Father Gonzaga doubt that the old man is an angel?
Father Gonzaga applies the tests of a churchman rather than the eyes of a believer. When he greets the old man in Latin, the language of God, the angel does not understand him and does not know how to greet the ministers of the church. T...
Why does the crowd lose interest in the angel and turn to the spider woman?
The crowd abandons the angel for a travelling show featuring a woman who has been changed into a spider for disobeying her parents. Several things make her more attractive. Admission to see her costs less than admission to the angel. She...
Discuss the major themes of "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" with reference to specific incidents from the story.
The story explores several interwoven themes, all of them arising from a single question: what do people do when a miracle lands in their backyard?
The first theme is the failure to recognise the miraculous. The angel arrives dirty, old and toothless, and no one responds with awe. The neighbour woman recommends killing him, the couple put him in the chicken coop, the priest checks his Latin, and Rome wants to know whether he has a navel or is merely a Norwegian with wings. Garcia Marquez suggests that people are so trapped in habit and self-interest that wonder, when it does not look the way they expect, is simply not seen.
Closely related is the theme of exploitation and cruelty. Elisenda's idea of charging five cents turns the angel into a source of income, and the mansion, the satin shoes and the rabbit warren are all built on his captivity. The crowd pluck his feathers, throw stones and brand him with a steer iron, and later he is chased around the house with a broom. The narrator records this without comment, which makes the reader supply the judgement.
A third theme is the gap between institutional religion and genuine faith. Father Gonzaga is not evil, but he responds to a possible angel with doctrinal tests and a chain of letters to the bishop, the primate and the Pope. The church's questions about the head of a pin show an institution more concerned with classification than compassion, and its final verdict never arrives.
The fourth theme is the human preference for a comprehensible story over an uncomfortable truth. The spider woman, with her moral tale of disobedience and her willingness to talk, wins the crowd from a silent angel whose miracles are absurd. Appearance and narrative matter more than reality.
Finally, the story celebrates patience and endurance. The angel's only visible virtue is patience, and it carries him through humiliation and years of neglect until his feathers regrow and he flies away on his own strength. His departure, watched by a relieved Elisenda, leaves the humans exactly as they were, which is the story's quiet indictment of them.
Describe the physical appearance of the old man when Pelayo first finds him.
Pelayo finds the old man lying face down in the mud of the courtyard after three days of rain, unable to rise because he is weighed down by a pair of enormous wings. He is dressed like a ragpicker, with only a few faded hairs left on his...
Explain the significance of the ending of the story. Why does Elisenda sigh with relief?
The story ends not with a verdict from Rome or a punishment for the villagers but with a small domestic scene. After a winter in which the angel seemed about to die, singing sea chanteys in his delirium, new stiff feathers grow on his wi...
What is the central claim with which Russell opens the essay "Knowledge and Wisdom"?
Russell opens by stating that most people would agree our age far surpasses all previous ages in knowledge, but that there has been no corresponding increase in wisdom. Human beings know more than ever before about science, medicine and history, yet they do not seem better at judging how to use that knowledge. He adds that agreement stops as soon as we try to define wisdom and to consider how it might be promoted. This opening sets up the whole essay: Russell will first explain what wisdom consists of, and then argue that it can and should be taught, because a world with growing knowledge and stagnant wisdom is a dangerous place.
What does Russell mean by "a sense of proportion"? Why has it become more difficult in the modern age?
By a sense of proportion Russell means the capacity to take account of all the important factors in a problem and to give each its due weight. A wise person does not look at one consequence alone but weighs the whole situation. Russell a...
Why does Russell mention Hegel in the essay? What point does the example prove?
Russell mentions Hegel to show that comprehensive knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Hegel wrote about history with great erudition; he was, by any measure, a learned man. Yet his philosophy encouraged Germans to see themselves as a ma...
What lesson does Russell draw from the examples of Queen Elizabeth I and Henry IV of France?
Russell uses Queen Elizabeth I of England and Henry IV of France to show that wisdom is practical and effective, not weak or impractical. Both rulers lived in an age when nearly everyone was a fanatic on either the Protestant or the Cath...
Explain the factors that, according to Russell, contribute to wisdom.
Russell admits that wisdom is hard to define, and instead of offering a single formula he describes several factors that together make up wisdom. The first factor is a sense of proportion. This is the ability to take account of all the i...
"Knowledge without wisdom can be harmful." Discuss this statement with reference to Russell's essay.
Russell's essay rests on the conviction that knowledge and wisdom are different things and that the first is dangerous without the second. Knowledge is information and technical skill; wisdom is the judgement that decides how that skill ...
Can wisdom be taught? Explain Russell's view and the reasons he gives for it.
After defining wisdom, Russell asks two questions: can wisdom be taught, and if so, should teaching it be one of the aims of education? He answers both in the affirmative, though he is careful to describe how the teaching would work and ...
Critically analyse Bertrand Russell's essay "Knowledge and Wisdom", commenting on its argument, examples, structure and relevance today.
Bertrand Russell's "Knowledge and Wisdom" is a short philosophical essay with a large purpose: to explain why a world that knows more than ever before is not wiser, and to show what wisdom would require. Written after the Second World War and the arrival of nuclear weapons, it carries the concern of a thinker who had watched human power outgrow human judgement.
The argument is carefully built. Russell begins with a claim most readers accept, that knowledge has grown while wisdom has not, and then confronts the difficulty that nobody agrees on what wisdom is. He resolves this by describing its components. A sense of proportion means weighing every important factor in a problem, something specialists find hard in an age of vast, divided knowledge. Awareness of the ends of human life means knowing what is worth pursuing, since learning alone gives no direction. Emancipation from the tyranny of the here and now means rising above the self-centred view we are born with and growing toward impartiality; Russell calls this the essence of wisdom and admits it is always a matter of degree. He then extends wisdom into private life, where it means choosing sensible ends and freeing oneself from prejudice, and finally argues that wisdom can and should be taught.
The examples are the essay's strength. Each one is concrete and each attaches to a specific point. Medical research that lowers infant mortality but strains the food supply shows a failure of proportion. Atomic research pursued out of curiosity but usable by powerful lunatics shows knowledge outrunning judgement. Hegel's learned philosophy feeding the German idea of a master race shows erudition without humane ends. Elizabeth I and Henry IV, unfanatical rulers in a fanatical age, show that wisdom is effective rather than weak. The contrast between Sunday teaching about loving one's neighbour and weekday encouragement to hate shows both the need for and the possibility of teaching wisdom.
The structure is logical and cumulative. Each factor is added to fill a gap left by the previous one, and the conclusion returns to the opening contrast with a sharper point: because knowledge increases our power to realise our purposes, it increases our capacity for evil whenever our purposes are unwise. The style is plain, personal and undogmatic, full of qualifications such as "as far as possible", which makes the reasoning persuasive rather than preachy.
A critical reader may notice limits. Russell's account of impartiality is left somewhat abstract, and he gives only a sketch of what a curriculum for wisdom would contain. He also assumes that understanding will usually dissolve hatred, which experience does not always confirm. Yet these are gaps in detail, not flaws in the central insight.
The essay remains strikingly relevant. Genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, climate change and social media all present exactly the situation Russell describes: enormous technical knowledge in the hands of people and institutions with little sense of proportion or of ends. His demand that education aim at wisdom, not just information, speaks directly to students today. "Knowledge and Wisdom" is therefore both a clear model of reasoned prose and a warning that has grown more urgent since it was written.
Why, according to Harari, do most people believe they are the centre of the world?
Harari says that most people believe they are the centre of the world because every culture teaches its members that their own history is the real history of humankind. Children grow up hearing that their nation or religion produced the ...
What do Chinese patriots and Hindu nationalists claim about history, as described in the essay?
Harari uses both groups as examples of national self-importance. Chinese patriots, he says, claim that history really began with the Yellow Emperor and the Xia and Shang dynasties, and that whatever Westerners, Muslims or Indians later a...
What did the Aztecs believe about their sacrifices, and why does Harari mention it?
Harari writes that the Aztecs firmly believed that without the sacrifices they performed every year, the sun would not rise and the whole universe would fall apart. He mentions this as the most extreme form of the belief that one's own people are the centre of the world. The Greeks, Chinese and others merely claim that history revolves around them; the Aztecs believed that the cosmos itself depended on their rituals. The example is striking because modern readers can see at once that it was false, and this prepares them to ask whether their own nation's claims to centrality are any better founded. It also shows that the habit is ancient and not limited to modern nationalism.
Why does Harari describe the Jewish contribution to history as modest?
Harari, who is Jewish himself, says that Israeli schooling presents Judaism as the source of the world's most important moral and religious ideas, but that the historical record does not support this. For most of its history Judaism was ...
Explain Harari's argument that the chief legacy of monotheism was intolerance rather than ethics.
One of the most challenging claims in "Humility" is that monotheism, which is usually praised as a moral advance, actually gave the world intolerance. Harari builds this argument in several steps within the essay's larger case against na...
Why does Harari use his own people as the main example in the essay, and what effect does this have on the reader?
Harari's essay is a criticism of the way every nation and religion places itself at the centre of history. Such a criticism could easily sound arrogant or hostile if it were aimed only at other people. Harari avoids this by choosing his ...
"You are not the centre of the world." Discuss how Harari develops this lesson in "Humility".
The chapter "Humility" in 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is built around a single lesson: no nation, religion or culture is the centre of the world, however strongly its members believe otherwise. Harari develops this lesson in a carefu...
Do you agree with Harari that humankind's key achievements were collective rather than the property of any one nation? Give reasons and examples.
In "Humility" Harari argues that the great achievements of humankind were collective and that no nation can honestly claim them as its own. I agree with this view, and both the essay and the wider historical record support it.
Harari's reasoning is simple. Every nation tells a story in which it is the centre of history, but these stories contradict each other, so they cannot all be true. Greeks, Chinese, Hindus, Muslims and the great Western powers each claim to have given the world its most important ideas. When the claims are checked against evidence, each turns out to be exaggerated. Harari demonstrates this with his own tradition, showing that monotheism had an Egyptian precedent in Akhenaten, that Confucius taught ethics without the Bible, and that Judaism's global influence came through other religions. If even the story he was raised on does not survive examination, the same is likely true of the others.
The positive case for collective achievement is equally strong. Agriculture began independently in several regions of the world and spread through contact between peoples. Writing was developed in more than one civilisation, and later alphabets were borrowed, adapted and passed from one culture to the next. The number system used everywhere today travelled from India through the Islamic world to Europe. Modern science drew on Greek geometry, Indian and Arabic mathematics, Chinese inventions such as paper and printing, and the work of scholars from many nations who read and corrected each other.
There is a reasonable objection. Particular discoveries were made by particular people in particular places, and it is fair to remember and celebrate them. But recognising a real contribution is different from claiming to be the centre of history. Harari does not deny that Jews contributed to modern science through figures like Einstein; he denies that this makes the science Jewish.
The collective view is not only more accurate but more useful. Nations that believe they are the source of civilisation find it hard to learn from others or to cooperate on shared problems. Humility about one's own contribution, as Harari says, is the beginning of a truer and more peaceful understanding of the human story.
What does Harari mean when he says there is no such thing as Jewish physics?
Harari makes this remark while assessing the Jewish contribution to world history. He acknowledges that Jews such as Einstein and Freud contributed enormously to modern science, and that some people cite this as proof of Judaism's import...
Why was the library the favourite room of Sacks's childhood home?
Sacks says that the library in his family's London home was his favourite room because it was full of books and because he was free to explore them on his own. It was an oak-panelled room lined with bookcases holding the medical books of...
What role did the Willesden public library play in Sacks's education?
After the home library, the public library at Willesden, near where Sacks grew up in London, became the second great library of his boyhood. He spent many hours there after school, and it gave him what the classroom did not: the freedom ...
Which libraries did Sacks use at Oxford, and what did each give him?
At Oxford Sacks used two very different libraries. The Radcliffe Science Library supplied the scientific and medical literature he needed as a student, and he read widely there in his own field. The Bodleian, one of the oldest libraries in Europe, gave him a different kind of pleasure. Its vast stacks held books that were centuries old, many of them scarcely read for generations, and Sacks describes the thrill of handling such volumes and of coming upon forgotten works by browsing. Between them the two libraries represent the two things he valued most in reading: access to current knowledge and a living connection with the history of thought.
What does Sacks mean by the pleasure of browsing, and why does he value it so highly?
By browsing Sacks means walking along the physical shelves of a library, taking down books at random, and letting one discovery lead to another. He values this because the arrangement of books on a shelf places the book you did not know ...
Describe Sacks's reaction to the disappearance of books from libraries in the digital age.
The final part of "On Libraries" turns from happy memory to loss, and Sacks's reaction to the change he witnessed gives the essay its emotional weight. The scene is the library of the medical college in New York where he had taught for m...
How does Sacks use his own life story to make an argument about libraries?
"On Libraries" reads at first like a piece of autobiography, but Sacks uses the story of his own life to build a clear argument about what libraries are for and what is lost when they disappear. The essay is arranged as a sequence of pla...
"Physical libraries are still needed in the digital age." Discuss this statement with reference to Sacks's essay and your own experience.
Oliver Sacks's essay "On Libraries" is both a memoir and a defence of the physical library. Written at a time when books were being replaced by screens, it argues, largely through the story of his own life, that rooms full of books offer...
Sacks suggests that he was educated more by libraries than by schools. Discuss this idea as it appears in "On Libraries".
Running through "On Libraries" is a quiet but firm contrast between two ways of learning. Formal schooling, in Sacks's memory, was passive and constraining; the library, at every stage of his life, was where he truly learned. The essay develops this idea through the succession of libraries that shaped him.
It begins in the family home in London, where the oak-panelled library was his favourite room. Surrounded by his parents' medical books, his brothers' collections and older volumes, he could take down whatever caught his eye and read at his own pace. He says plainly that being taught did not suit him and that the library was where he could educate himself.
The public library at Willesden confirms this. He spent long hours there after school, wandering the shelves and moving from one subject to another as one book led to the next. Much of what he knew of chemistry and astronomy before university came from these hours, not from lessons.
At Oxford the pattern continued in a more sophisticated form. The Radcliffe Science Library gave him the literature of his field, but the Bodleian gave him something no lecture could: the experience of handling books centuries old and discovering neglected works by chance. Later, in the library at Queen Square, he read the original descriptions of neurological disorders by the doctors who first observed them, and so learned how his profession had come into being. In each case the learning was self-directed and often accidental, the result of browsing rather than instruction.
This is why Sacks places such value on the physical shelf. Browsing is the method of the self-educator; it produces the discovery you did not know to seek. A search on a screen, like a school syllabus, gives only what is already asked for. The empty shelves of his college library at the end of the essay therefore represent not just the loss of books but the loss of a way of learning.
Sacks does not argue that schools are useless. He describes what worked for one particular, unusually curious mind. But his essay makes a strong case that the freedom of a library, and the patience and chance it allows, can educate in ways that formal teaching cannot.
What contrast does Sacks draw between school and the library?
Sacks draws a sharp contrast between the two throughout the essay. School, as he remembers it, was passive and constraining: a fixed syllabus was taught to him, and he had little say in what he learned or how fast. The library was the op...
What does Moyn mean by "the age of inequality"?
By the age of inequality Moyn means the period from roughly the 1970s to the present, during which the gap between the rich and everyone else has widened dramatically within many nations. In these decades market fundamentalism, or neolib...
Distinguish between sufficiency and equality as Moyn uses the terms.
Moyn's argument rests on the distinction between two ideals of distributive justice. Sufficiency means that every person should have enough: a minimum of food, shelter, health care, education and security below which no one should be all...
What was Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights, and why does Moyn mention it?
In his State of the Union address of 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed what he called a Second Bill of Rights. Alongside the political freedoms of the original Bill of Rights, he argued that Americans were entitled to economic security: a useful job, an adequate income, a decent home, medical care, education and protection in old age, sickness and unemployment. Moyn mentions it because it represents the ambition of the age of national welfare, when social and economic rights were joined to a wider commitment to limit inequality through the power of the nation-state. It is the standard against which he measures the narrower human rights movement of later decades.
Why does Moyn describe the human rights movement as a companion of neoliberalism rather than its cause?
Moyn is careful not to blame human rights for inequality. Neoliberal policies, not human rights campaigns, cut welfare, weakened labour and lowered taxes on the wealthy, and there is no evidence that human rights activists wanted these o...
What does the image of Croesus's world illustrate in the essay?
Moyn opens with Croesus, the legendary king of Lydia whose wealth Herodotus described, and imagines a world named after him. In Croesus's world every person is guaranteed the basic necessities of life, yet a few individuals possess riche...
Compare the age of national welfare with the present age of human rights, as Moyn presents them.
Moyn organises his essay around a contrast between two periods in the history of rights. The first is the age of national welfare, centred on the 1940s. Its representative documents are Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights of 1944 and the U...
Why, according to Moyn, can human rights alone not solve the problem of economic inequality?
Moyn offers several connected reasons why the human rights movement cannot, by itself, address economic inequality. The first is conceptual. Human rights aim at sufficiency, a floor of protection beneath which no one should fall. Even th...
"Human rights are not enough." Critically examine Moyn's argument and relate it to the situation of Nepal.
Moyn's essay is a critique from within: he values human rights but argues that they are not enough to meet the defining injustice of our time.
His case is powerful in three respects. First, the historical coincidence he identifies is real. The human rights movement did rise to prominence from the 1970s, and inequality within nations did grow sharply in the same decades. Second, the conceptual distinction between sufficiency and equality is precise and hard to dispute. Human rights documents speak of an adequate standard of living, not of limits on wealth, and the image of Croesus's world shows how a society could satisfy every human right while remaining grotesquely unequal. Third, his account of the movement's tools is fair. Naming and shaming and litigation are suited to identifiable abuses, not to the structural forces that shape distribution.
The essay can also be questioned. Defenders of human rights would reply that guaranteeing a floor is itself a vast achievement in a world where hundreds of millions lack food, health care and schooling, and that the movement should not be judged for failing to do what it never promised. Others might argue that economic and social rights, taken seriously and enforced through national courts and budgets, could be stretched toward equality, and that Moyn underestimates their potential. His call for a different politics is also somewhat vague; he tells us what human rights cannot do without specifying what should replace them.
For Nepal the argument is instructive. The Constitution of 2015 guarantees a wide range of fundamental rights, including rights to education, health, food and housing, and Nepal is party to the major human rights treaties. Yet inequality between regions, castes, genders and classes remains deep, and remittance-driven growth has enriched some far more than others. Moyn would say that securing the constitutional floor, though essential, will not by itself close these gaps. That would require progressive taxation, land and labour policy, and political movements committed to equality, exactly the kind of national politics he believes the human rights framework cannot supply.
The essay's lasting value is its honesty. By refusing to treat human rights as a complete moral programme, Moyn forces readers to ask what more justice requires, and that question is as urgent in Nepal as anywhere.
What does the speaker mean when she says the sun rose "a ribbon at a time"?
The phrase describes how the sunrise appears to an attentive watcher. The light does not arrive all at once; it unrolls gradually along the horizon in thin, coloured bands, one strip after another, like ribbons being laid out. Dickinson ...
Who is the "dominie in gray" and what does he do in the poem?
A dominie is an old Scottish word for a schoolmaster or a clergyman. In the poem the "dominie in gray" is a personification of dusk or evening. Dressed in grey, the colour of fading light, he appears when the "little yellow boys and girls", the last golden rays of the sun, have climbed over the purple stile to "the other side". He "put gently up the evening bars", as if closing a gate or the shutters for the night, and "led the flock away", taking the children off like a teacher leading his class home or a shepherd guiding his sheep. On the symbolic level he suggests a kindly guide, perhaps a pastor or even death itself, who gathers up life at its close and leads it gently away.
Explain the line "The hills untied their bonnets."
This line personifies the hills as women wearing bonnets, the close-fitting hats tied under the chin that were common in Dickinson's time. At night the hills are wrapped in darkness or mist; as the sun rises, this covering lifts and the ...
Why does the speaker say "But how he set, I know not"? What does this admission suggest?
After eight lines of confident, detailed description of the sunrise, the speaker suddenly confesses that she does not know how the sun set. The admission marks the turning point of the poem. Everything that follows is hedged: there "seem...
Identify and explain two examples of personification in "A Day".
Personification, giving human qualities to non-human things, runs through the whole poem. One example is "The hills untied their bonnets." The hills are imagined as women loosening and removing their hats as the morning mist or darkness ...
Interpret "A Day" as a symbolic account of human life and death.
On the surface "A Day" is a description of one day from sunrise to sunset, but Dickinson builds it so carefully in two halves that a symbolic reading becomes almost unavoidable. The day stands for a human life, sunrise for birth and yout...
Discuss the use of imagery and colour in "A Day".
Dickinson's poem works almost entirely through images; there is hardly a line without a picture, and the pictures are arranged so that their colours and movements carry the meaning. The sunrise images are drawn from everyday village life...
Write a critical appreciation of Emily Dickinson's poem "A Day".
Emily Dickinson's "A Day" is a sixteen-line lyric that describes a sunrise and a sunset and, through them, explores what human beings can and cannot know about the beginning and the end of life. Written around 1860 and published after the poet's death, it shows in miniature the qualities that make Dickinson so original: compression, playful yet precise imagery, a mixture of homely and rare words, and a habit of approaching the largest subjects sideways.
The poem is built on a contrast. Its first eight lines describe the sunrise with confidence: "I'll tell you how the sun rose, / A ribbon at a time." Light unrolls like cloth; the "steeples swam in amethyst"; "the news, like squirrels, ran"; the hills "untied their bonnets"; the bobolinks begin to sing. The images are quick, cheerful and drawn from village life, and the speaker even jokes, "That must have been the sun!"
The second eight lines turn on an admission: "But how he set, I know not." From here the speaker reports only what "seemed". A "purple stile" appears; "little yellow boys and girls" climb it until they reach "the other side"; a "dominie in gray" then "put gently up the evening bars, / And led the flock away." The tone becomes hushed and tentative. The yellow children are the last rays of light, the grey dominie is dusk, and the closing of the bars is nightfall.
Beneath the literal picture lies a symbolic one. The day is a life: sunrise is birth and youth, which we know from the inside and can describe; sunset is death, which no living person has witnessed, so the speaker honestly stops at the fence. The children crossing to "the other side" and being led away by a kindly schoolmaster or minister suggest souls passing gently out of this world. Dickinson's lifelong subject, death, is present without being named.
Technically the poem is a loose ballad, alternating roughly four-beat and three-beat lines, with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain rhyming, sometimes fully ("gray" and "away") and sometimes only approximately ("time" and "ran"). Personification dominates: hills undress, news runs, dusk becomes a teacher. The diction mixes childlike words such as bonnets and squirrels with the learned "amethyst" and "dominie", so the poem feels at once simple and mysterious.
The poem's achievement is to say something serious about mortality in a voice that is light, visual and unpretentious. It neither denies death nor dramatises it; it places death at the edge of what can be seen and trusts that the figure who leads the flock away does so gently. That balance of honesty and calm gives "A Day" its lasting power.
Compare the tone of the first half of "A Day" with that of the second half, and explain how the change supports the poem's meaning.
The two halves of "A Day" are almost equal in length, and Dickinson gives each a distinct tone so that the shift between them carries the meaning of the poem. The first eight lines are confident, brisk and playful. The speaker begins wit...
What does the speaker ask God to do every morning?
Every morning when he wakes, the Reverend Eli Jenkins says "a little prayer" asking the Lord to keep "Thy lovely eye / On all poor creatures born to die". In other words, he asks God to watch over every living being. The request is gener...
Explain the phrase "all poor creatures born to die".
The phrase sums up the human condition as the Reverend sees it. Every living thing is a "creature", something made by God, and every creature is "born to die": death is not an accident that may or may not happen but a fact built into lif...
What is the significance of the phrase "touch-and-go" in the poem?
"Touch-and-go" is an everyday English idiom meaning uncertain, risky, likely to go either way. The Reverend uses it to explain why he asks a blessing on the town every evening: whether the people "last the night or no" is, he says, always touch-and-go. The phrase is significant for two reasons. First, it states the poem's central awareness of mortality in the plainest possible words. No one, however healthy or ordinary, is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow, and the speaker accepts this without drama. Second, the choice of a casual, almost sporting expression inside a prayer creates gentle humour. A more solemn poet might have written about the shadow of death; Eli Jenkins talks as if survival were a close-run game. This mixture of seriousness and lightness makes the speaker sound humble, honest and likeable, and it prepares the way for the hopeful ending, where the town says good-bye to the sun "but just for now".
What does the speaker mean by "We are not wholly bad or good / Who live our lives under Milk Wood"?
In these lines the Reverend speaks for the whole community of the little town beneath Milk Wood. He admits that its people are a mixture: not entirely wicked, but not saints either. In the play Under Milk Wood, from which the prayer come...
Why do the townspeople say good-bye to the sun "but just for now"?
In the last stanza the Reverend pictures the whole town bowing to the setting sun and bidding it good-bye, but he adds the important qualification "just for now". The farewell is temporary. The sun sets every evening and rises again ever...
Discuss the themes of mortality and hope in "Every Morning I Wake".
"Every Morning I Wake" is a small prayer, but it holds together two large ideas: the certainty of death and the hope that carries people through each day. Dylan Thomas, speaking through the Reverend Eli Jenkins, lets neither idea cancel ...
How do the simplicity of language and the form of the poem contribute to its effect?
Dylan Thomas was famous for rich, difficult, highly musical verse, so the plainness of "Every Morning I Wake" is a deliberate choice. The poem is spoken by the Reverend Eli Jenkins, a modest country preacher who writes verses for his own...
Write a critical appreciation of Dylan Thomas's "Every Morning I Wake".
"Every Morning I Wake" is a short prayer-poem from Under Milk Wood, the radio play Dylan Thomas completed shortly before his death in 1953 and which was broadcast and published in 1954. In the play it is spoken by the Reverend Eli Jenkins, the kindly poet-preacher of the Welsh seaside town of Llareggub, as his prayer at sunset. On its own it stands as a gentle meditation on mortality, human imperfection and hope, expressed in the plainest possible words.
The poem is built in four quatrains of rhyming couplets, each carrying one complete idea. The first describes the speaker's habit: "Every morning when I wake, / Dear Lord, a little prayer I make," asking God to keep a "lovely eye" on "all poor creatures born to die". The second turns to evening, when he asks "a blessing on the town" because whether its people "last the night or no" is always "touch-and-go". The third is a confession for the whole community, "We are not wholly bad or good / Who live our lives under Milk Wood," followed by trust that God will be "the first / To see our best side, not our worst". The fourth is the petition, "O let us see another day!", and a picture of the town bowing to the setting sun and saying good-bye "but just for now".
Three themes emerge. The first is mortality: "born to die" and the nightly "touch-and-go" keep death steadily in view, not as a horror but as the ordinary condition of life. The second is human imperfection met by divine mercy: the Reverend calls his neighbours neither saints nor sinners, and his God looks for the good in them first, the generous outlook of the whole play. The third is hope: the prayer asks only for "another day", and the farewell to the sun "just for now" promises return.
The style is remarkable for its restraint. Thomas, usually a poet of dense sound and strange imagery, here writes in monosyllables and full rhymes, in a loose four-beat rhythm that recalls hymns and nursery verse. The archaic "Thy", "Thou" and "wilt" give the address to God its traditional dignity, while the colloquial "touch-and-go" gives it humour and humanity. Imagery is spare but pointed: God's watching "eye", the "sun-down" over the town, the townsfolk bowing to the sun as to an old friend. Antithesis in "not wholly bad or good" mirrors the balanced judgement the poem recommends. The tone is humble, affectionate and lightly amused.
The poem's achievement lies in this union of simplicity and depth. It sounds like something a plain man might say every night, yet it contains a whole outlook on life: that we are fragile, that we are flawed, that we are nevertheless loved, and that each new day is a gift worth asking for.
Describe the speaker's attitude toward God and toward his fellow townspeople in the poem, and explain how the poem relates to the play Under Milk Wood.
The speaker of "Every Morning I Wake" is the Reverend Eli Jenkins, and his attitude toward both God and his neighbours is one of warmth, humility and trust. Toward God he is respectful but intimate. He addresses him as "Dear Lord", the t...
What does the speaker mean when she says, "I wanted to be like men wanted me to be"?
The speaker is confessing that, at the beginning of her life, she tried to become the kind of woman that men and male-dominated society expected her to be: quiet, obedient and shaped by others' wishes rather than her own. The line shows ...
Explain the line "But I was made of nows."
This is the turning point of the poem and it is repeated twice. When the speaker says she was "made of nows," she means that her whole being belongs to the present moment. She is not made of the past, of tradition, or of the memories and...
Who or what is the "old guard" in the poem? How does it treat the speaker?
The "old guard" is a metaphor for tradition, patriarchy and the conservative people who protect the established order: the elders, the men, and the customs that decide how a woman must live. The phrase suggests soldiers guarding an old f...
What is the significance of the last line, "and the homage was left waiting for me"?
The last line completes the refrain with a new ending. The heralds announce the speaker at the "regal parade" of the old guard, ready to honour her as a woman who has accepted her expected role. But the desire to follow men has "warped" inside her, so she never arrives, and the homage stays uncollected. The line is ironic: society's reward for obedience turns out to be something she does not want at all. It also shows the price and the pride of her choice. She gives up public approval, ceremony and status, but she keeps her real self. The homage waiting forever is a picture of how empty conventional honour is beside the freedom of being one's own route.
Summarise the poem "I Was My Own Route" in your own words.
"I Was My Own Route" by Julia de Burgos is a feminist poem in which a woman looks back on how she rejected the life that men and tradition had planned for her and chose her own path instead. The speaker begins by confessing that she once...
Discuss "I Was My Own Route" as a feminist poem.
"I Was My Own Route" is one of the clearest feminist statements in modern Latin American poetry. Julia de Burgos wrote it in the 1930s, when a Puerto Rican woman was expected to define herself through her father, husband and community. T...
Analyse the imagery of journey, struggle and liberation in "I Was My Own Route". How do these images convey the poem's meaning?
Julia de Burgos builds "I Was My Own Route" almost entirely out of images, and the meaning of the poem lives in the way those images move from confinement to freedom.
The controlling image is the journey. The title itself declares that the speaker was her own "route," that is, both the traveller and the road. Her feet stand "level on the promissory earth," a phrase that suggests the ground itself promises something better ahead. Those feet "would not accept walking backwards" and instead go "forward, forward." Every later moment of the poem is measured in steps. Because the road runs from past to future, walking forward also means living in the present; the speaker is "made of nows." The "distant familiar horizons" from which her gaze separates "more and more and more" are the limits of the world she was born into, and the widening distance measures her growth.
The images of struggle are drawn from fire, birds and whips. The past is "ashes," already burnt out, and she mocks it as she passes. The old guard is a flock whose "desperate flapping wings" rip her back, and its blows are "whiplashes." These images insist that liberation is painful and that tradition fights back violently. They strike her back because she is always moving away from them; the pain is proof of progress.
The images of liberation are organic and tender. The "kiss of new paths" personifies the future as a lover who welcomes her. The "branch" that "was unpinned forever" turns the violence into release: she is a living branch freed from the tree of custom. Her face takes "the expansion that came from within," an image of inner growth becoming visible. Finally she becomes "a blossom of all the soils of the earth," the freed branch flowering and rooting itself in the whole world rather than in one narrow plot.
The poem closes with a ceremonial image: heralds, a "regal parade," and homage. This is the world of tradition seen as empty pageantry, and it stands still while she keeps walking. Together, the images tell the story the poem never states plainly: a woman leaves a dead past, endures the attacks of the guardians of custom, and flowers into a self that belongs to the whole earth.
How relevant is the message of "I Was My Own Route" to women in Nepali society today? Give reasons.
Although Julia de Burgos wrote "I Was My Own Route" in Puerto Rico in the 1930s, its message speaks directly to the situation of many women in Nepal today. The poem's opening confession, "I wanted to be like men wanted me to be," describ...
Why does the poet call his storm a "soft" storm?
A storm is normally violent, noisy and destructive. The poet calls his storm soft because it takes place inside him and is made of feeling rather than force. When he sees the hungry children, the hunchbacked woman, the hurt and the homel...
What scenes in Kathmandu move the speaker to become a soft storm?
The speaker is moved by a series of ordinary but painful scenes on his walks through the city. At night, under a moon that slides gently over the hills and roofs, he sees the homeless children of Thamel crying with hunger beneath the tre...
What does the moon symbolise in "Soft Storm"?
The moon in the poem is more than scenery. Sliding down over the hills and the roofs of the city, it symbolises beauty, calm and timeless serenity, the Kathmandu of temples and postcards. But it is also a symbol of indifference, because its lovely light falls equally on the shrines and on the hungry children beneath the trees, without changing anything. This double meaning is exactly what makes the speaker soft. The beauty of the moonlight sharpens his awareness of the suffering it illuminates, so the moon becomes the point where the city's loveliness and its pain meet, and where the speaker's tender storm begins.
How does "Soft Storm" criticise politics and society in Nepal?
The criticism in "Soft Storm" is indirect but sharp. Subedi sets the loud, hard storm of public life against the soft storm of the speaker's feeling. Public life appears as noise: speeches, slogans, processions, loudspeakers and posters ...
Summarise the poem "Soft Storm" in your own words.
"Soft Storm" by Abhi Subedi is a free-verse poem about a speaker who walks through Kathmandu and is moved, again and again, to a gentle storm of feeling by what he sees. The poem opens at night. The moon slides down over the hills and th...
Discuss the paradox in the title "Soft Storm" and its significance in the poem.
The title "Soft Storm" is an oxymoron, a figure of speech that places two opposite ideas side by side. A storm is by nature violent, loud and destructive; softness is gentle, quiet and harmless. By joining them, Abhi Subedi creates a phr...
Write a critical appreciation of "Soft Storm" as a poem about Kathmandu and modern Nepali society.
Abhi Subedi's "Soft Storm" is one of the most striking English poems written about Kathmandu. It comes from his collection Chasing Dreams: Kathmandu Odyssey (1996), written when Nepal was full of political noise but still burdened by poverty and neglect.
The poem's method is the walk. The speaker moves through Kathmandu by night and by day, and the poem records what he sees in a series of sharp, concrete pictures: the moon sliding down over the hills and roofs, the homeless children of Thamel crying with hunger beneath the trees where bats roost, a hunchbacked woman carrying a child through the cold streets, the hurt and the poor lying on pavements, and by day the traffic, the processions, the loudspeakers and the endless political speeches. These images are local and specific, yet the pattern they reveal, beauty above and suffering below, belongs to modern cities everywhere.
The poem's structure rests on a refrain: the speaker tells us repeatedly that he became a soft storm. This repetition binds unrelated scenes together and carries the poem's central paradox. A storm is violent; his is soft. The intensity is that of a tempest, but the substance is tenderness and bewildered love. This oxymoron is the poem's most important idea: in a hard city, softness is a form of strength.
As a social document, the poem is quietly devastating. It sets the loud storm of politics, all slogans and promises, against the silent facts of hunger and homelessness, and lets the contrast speak. It shows a society that has learned to step over its own wounded, and a public life more interested in speeches than in the children under the trees. The criticism emerges from juxtaposition and irony, never from preaching.
At the same time the poem is deeply personal. Its final movement turns inward, as the speaker admits that he cannot stand outside his city and wishes he could spread his softness over the whole valley. The poet cannot cure suffering, but he can witness it and refuse to grow numb.
In free verse, with conversational language and a stream of images, "Soft Storm" achieves what good social poetry should: it makes the reader see familiar streets with new eyes and feel the storm the poet feels.
"The speaker's soft storm is a sympathetic feeling, but is feeling enough in the face of suffering?" Discuss with reference to the poem.
This question goes to the heart of "Soft Storm." The speaker sees hungry children, a hunchbacked woman carrying a child, the poor lying hurt on pavements, and a public life full of hollow rhetoric and violence. His response is a storm of...
Who does the speaker address in "The Awakening Age", and what is the significance of the phrase "the meridian line"?
The speaker addresses those "who travel the meridian line". The meridian line is the prime meridian, the line of zero longitude, which passes through West Africa. Okri, who was born in Nigeria, is therefore speaking to the people of his ...
What does the poet mean by "the awakening age"? Explain in your own words.
The awakening age is the time Okri hopes for when a people long kept down by poverty, fear and division open their eyes to their own condition and their own strength. To be awake is to see clearly, to stop pretending, and to act. The poe...
Discuss the imagery of sight and light in the poem.
Sight and light run through the whole poem and carry its meaning. In the opening couplet the speaker wishes that "the vision of a new world" may shine within the travellers, so hope is pictured as an inner light. The poem then speaks of ...
Summarise the poem "The Awakening Age" in your own words.
Ben Okri's "The Awakening Age" is a short poem of hope, written as a blessing on a people who are passing through hard times. It opens with a direct address to those "who travel the meridian line", the inhabitants of the lands along the ...
What are the major themes of "The Awakening Age"? Discuss with reference to the poem.
The first and most important theme of the poem is hope and awakening. Okri imagines a people who have been asleep, not from laziness but because poverty, fear and division have prevented them from seeing their own strength. The awakening age is the moment when they open their eyes, understand their condition and begin to act. The whole poem is cast as a series of wishes beginning with "May", so hope is not only its subject but its very grammar.
A second theme is the damage caused by poverty and fear. The poem does not soften these realities. It speaks of eyes that have lived with poverty's rage, and of a people divided and taught to fear one another. Poverty produces anger, fear produces silence, and division produces weakness. Because Okri names these conditions honestly, his hope is credible rather than sentimental.
Truth is a third theme. The speaker hopes that the people will both see the truth and speak it. Lies, whether imposed by rulers or accepted out of habit, keep a society asleep, while honest speech is the first act of waking. This links the personal awakening of each individual to the public awakening of a nation.
The fourth theme is unity and shared humanity. Those who travel the meridian line have been set against each other, yet they share one land and one earth. The poem asks them to discover their common ground and to see themselves as part of humanity as a whole. The image of the turning earth and the coming dawn reinforces this: the dawn belongs to everyone.
Taken together, these themes make the poem a compact statement of faith in human renewal. It looks at suffering directly, refuses despair, and insists that clear sight, honest speech and solidarity can carry a people out of a long night into a new age.
Write a critical appreciation of the poem "The Awakening Age", commenting on its subject, themes, imagery, language and form.
"The Awakening Age" by Ben Okri is a short public poem that speaks, in the voice of a blessing, to a people emerging from a long period of poverty, fear and division. Okri, born in Nigeria in 1959, is best known as a novelist, but this poem shows the visionary side of his writing.
The subject is a collective awakening. The speaker addresses those "who travel the meridian line", a phrase that points to West Africa and Okri's own Nigeria while also suggesting a journey through history, and wishes that "the vision of a new world" may shine within them. The poem acknowledges the rage that poverty has bred, the divisions that have set the people against one another, and the fear they have been taught. Against all this it sets a series of hopes: that the people may see beyond their suffering, discover their common humanity, see and speak the truth, and rise with a new dawn.
The themes follow from this movement. Hope and awakening are central; the repeated "May" makes wishing the poem's basic gesture. The destructive power of poverty and fear is named honestly, so the hope is earned rather than easy. Truth-telling is treated as the first act of freedom, and unity and shared humanity are the goal.
The imagery is consistent. Light and sight dominate: vision shines, eyes see through to new fields, the earth turns towards dawn. Darkness stands for oppression, light for knowledge and freedom. The meridian line becomes a symbol of a path to be travelled, and the turning earth reminds us that no night is permanent.
The language is plain but elevated. The archaic "O ye" gives the address ceremonial dignity, and the anaphora of "May" creates the rhythm of a prayer, yet a phrase such as "the awakening age" carries great weight.
In form the poem is a lyric in rhyming couplets, each a self-contained, memorable wish, moving in a clear arc from address, through suffering, to truth and dawn. The voice is communal and prophetic rather than private.
The poem's strength is its union of honesty and hope: it does not pretend that suffering is over, but it refuses despair. Its generality may feel abstract, yet that is also what makes it universal. Readers in any developing society, including Nepal, can recognise their own struggles and hopes in Okri's vision of a people waking up.
Comment on the form and rhyme of "The Awakening Age".
The poem is a short lyric written in rhyming couplets: successive pairs of lines end in full rhymes, as in "line" and "shine" in the opening couplet. Each couplet expresses a single complete wish, which makes the poem easy to remember an...
How far is the message of "The Awakening Age" relevant to a developing country like Nepal? Give reasons.
Although Okri wrote "The Awakening Age" with Africa and his native Nigeria in mind, its message applies closely to Nepal and to any developing society. The poem speaks of eyes that have lived with poverty's rage. Nepal has known long per...
Why does the Earnest Young Woman visit the Famous Actress?
The Earnest Young Woman visits the Famous Actress because she believes the actress has stolen her husband. Her husband, a lawyer, has been handling legal business for the actress, and since then he has changed: he stays out late, has grown distant, and talks constantly about the actress. Worst of all, the young woman has found a letter in his handwriting addressed to the actress, written in warm and intimate terms. Convinced that the two are having an affair, she comes without an appointment to confront the actress and, rather than to threaten her, to beg her to give her husband back. Her visit is driven by fear of losing her marriage, and she wants, above everything, to be told that her fears are groundless.
What evidence does the young woman offer against the actress, and how does the actress deal with it?
The young woman's evidence is of two kinds. First there is her husband's changed behaviour: he comes home late, seems distant, and speaks endlessly about the actress, whose legal case he handled. Second, and far more damaging, there is a...
Explain the actress's theory about husbands who pretend to have affairs with actresses.
According to the actress, a husband who feels that his wife has grown cool towards him, or takes him for granted, sometimes invents an affair in order to win back her attention. He chooses a famous actress as his imaginary lover because ...
Summarise the play "A Matter of Husbands".
"A Matter of Husbands" is a one-act comedy by the Hungarian dramatist Ferenc Molnar with two characters, a Famous Actress and an Earnest Young Woman, and a single continuous scene. The young woman arrives unannounced at the actress's roo...
Sketch the character of the Famous Actress.
The Famous Actress is the dominant figure of the play and one of Molnar's most skilfully drawn characters. She is a celebrated star of the stage, and everything about her, from her courtesy to her timing, shows a woman accustomed to comm...
Discuss the ending of "A Matter of Husbands" and the use of irony in the play.
The ending of "A Matter of Husbands" is the moment that gives the whole play its meaning, and it works almost entirely through irony.
For most of the play the audience shares the position of the Earnest Young Woman. We hear the actress deny knowing the husband, we see the letter, and we listen to her explanation that husbands pretend to love actresses in order to make neglected wives jealous. The explanation is reasonable, detailed and sympathetic, and by the time the young woman is convinced, most spectators are convinced with her.
Then everything reverses. The door closes, the actress's manner changes, and she turns to the inner room and calls the husband by his first name. He has been present throughout. Nothing more is said. The hint is unmistakable: the husband is indeed involved with the actress, and the comforting theory was improvised to get rid of the wife.
This is dramatic irony of a delayed kind. Normally the audience knows more than a character; here we are kept in the dark with the young woman and enlightened only at the end, so that we must look back and reinterpret every line. The actress's smooth denial, her questions about the marriage, her tender reading of the letter, all now appear as moves in a performance.
The deepest irony lies in the content of the actress's speech. She describes, with great insight, how one person can manipulate another by constructing a false story of love and jealousy, and that is precisely what she is doing as she speaks. Her explanation of deception is itself the deception. The play becomes a demonstration of its own theme: appearances persuade, and we believe what we wish to believe.
The title is ironic too. For the wife, her husband's love is a unique and desperate matter; for the actress it is merely "a matter of husbands", a routine problem she has handled before. The phrase reduces the wife's crisis to a category, just as the theory reduces her husband to a type.
Finally, there is a gentle irony at the audience's expense. We smile at the young woman's readiness to be comforted, then discover that we were comforted with her. Molnar's twist is not merely a clever trick; it shows how easily a confident voice can replace evidence, which is why this light ending leaves a lasting impression.
Justify the title of the play "A Matter of Husbands".
The title is apt on several levels. Most simply, the whole play concerns a husband: the Earnest Young Woman has come to reclaim hers, and every line turns on what he has done and why. The title also echoes the actress's attitude. To the ...
Is the Earnest Young Woman right to believe the actress? What does the play suggest about appearance and reality?
Within the world of the play the Earnest Young Woman is not right to believe the actress, though it is easy to understand why she does. The ending, when the actress calls the husband from the inner room, makes it almost certain that the ...
How does Monsieur Durand come to be in financial trouble?
Monsieur Durand is a former railway employee who now runs a small pension, or boarding house, on Lake Leman in Switzerland. The business has failed. Guests no longer come, and the only remaining lodger, the Italian lieutenant Antonio, is...
Describe the attitude of the three daughters towards their father.
Adele, Annette and Therese treat their father with contempt. They blame him for the collapse of the family's fortune and hold him responsible for every humiliation, such as Pierre's unpaid bill. They compare him unfavourably with their d...
Why does Durand set fire to the house and take poison?
Durand's final act is the climax of the play and the key to his character. His pension is bankrupt, the last lodger is leaving, creditors such as the baker are refusing further credit, and he has no way left to provide for his daughters....
What truth about their mother does Durand reveal at the end, and why has he kept it secret?
Throughout the play the daughters idealise their dead mother. They remember her as elegant, generous and warm, and they treat their father as the dull and incompetent husband who failed her. Durand never contradicts them, and the audienc...
Discuss the theme of sacrifice in Facing Death.
Sacrifice is the central theme of Facing Death, and Strindberg develops it through the whole life of Monsieur Durand rather than through a single heroic gesture. From the first scene the audience sees a man who has given up everything for his family and receives nothing in return.
Durand's sacrifice begins long before the play opens. He married a woman who wasted his inheritance and ran up debts in his name, and instead of exposing her he took the blame himself so that his daughters could keep an untroubled memory of their mother. For years he has accepted their contempt as the price of that silence. Within the play this pattern continues in small daily acts. He gives up his own food so that the girls can eat, he endures Adele's sharp remarks and Therese's open insolence, and he suffers the humiliation of Pierre's unpaid bill without complaint.
The final sacrifice is his death. With the pension bankrupt and Antonio, the last lodger, leaving, Durand sees no future for his daughters while he lives. He sets fire to the insured house so that they can collect the money and be free, and he takes poison so that he cannot be accused of arson and so that his daughters will not be blamed. He arranges the details carefully, confirming that the premium has been paid and choosing the moment when the girls can escape. His last words to Adele are instructions for their safety and a plea that she remember him kindly.
Strindberg deliberately strips this sacrifice of sentimentality. Durand does not expect thanks, and only Adele learns the truth, too late to make amends. The daughters' cruelty is not softened, and the play does not promise that they will change. This honesty is what makes the theme powerful. The play suggests that true love may be invisible to those who receive it, and that a parent's greatest gift can go unrecognised until the giver is gone. Facing Death is therefore both a tribute to silent devotion and a bitter comment on how easily it is misunderstood.
Explain the significance of the title Facing Death.
The title Facing Death describes both the situation and the spirit of the play. On the simplest level, Monsieur Durand spends the whole play in the presence of death. He has already decided to end his life, has planned the fire and the p...
How does Strindberg use naturalistic technique in the play?
Facing Death is a clear example of naturalistic drama, the style Strindberg practised in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The action takes place in a single setting, the dining room of a shabby pension on Lake Leman, and unfolds in a continuous stretch of time. Nothing is idealised. The stove, the unpaid bill, the departing lodger and the talk of food and credit all create the sense of a real household in real distress.
The dialogue is plain and realistic. The daughters' cruelty comes out in ordinary remarks about money and housekeeping rather than in grand speeches, and Durand's replies are short and tired. Character is revealed through behaviour, such as Durand quietly giving up his share of food or Therese's interest in Antonio, rather than through explanation.
Strindberg also applies the naturalist interest in heredity and environment. The family's condition is shown as the product of a past that still controls the present: the mother's extravagance, the father's silence, the daughters' upbringing on a false story. The play refuses moral comfort. The daughters are not punished or reformed, and Durand's sacrifice is recognised only by Adele and only at the last moment. The one-act structure adds to the effect by concentrating the pressure so that the ending arrives with the force of inevitability. These features make the play a compact study of a family destroyed by money, misunderstanding and a lie told out of love.
Describe the setting of the play The Bull.
The Bull is set at Thulo Gauchar in Kathmandu in the year 1854 BS, during the reign of King Ranabahadur Shah. The action takes place around the royal cattle shed where the king's beloved bull Male has been kept and cared for by the cowherds Gore and Jitman. The historical setting is important because it places the story in a feudal court where the king's word is law and a servant's life depends on the ruler's mood. By choosing a real place and a specific date, Tiwari gives his satire the appearance of a historical incident while inviting the audience to recognise the same servility and arbitrary power in their own time.
Why are Gore and Jitman so frightened when the bull dies?
Gore and Jitman are the cowherds responsible for the king's bull Male, and the animal has died in their care. They know that King Ranabahadur Shah loves the bull more than anything else and treats it like a prince. In a feudal court the ...
What advice does Laxminarayan Dahal give to the cowherds?
Laxminarayan Dahal, the bull doctor, understands the ways of the court. He tells Gore and Jitman that they must never announce plainly that the bull has died, because such blunt words would enrage the king. Instead they must speak of Mal...
How do the cowherds behave before the king, and what is the result?
When King Ranabahadur Shah arrives at Thulo Gauchar, Gore and Jitman put Laxminarayan Dahal's coaching into practice. They are seen massaging the legs of the dead bull as if it were still alive and in need of care. They weep and wail, an...
The Bull is a satire on feudal rule. Discuss.
Satire uses humour and exaggeration to expose folly and injustice, and Bhimnidhi Tiwari's The Bull is a clear example of political satire aimed at the feudal system of old Nepal. The play is set in 1854 BS in the reign of King Ranabahadur Shah, but its target is the whole tradition of arbitrary royal power and the servility it produces.
The first object of the satire is the king himself. Ranabahadur Shah loves his bull Male more than his subjects. He has had the animal fed and pampered like a prince, and when it dies he grieves as if for a member of his family. The play never shows him thinking of the welfare of his people. A ruler whose deepest emotions are reserved for a bull, and whose servants fear for their lives because of its death, has lost all sense of proportion. Tiwari exaggerates this absurdity so that the audience laughs at the king, and through him at every ruler who confuses personal whim with public duty.
The second object is the court that surrounds such a ruler. Laxminarayan Dahal, the bull doctor, survives by knowing exactly how to speak and bow. He teaches the cowherds to use honorific language for an animal and to stage their grief. The gap between the courtly words and the dead bull produces the play's comedy, but it also shows how power breeds hypocrisy.
The third object is servility itself. Gore and Jitman are poor men who have done nothing wrong, yet they must lie, weep and massage the legs of a dead animal in order to live. The play does not blame them; it blames a system in which honesty is dangerous and flattery is rewarded. When the king gives gifts to the men who deceived him, the satire is complete: feudal rule rewards performance and punishes truth.
Tiwari delivers all this without a single lecture. The single situation, the fast pace of the one-act form, the rehearsal scene and the dramatic irony of the royal audience allow the audience to see the absurdity for themselves. The laughter leaves a bitter taste, and that is the point. The Bull remains relevant wherever rulers place their own attachments above the lives of ordinary people and wherever subordinates learn that survival depends on flattery.
Comment on the use of humour and irony in The Bull.
Humour and irony are the main instruments of Tiwari's satire in The Bull. The basic situation is itself comic: two cowherds and a bull doctor are terrified because a bull has died, and a king is about to arrive in mourning. The dispropor...
Sketch the character of Laxminarayan Dahal.
Laxminarayan Dahal, the bull doctor, is the cleverest character in The Bull and the engine of its plot. He holds a position at the court of King Ranabahadur Shah, where he is responsible for the health of the royal cattle, and he knows b...
What does the maxim "Know thyself" mean, and where does it come from?
The maxim "Know thyself" is an ancient Greek instruction inscribed at the temple of Delphi. It tells a person to understand his or her own mind, character, motives and limitations before trying to judge anything else. The reading text "K...
Why, according to the text, is self-knowledge the most neglected kind of knowledge?
The text argues that people devote their lives to learning about the outside world, about science, history and other people, but rarely turn the same attention inward. There are two reasons. First, it is far easier and more pleasant to n...
How does self-deception prevent people from knowing themselves?
Self-deception is the habit of hiding the truth from oneself. According to the text, we flatter ourselves, excuse our failures and build comfortable stories about why we acted as we did. Pride makes us unwilling to see an unpleasant trut...
What is the relationship between self-knowledge and wisdom in the text?
In the text, wisdom is not the accumulation of facts but the clear and honest understanding of one's own nature and of how that nature shapes one's view of everything else. Self-knowledge is therefore the root of wisdom. A person who knows his own biases, fears and desires can allow for them when judging the world, and so judges more fairly and decides more soundly. Without self-knowledge, learning only makes a person more confidently wrong. Knowing oneself is thus the beginning, not the end, of thinking well about anything.
What practical steps does the text suggest for knowing oneself better?
The text suggests that knowing oneself is an active practice rather than a single discovery. A person should observe his own reactions honestly, especially anger, envy and pride, and ask what they reveal. He should question his assumptio...
Write the meanings of the following words and use each in a sentence of your own: assumption, bias, evaluate.
Assumption: something accepted as true without proof. Her assumption that the exam would be easy cost her many marks. Bias: an unfair preference or prejudice that distorts judgement. A good journalist tries to report the facts without bi...
Rewrite the following sentences as conditional sentences of the type indicated.
(a) People do not examine their motives. They repeat their mistakes. (first conditional) (b) I am not you, so I cannot advise you, but here is my opinion. (second conditional, using "If I were you") (c) He did not check the facts. He believed the false report. (third conditional) (d) You will be misled if you do not question what you read. (rewrite with "unless") (e) She did not learn to think critically at school. Today she accepts every rumour. (mixed conditional)
(a) If people do not examine their motives, they will repeat their mistakes. (b) If I were you, I would question that opinion before accepting it. (c) If he had checked the facts, he would not have believed the false report. (d) Unless y...
Write an essay on "The Importance of Critical Thinking in Student Life" in about 300 words.
The Importance of Critical Thinking in Student Life
Critical thinking is the habit of examining ideas carefully before accepting them. It means asking what the evidence is, whose interest a claim serves, and whether our own feelings are colouring our judgement. For a student, it is not an extra subject but the skill that gives every other subject its value.
In the classroom, critical thinking turns memorising into understanding. A student who only copies definitions can repeat them in an exam but cannot apply them to a new problem. A student who asks why a formula works, how a historical event is interpreted differently by different writers, or what a poem leaves unsaid, learns more deeply and remembers longer. Examiners reward this kind of thinking, because it shows that the learner has made the knowledge his own.
Outside the classroom, critical thinking protects young people from being misled. Students today live surrounded by advertisements, social media posts and viral rumours, many of them false or one sided. Without the habit of checking sources and recognising bias, a student can be pushed into harmful choices about health, money, politics or relationships. With that habit, he or she can weigh claims calmly and decide independently.
Critical thinking also turns inward. As the reading text "Know Thyself" reminds us, the hardest thing to examine honestly is oneself. A student who can admit a weakness in his own preparation, notice that pride is stopping him from asking for help, or recognise that he dislikes an idea only because it is unfamiliar, is already practising the highest form of critical thought.
The skill can be developed by reading widely, discussing with people who disagree, asking for reasons, and reflecting on one's own mistakes without excuses. In a country like Nepal, where young people must make important decisions about education, work and migration, such clear thinking is a necessity, not a luxury. A student who thinks critically becomes not only a better learner but a wiser and more responsible citizen.
Write a paragraph in about 150 words on how a person can come to know himself or herself better.
Knowing oneself is a lifelong practice rather than a single discovery. The first step is honest observation: a person should notice how he actually reacts to praise, criticism, failure and temptation, instead of how he likes to imagine h...
What is a family? Why is it difficult to give a single fixed definition?
In the simplest sense, a family is a group of people related by blood, marriage or adoption who usually live together and share responsibility for one another. The unit's reading text shows, however, that this definition is not fixed. Different societies and different historical periods have recognised different arrangements as families: a household of fourteen relatives in a Nepali village, a couple with two children in a city flat, a single mother and her son, or grandparents raising grandchildren whose parents work abroad. Because the family changes with the society around it, the text treats it as a living institution rather than a structure with one permanent form.
Distinguish between a nuclear family and an extended family. Which has been more common in Nepal?
A nuclear family consists of parents and their children living together in one household. It is small, mobile and independent, and it is the typical pattern in cities and in industrial societies. An extended family, also called a joint f...
What functions does the family perform for its members and for society?
According to the reading text, the family performs several essential functions. It is the place where children are born, protected and cared for. It is the first school, where children learn language, values, manners and culture and are ...
What changes are taking place in family life today, and what are their causes?
The text explains that families are becoming smaller, more mobile and more nuclear. Several causes work together. Urbanisation draws young people from villages to cities, where housing is small and joint living is impractical. Education ...
Match the words in column A with their meanings in column B.
A: kinship, breadwinner, sibling, dependant, upbringing, in-laws
B: (i) relatives by marriage (ii) a brother or sister (iii) the way a child is raised (iv) the person who earns the family's income (v) relationship by blood or marriage (vi) a person who relies on another for support
kinship: (v) relationship by blood or marriage breadwinner: (iv) the person who earns the family's income sibling: (ii) a brother or sister dependant: (vi) a person who relies on another for support upbringing: (iii) the way a child is r...
Rewrite the following sentences using used to or would as appropriate. Correct any sentence that is already wrong.
(a) My grandparents lived in a joint family of twelve people. (b) Every winter my grandmother told us folk tales by the fire. (c) My uncle would have a small shop near the temple. (d) Did your family celebrate Tihar in the village? (question with used to) (e) Children obeyed their elders without question. (negative: they no longer do)
(a) My grandparents used to live in a joint family of twelve people. (A past state, so used to, not would.) (b) Every winter my grandmother would tell us folk tales by the fire. (A repeated past action, so would is correct; used to tell ...
Write an essay on "The Changing Family Structure in Nepal" in about 300 words.
The Changing Family Structure in Nepal
The family is the oldest social institution in Nepal and, for most people, still the most important one. For generations the typical Nepali family was a joint family: grandparents, parents, unmarried and married sons, their wives and children, all living under one roof, farming the same land and eating from the same kitchen. That structure is changing rapidly, and understanding the change is essential for understanding modern Nepal.
The joint family had real strengths. Work on the farm and in the home was shared, so no single person carried the whole burden. The elderly were cared for by their sons and daughters in law as a matter of course. Children grew up among many adults and learned language, festivals, religion and manners from their grandparents as much as from their parents. Property stayed together, and the family name and traditions were passed on without interruption.
Several forces have weakened this pattern. Young people leave villages for education and jobs in Kathmandu, Pokhara and other towns, where rented rooms cannot hold a large household. Millions of Nepalis work abroad in the Gulf, Malaysia and elsewhere, so husbands live apart from wives and parents from children for years at a time. Women increasingly earn their own income and expect a share in decisions. Land is divided into ever smaller plots, so brothers separate to make a living.
The effects are mixed. Nuclear families offer privacy, independence and more equal relationships between husband and wife. At the same time, many old people now live alone in villages, children are raised by one parent or by grandparents, and the daily transmission of culture has thinned.
The family in Nepal is not disappearing, but it is taking new forms. The task for our generation is to keep its values of care, respect and shared responsibility alive across distance, in smaller households, and between equals. If we succeed, the family will remain the safety net that Nepali society still depends on.
Write a letter to a friend abroad describing your family and the role each member plays in your home.
Bhaktapur 15 September 2026 Dear Anisha, It was lovely to receive your letter from Sydney. You asked me to tell you about my family, so here is a proper introduction to the people you have only seen in photographs. We are a family of six...
When and where was Euro 2020 played, and why did the tournament keep the name 2020?
Euro 2020 was played from 11 June to 11 July 2021 in eleven cities across eleven European countries, with the semi-finals and the final held at Wembley Stadium in London. The tournament was originally scheduled for the summer of 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced UEFA to postpone it by one year. The organisers decided to keep the original name, so a championship that was actually played in 2021 is still known as Euro 2020. This detail shows students how a major event can retain its planned name even when its date changes.
In what ways was Euro 2020 an unusual European Championship?
Euro 2020 was unusual in several ways. First, it was not hosted by a single country. To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the competition, UEFA spread the matches across eleven host cities in eleven different countries, which had never be...
Describe how the final of Euro 2020 was decided.
The final of Euro 2020 was played between Italy and England at Wembley Stadium in London on 11 July 2021. England began strongly and Luke Shaw scored in the opening minutes, giving the home team an early lead. Italy gradually took contro...
What does Euro 2020 teach us about resilience? Give examples from the tournament.
Euro 2020 offers several examples of resilience. Italy had failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, a humiliation for a football nation, yet the team rebuilt under Roberto Mancini and went on to win the European title. Denmark's Christi...
Give the meaning of the following words and use each in a sentence of your own: tournament, postpone, underdog, equaliser, spectator.
tournament: a series of matches leading to one overall winner. The school organised a football tournament for all four houses. postpone: to delay an event until a later time. The final was postponed because of heavy rain. underdog: a tea...
Rewrite the following sentences as instructed.
a) UEFA postponed the tournament for a year. (Change into passive voice)
b) England scored an early goal. Italy equalised in the second half. (Join using the past perfect)
c) Eleven cities hosted the matches. (Change into passive voice)
d) The coach said, "My players deserve this trophy." (Change into reported speech)
e) The captain said, "We will come back stronger next time." (Change into reported speech)
a) The tournament was postponed for a year by UEFA. b) England had scored an early goal before Italy equalised in the second half. c) The matches were hosted by eleven cities. d) The coach said that his players deserved that trophy. e) T...
Write a news report on an inter-school football tournament that was recently held in your district.
Shree Janata Secondary wins district inter-school football title Pokhara, 14 September Shree Janata Secondary School lifted the District Inter-School Football Trophy on Saturday after defeating Gyan Jyoti Higher Secondary School 2-1 in a...
Write an essay on the importance of sports in the life of students in about 300 words.
The Importance of Sports in the Life of Students
Sports are often treated as a break from real study, yet they are one of the most valuable parts of a student's education. A young person who plays regularly gains a healthy body, a disciplined mind and social skills that no textbook can provide. In Nepal, where academic pressure is heavy and screens fill much of a student's free time, the importance of sports has never been greater.
The first and most obvious benefit is physical health. Running, football, volleyball and other games strengthen the heart and muscles, improve stamina and help students avoid obesity and lifestyle diseases. Regular exercise also improves sleep and concentration, so students who play sports often perform better in the classroom rather than worse. A tired body after a game brings a fresh mind to the study table.
Sports also build character. A player learns to follow rules, accept the decisions of a referee and respect opponents. Defeat teaches humility and victory teaches gratitude. Team games in particular develop cooperation, communication and leadership, because no striker can score without passes from team-mates. These qualities of discipline and teamwork later help students in higher education and in their careers.
Moreover, sports offer emotional relief. Examinations, family expectations and uncertainty about the future create stress, and a game on the field is one of the healthiest ways to release it. Sports also create friendships across classes, castes and communities, promoting unity and national pride, as major tournaments such as the European Championship show on a larger scale.
Of course, sports must be balanced with study, and schools should provide safe grounds, trained coaches and equal opportunities for girls. When this balance is achieved, sports do not compete with education; they complete it. Every student should therefore be encouraged to play at least one game regularly, for the sake of body, mind and community.
What is Hyperloop and how is it meant to work?
Hyperloop is a proposed system of very high-speed ground transport in which passengers and goods travel in pods, or capsules, through long sealed tubes. The system works by removing the two main forces that slow down ordinary vehicles. First, most of the air is pumped out of the tube to create a near vacuum, so the pod meets almost no air resistance. Second, the pod does not run on wheels but is lifted by magnetic levitation or a cushion of air, so there is very little friction with the track. Electric motors then push the pod forward. Because the resistance is so small, supporters claim that the pods could travel at speeds close to the speed of sound while using far less energy than an aeroplane. The idea became famous in 2013 when Elon Musk published a concept paper describing it.
Why do supporters say Hyperloop would be faster than a conventional train?
A conventional train is slowed by two things: the air it has to push aside and the friction between its wheels and the rails. Hyperloop is designed to remove both. The pods travel inside a tube from which most of the air has been removed...
What advantages are claimed for the Hyperloop system?
Several advantages are claimed for Hyperloop. The first is speed: journeys between cities that now take many hours by road could be completed in minutes, which would allow people to live in one city and work in another. The second is eff...
What difficulties stand in the way of building a working Hyperloop? Do you think it is realistic? Give reasons.
The difficulties are considerable. Building hundreds of kilometres of airtight tube, along with stations and land acquisition, would cost enormous sums of money. Keeping a vacuum inside such a long tube is technically very hard, and any ...
Give the meaning of the following words and use each in a sentence of your own: prototype, vacuum, feasibility, sustainable, obsolete.
prototype: the first working model of a new design, built for testing. The engineers tested a prototype of the pod on a short track. vacuum: a space from which almost all the air has been removed. The pods travel through a tube kept in a...
Rewrite the following sentences as instructed.
a) Engineers pump the air out of the tube. (Change into passive voice)
b) Magnets lift the pod above the track. (Change into passive voice)
c) The company ....... (build) a test track next year. (Use a suitable future form)
d) The project ....... never be completed because of the cost. (Use a suitable modal verb)
e) If the tube ....... (be) damaged, the pods ....... (stop) automatically. (Complete the first conditional)
a) The air is pumped out of the tube by engineers. b) The pod is lifted above the track by magnets. c) The company is going to build a test track next year. (will build is also acceptable.) d) The project might never be completed because...
Write an essay on the impact of modern technology on our daily life in about 300 words.
The Impact of Modern Technology on Our Daily Life
Modern technology has changed daily life more in the past thirty years than in the previous three centuries. From the mobile phone in a farmer's pocket in Jumla to digital banking in Kathmandu, technology now shapes how we communicate, learn, work and travel. Its impact is largely positive, but it also brings problems that a wise society must manage.
The most visible benefit is communication. A student in a remote village can attend an online class, a migrant worker in Qatar can see his family every evening on a video call, and news reaches the whole country within minutes. Technology has also transformed services. Digital payment applications have reduced the need to carry cash, online forms have made government offices more accessible, and telemedicine allows patients to consult doctors without travelling for days. In agriculture, weather forecasts and market prices on a phone help farmers decide what to plant and when to sell.
Transport and energy show the same pattern. Electric vehicles and solar panels are reducing pollution, and bold ideas such as Hyperloop promise journeys of minutes between cities. Even if such systems take decades to arrive, the research behind them improves the technology we already use.
However, technology has a darker side. Excessive use of social media reduces concentration, disturbs sleep and spreads false information. Online fraud and misuse of personal data are growing threats. Machines are replacing some jobs faster than new ones are created, and the digital divide means that students without a device or internet fall further behind their peers.
The answer is not to reject technology but to use it responsibly. Schools should teach digital literacy and safety, the government should extend affordable internet to every village, and each of us should decide when to switch off. Used with such discipline, modern technology remains one of the greatest gifts of our age.
Write a letter to the editor of a national daily expressing your concern about the poor internet facilities in rural schools of Nepal and suggesting solutions.
Shree Saraswati Secondary School Besisahar, Lamjung 14 September 2026 The Editor The Rising Nepal Kathmandu Subject: Poor internet facilities in rural schools Dear Sir or Madam, Through the columns of your respected newspaper, I wish to ...
Why does the unit's reading text treat education as something much wider than schooling? Explain with reference to the passage.
The reading treats education as wider than schooling because school is only the visible part of learning. Classes, syllabuses and examinations give a learner information, but real education also takes place at home, in the community and ...
How do teachers and family members shape a young learner, according to the ideas in the reading?
According to the reading, teachers and family members shape a learner far more through example and encouragement than through facts alone. A good teacher notices a student's talent, praises effort, corrects mistakes patiently and shows h...
Distinguish between rote learning and learning with understanding. Which does the unit favour and why?
Rote learning means memorising facts, definitions or answers by repetition without grasping their meaning. It produces quick results in a test but the knowledge is soon forgotten and cannot be applied to a new problem. Learning with unde...
Write the meanings of the following words from the unit and use each in a sentence of your own: literacy, curriculum, scholarship.
Literacy means the ability to read and write. Sentence: Adult literacy classes have helped many women in the village read letters and signboards for the first time. Curriculum means the whole set of subjects and content that a school or ...
Change the following sentences into reported (indirect) speech.
a. "I want to become a teacher," Sita said. b. "Have you completed your assignment?" the teacher asked Hari. c. "Where did you learn English?" she asked me. d. "Do not waste your time on social media," my father said to me. e. "We will visit the library tomorrow," the students said.
a. Sita said that she wanted to become a teacher. b. The teacher asked Hari if (whether) he had completed his assignment. c. She asked me where I had learnt English. d. My father told me not to waste my time on social media. (Or: My fath...
Change into direct speech: The principal told the students that they had performed well in the board examination and asked them what they planned to do next.
"You have performed well in the board examination. What do you plan to do next?" the principal said to the students.
To convert back to direct speech, the past perfect had performed returns to the present perfect have performed, the past simple planned returns to the present simple plan, the pronoun they becomes you because the principal is addressing the students directly, and the reported wh-question is restored to question order with a question mark and quotation marks.
Write an essay on "The Importance of Education" in about 300 words.
The Importance of Education
Education is the process by which a person gains knowledge, skills, values and the ability to think. It begins at home, continues in school and college and, for a wise person, never really ends. Of all the investments a family or a nation can make, education gives the most lasting return, because it changes not only what people know but who they become.
For the individual, education opens doors. A literate person can read a contract, understand a medicine label and follow the news. A trained person can earn a better living and support a family with dignity. Education also builds confidence. Students who learn to speak, write and reason clearly are able to express their views and defend their rights instead of depending on others.
For society, the benefits are even greater. Educated parents keep their children healthier and send them to school in turn. Educated women marry later, earn more and take part in public life, which lifts whole communities out of poverty. A democracy needs citizens who can judge arguments, detect false claims and vote thoughtfully, and only education produces such citizens. For a developing country like Nepal, where many young people leave for work abroad, skilled and educated youth are the best hope of building a strong economy at home.
However, the purpose of education is not only economic. True education shapes character. It teaches honesty, tolerance, respect for others and responsibility towards the environment and the nation. A clever person without these values may misuse knowledge, but an educated person uses it for the common good. This is why schools should encourage curiosity and critical thinking rather than mere memorisation.
In conclusion, education is the foundation on which personal progress and national development are built. It should reach every child, regardless of gender, caste or wealth, and it should continue throughout life. A society that educates its people well has already secured its future.
Write a paragraph in about 150 words on "Education for All".
Education for All Education for all means that every child, whatever his or her gender, caste, religion, disability or family income, has the right to complete good quality basic education. In Nepal the Constitution treats basic educatio...
Why was the QR code invented, and where? What problem did it solve?
The QR code was invented in Japan in 1994 by a company working in the automotive industry. The company needed to track a very large number of parts and components moving through its factories, and the barcodes then in use were not good e...
How is a QR code different from a traditional barcode?
A traditional barcode is one-dimensional: it stores information only horizontally, in the widths and spacing of its parallel lines, and can therefore hold only a small amount of data, usually a product number. A QR code is two-dimensiona...
What is the function of the three large squares in the corners of a QR code, and why can a QR code still be read when it is partly damaged?
The three large squares in the corners of a QR code are position markers. When a camera or scanner points at the code, these squares allow the device to locate the code immediately and work out which way it is turned. Because the orienta...
Mention any four uses of QR codes in daily life today.
QR codes are used in many parts of daily life today. First, they are used for payment: a customer scans the code displayed by a shop or a taxi driver and transfers money from a digital wallet or bank account without cash. Second, they open websites or download applications when scanned by a phone camera, so companies print them on posters and packaging. Third, they appear on tickets and boarding passes, where a scan verifies the ticket at the gate. Fourth, restaurants display a code that opens the menu on the customer's phone. Other uses include connecting to a Wi-Fi network, sharing contact details and tracking goods in factories and warehouses.
Give the meanings of the following words and use each in a sentence of your own: transaction, cashless, remittance.
Transaction means an act of buying, selling or transferring money. Sentence: Every transaction made through the mobile wallet appears in the app's history with the date and amount. Cashless means done without physical notes and coins. Se...
Complete the following sentences with the correct form of the verbs in brackets.
a. If prices keep rising, poor families ........ (suffer) the most. b. If I ........ (have) enough savings, I would open a small shop in my village. c. If the shopkeeper had accepted QR payment, I ........ (not need) to look for change. d. Water ........ (boil) if you heat it to 100 degrees Celsius. e. Unless you ........ (save) a part of your income every month, you will never be able to invest.
a. If prices keep rising, poor families will suffer the most. (First conditional: a real future possibility, so present simple in the if clause and will in the main clause.) b. If I had enough savings, I would open a small shop in my vil...
Write an essay on "Advantages and Disadvantages of a Cashless Economy" in about 300 words.
Advantages and Disadvantages of a Cashless Economy
A cashless economy is one in which most payments are made electronically, through cards, mobile wallets, bank transfers and QR codes, rather than with notes and coins. In Nepal the change has been rapid. A few years ago cash was almost the only option; today a vegetable seller, a taxi driver and a large supermarket all display a QR code at the counter. This shift brings real benefits, but it also creates problems that must be managed.
The advantages are considerable. Digital payment is fast and convenient: a customer does not need to carry cash, wait for change or visit a bank. It is cheaper for the country, because printing, transporting and guarding currency costs money. Every transaction leaves a record, which helps people manage their budgets and helps the government collect taxes and reduce corruption. Cashless payments also lower the risk of theft and remove the problem of counterfeit notes. For small businesses, accepting digital payment can widen the customer base and make it easier to obtain loans, since a bank can see a clear record of income.
However, the disadvantages are serious for a developing country. Digital payment depends on a smartphone, a bank account and a reliable internet connection, and many elderly, poor and rural Nepalis lack one or more of these. If cash disappears, they risk being excluded from the economy. Fraud, hacking and fake payment screens are growing threats, and victims often do not know how to seek help. Electronic records also reduce privacy, because companies and authorities can trace what a person buys. Finally, spending feels less real when no cash leaves the hand, and some people fall into debt through careless digital spending.
In conclusion, a cashless economy offers efficiency, transparency and security, but only if it includes everyone. Nepal should promote digital payments while protecting consumers, teaching financial literacy in schools and communities, and keeping cash available for those who still depend on it. Technology should widen access to the economy, not narrow it.
Write a paragraph in about 150 words describing how a payment is made using a QR code.
Making a Payment with a QR Code Paying with a QR code is a simple process that takes less than a minute. First, the customer needs a smartphone with a mobile wallet or mobile banking application that has money in it. When it is time to p...
According to the article "Why Do We Laugh Inappropriately?", what is the main purpose of laughter?
The article argues that the main purpose of laughter is social rather than comic. Laughter is a signal that we send to other people to show that we are friendly, that we understand and agree with them, and that we belong to the group. Th...
Why do people sometimes laugh at serious or sad occasions such as funerals? Explain with reference to the text.
The writer explains that laughter appears whenever we are under social strain, not only when something is funny. At a funeral, in a hospital or during a frightening moment, the body is full of tension and looks for a way to release it. L...
Distinguish between involuntary laughter and voluntary (social) laughter as described in the reading.
Involuntary laughter is the genuine, helpless kind that takes over the whole body. It is produced without conscious control, it is very difficult to fake, and it is strongly contagious, which is why a hall full of laughing people can set...
Why is comedy usually funnier in a crowded hall than when watched alone at home? Answer according to the text.
The text explains that laughter is contagious and social. When we are surrounded by other people who are laughing, their laughter triggers ours, often before we have understood the joke. In a crowded hall the laughter of the audience feeds on itself and grows, so the same comedy feels much funnier. At home, alone in front of a screen, there is no group to laugh with, and since we laugh far less when we are by ourselves, the jokes seem weaker. The difference lies not in the comedy but in the company.
Write the meanings of the following words as they are used in the text and use each in a sentence of your own: contagious, suppress, inappropriate.
Contagious means spreading quickly from one person to another. In the text it describes how laughter passes from person to person in a group. Sentence: Her laughter was so contagious that the whole classroom was soon giggling. Suppress m...
Change the following sentences into reported speech.
a. "I can't stop laughing at this cartoon," Sita said. b. "Why are you giggling in the library?" the librarian asked us. c. "Don't laugh at your classmates," the teacher told the boys. d. "We watched a comedy show last night," Ram said to me. e. "Have you ever laughed at a funeral?" she asked him.
a. Sita said that she could not stop laughing at that cartoon. b. The librarian asked us why we were giggling in the library. c. The teacher told the boys not to laugh at their classmates. d. Ram told me that they had watched a comedy sh...
Write a short essay in about 250 words describing a time when you or someone you know laughed at the wrong moment. Explain what happened and how the people around reacted.
Laughing at the Wrong Moment
The most embarrassing laugh of my life happened during a school assembly in Grade 10. Our principal had called the whole school together to announce the death of a retired teacher whom many of the seniors remembered fondly. The hall was completely silent, heads were bowed, and the principal was reading a short tribute in a slow, solemn voice.
Behind me my friend Bikash whispered that the principal's shoes did not match. I looked down and saw that one was brown and one was black. It was not really funny, but the silence of the hall and the seriousness of the occasion made it feel enormous. I felt a laugh rising in my chest and pressed my lips together as hard as I could. My shoulders began to shake. Bikash, seeing my face, started to shake as well. Within seconds a small, strangled squeak escaped from me and echoed through the hall.
The reaction was immediate. The students around us turned with shocked faces, a teacher glared and hissed at us to be quiet, and the principal paused for a long, painful moment before continuing. I stared at the floor, burning with shame, and the laugh finally died. After the assembly the class teacher called us to the staff room, and we apologised sincerely. She surprised us by saying that she understood, because she had done the same thing at her grandmother's funeral.
I now know from the article "Why Do We Laugh Inappropriately?" that this kind of laughter is nervous laughter, a release of tension and a signal of connection rather than disrespect. The knowledge does not remove the embarrassment, but it helps me forgive that fifteen-year-old boy who could not keep a straight face.
Write a paragraph in about 150 words on the importance of humour in daily life.
Humour is one of the simplest and most powerful tools we have for living well with other people. A shared joke breaks the ice between strangers, eases the tension of a difficult meeting and turns an ordinary evening with family into a wa...
Who is Harvey Maxwell, and how does he behave when he reaches his office in the morning?
Harvey Maxwell is a busy stockbroker in New York and the central character of O. Henry's story "The Romance of a Busy Broker". He arrives at his office at half past nine with his stenographer, Miss Leslie, throws a quick "Good morning" t...
Why does Miss Leslie linger near Maxwell's desk, and how does he react? What does this tell us about him?
Miss Leslie lingers near Maxwell's desk because she is expecting some sign of affection or recognition from him. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are dreamy and there is a tender softness in her manner, since the two of them were married...
Describe the confusion about the new stenographer. Why does Maxwell deny having asked for one?
Pitcher tells Miss Leslie that Maxwell instructed him the day before to ask the employment agency to send a new stenographer. She is surprised but replies that she will continue her work as usual until someone replaces her. When a candid...
What makes Maxwell suddenly think of Miss Leslie, and what happens when he goes to her?
At lunch hour, when the rush of the market slows a little, the sweet scent of lilac drifts in through the open window. The fragrance stops Maxwell where he stands, because it belongs to Miss Leslie and reminds him of her. He realises tha...
What is the message of "The Romance of a Busy Broker"? Is the title appropriate? Give reasons.
The story's message is that the frantic pursuit of money can dehumanise a person. Maxwell's work has turned him into a machine so completely that he has forgotten his own wedding, the most important event of his life. O. Henry warns that a life given wholly to business leaves no room for love, memory or ordinary human feeling, though the scent of lilac shows that tenderness can still break through. The title is appropriate and gently ironic. It promises a romance, and there is one, but it is the romance of a busy broker: rushed, squeezed into a lunch break and almost destroyed by forgetfulness. The word busy explains why the romance is so strange, and the surprise ending fulfils the title's promise in an unexpected way.
Find the words from the story that match the following meanings and use them in sentences of your own: (a) a person who buys and sells shares for others, (b) a person who takes dictation and types letters, (c) a pleasant smell.
(a) Broker: a person who buys and sells shares on behalf of other people. Sentence: My uncle works as a broker and spends his whole day watching share prices. (b) Stenographer: a person employed to take dictation in shorthand and type le...
Change the following sentences into the passive voice.
a. Pitcher noticed a change in his employer. b. Maxwell shouted orders across the office. c. The agency sent a new stenographer. d. The scent of lilac reminded him of Miss Leslie. e. They had performed the marriage the previous evening.
a. A change in his employer was noticed by Pitcher. b. Orders were shouted across the office by Maxwell. c. A new stenographer was sent by the agency. d. He was reminded of Miss Leslie by the scent of lilac. e. The marriage had been perf...
Write an imaginative story in about 250 words in which an ordinary object suddenly gains a magical power. Give your story a suitable title and a surprising ending.
The Watch That Ran Backwards
Anjali found the watch in a box of her grandfather's old things, a plain steel watch with a cracked glass face. When she wound it, the hands began to move, but backwards. She laughed, put it on and forgot about it.
That afternoon she dropped a glass of milk in the kitchen. As the white puddle spread across the floor, she glanced at the watch and wished she had been more careful. The hands spun. In an instant the glass was whole again in her hand, full to the brim, and the floor was dry. Anjali stood frozen. Then she understood: the watch could take her back a few minutes and let her try again.
For a week she was the luckiest girl in Kathmandu. She rewound a wrong answer in class, a clumsy fall on the football pitch and an argument with her mother, each time choosing better words or steadier feet. Every mistake could be erased. She began to feel that nothing could ever go wrong for her again.
On Saturday her best friend Sunita told her a secret and made her promise never to repeat it. That evening, without thinking, Anjali repeated it to her cousin. Horrified, she reached for the watch. The hands did not move. She wound it, shook it, begged it. Nothing. Only then did she notice the tiny words engraved on the back, which she had never read: One for every mistake you learn from.
Anjali sat on her bed for a long time. Then she picked up the phone, called Sunita, and told her the truth. It was harder than any spell, and it was the first thing all week that felt real.
Write a paragraph in about 150 words describing your dream world, a place where things happen that cannot happen in ordinary life.
In my dream world the mountains of Nepal have learned to speak. Every morning Machhapuchhre greets the villages of Pokhara with a low, warm voice that rolls across the lake, and the smaller hills answer like children in a classroom. Rive...
What did the World Trade Center mean to the writer and the people of New York before 11 September 2001?
Before the attacks, the World Trade Center was a landmark that defined the skyline of New York. For the writer and for millions of ordinary people it was part of everyday life rather than a distant symbol: a place where people went to wo...
How, according to the reading, did the attacks change the lives and attitudes of ordinary people?
The text shows that the attacks changed people in two ways. Emotionally, they brought shock and grief, and people began to divide their lives into a time before the event and a time after it, replaying small details of that day again and...
What does the reading suggest about the role of memory after a great tragedy?
The reading suggests that memory is how a community keeps a tragedy alive and makes sense of it. After the attacks, people held on to small details, told and retold their personal stories, and returned to the event through anniversaries and memorials. In this way history becomes collective memory, something a whole society carries, rather than a record kept only in books. The writer's own reflection is itself an act of remembering, which shows that writing about a painful event is also a way of coming to terms with it.
Describe the tone of the reading text and explain why the writer adopts it.
The tone of the passage is thoughtful, sad and quietly hopeful rather than angry. The writer does not use the language of revenge or political blame; instead the text reflects on loss, on the strangeness of ordinary life continuing besid...
Give the meanings of the following words from the theme and use each in a sentence of your own: landmark, aftermath, resilience, commemorate, rubble.
landmark: a well known building or feature that identifies a place. The Dharahara tower was a landmark that every visitor to Kathmandu recognised. aftermath: the period and consequences that follow a disaster. In the aftermath of the ear...
Rewrite the following sentences, putting the verbs in brackets into the simple past, past continuous or past perfect as appropriate.
(a) When the fire alarm rang, most of the staff (already / leave) the building. (b) She (walk) to the station when she heard the news. (c) By the time the rescue team arrived, the volunteers (clear) part of the debris. (d) After the memorial (be) built, families (visit) it every year. (e) While the city (mourn), ordinary work slowly (resume).
(a) When the fire alarm rang, most of the staff had already left the building. (The leaving was completed before the alarm, so the past perfect is needed.) (b) She was walking to the station when she heard the news. (An action in progres...
Write an essay in about 300 words on a historical event that changed the world, explaining what happened, why it mattered and how it is remembered today.
An Event That Changed the World: The Attacks of 11 September 2001
Some events are remembered not because of a single dramatic moment but because life afterwards never returns to what it was. The attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001 belong to this kind of history. In a single morning, a city lost one of its most famous landmarks and thousands of lives, and the whole world began to think differently about security, travel and trust.
On that day, hijacked passenger aircraft were deliberately flown into the two towers of the World Trade Center, and both buildings collapsed within hours. Other targets in the United States were attacked the same morning. People who had gone to work as usual never came home, and rescue workers who rushed toward the site lost their lives trying to save others. Television carried the images around the globe, so that people in every country felt they had witnessed the event.
The attacks mattered because their consequences reached far beyond New York. Governments tightened airport security, introduced new laws and launched military campaigns that reshaped international politics for the next two decades. In daily life, ordinary people became more anxious about safety and more suspicious of strangers, and communities that were wrongly associated with the attackers faced prejudice. At the same time, the response showed remarkable solidarity, as volunteers, doctors and firefighters worked together in the ruins.
Today the event is remembered in many ways. A memorial stands where the towers once rose, and every anniversary the names of the dead are read aloud. Survivors and families tell their stories, and the day is studied in schools as a turning point of the twenty first century. Remembering it honestly, without hatred, reminds us that history is made not only by those who cause destruction but also by those who rebuild.
Write a paragraph in about 150 words on why it is important to remember the painful events of history.
Remembering the painful events of history is important because forgetting them makes it easier to repeat them. When a society keeps the memory of a war, a disaster or an act of terror alive, it also keeps alive the lessons those events t...
What is culture, according to the ideas presented in the unit? Explain in your own words.
Culture is the shared way of life of a group of people. It includes the visible things a community produces and enjoys, such as its food, dress, music, art, architecture and festivals, as well as the invisible things that guide behaviour, such as its values, beliefs, norms of politeness and ideas about family, work and time. Culture is learned, not inherited biologically; a child absorbs it from parents, language, school and religion long before being able to name it. Because it is shared, it gives members of a community a common identity and a sense of what is normal.
How is culture transmitted from one generation to the next? Give examples.
Culture is transmitted through learning rather than through birth. Within the family, children pick up language, manners, food habits and religious practice by imitating parents and grandparents. Stories, proverbs, songs and rituals carr...
Why does the unit say that culture is living and changing rather than fixed?
Culture is described as living because it exists only in the people who practise it, and people respond to new conditions. Every generation adapts what it inherits: some customs fade because they no longer fit modern life, new technologi...
What attitude toward other cultures does the unit encourage, and why is that attitude important?
The unit encourages curiosity, respect and tolerance toward other cultures. It warns against ethnocentrism, the habit of judging other people's ways of life by the standards of one's own and treating one's own customs as the only natural...
Explain the difference between each pair of words and use one word from each pair in a sentence: custom and tradition; diversity and assimilation; heritage and artefact.
custom / tradition: A custom is an accepted way of behaving in a community at the present time, such as removing shoes before entering a home. A tradition is a belief or practice that has been handed down through generations and carries ...
Join each pair of sentences using a suitable relative pronoun (who, which, that, whose, where or when).
(a) Tihar is a festival. It honours the bond between brothers and sisters. (b) The Tharu people live in the Tarai. Their culture is closely tied to the land. (c) Lumbini is a sacred place. The Buddha was born there. (d) My grandmother taught me the songs. She could not read or write. (e) Dashain falls in autumn. Families gather at that time.
(a) Tihar is a festival which (or that) honours the bond between brothers and sisters. (A defining clause about a thing; no commas.) (b) The Tharu people, whose culture is closely tied to the land, live in the Tarai. (Whose shows possess...
Write an essay in about 300 words on the importance of preserving cultural diversity in Nepal.
Preserving Cultural Diversity in Nepal
Nepal is a small country with an extraordinary range of cultures. Within its borders live more than a hundred ethnic and caste groups speaking well over a hundred languages, following Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Kirat and other faiths, and celebrating festivals that fill almost every month of the calendar. This diversity is one of the nation's greatest assets, and preserving it deserves the attention of every citizen.
Cultural diversity matters first because culture is identity. The language a child hears at home, the festivals a family celebrates and the stories grandparents tell give people a sense of who they are and where they belong. When a language dies or a ritual is abandoned, a community loses part of its memory and its dignity. Several indigenous languages in Nepal are now spoken by only a few elderly people, and once they are gone the knowledge carried in their songs, medicines and place names disappears with them.
Diversity also enriches the whole nation. The Newar festivals of the Kathmandu Valley, the Tharu dances of the Tarai, the Sherpa monasteries of the high Himalaya and the Maithili paintings of the eastern plains attract visitors from around the world and support livelihoods in tourism and crafts. A society that draws on many traditions is more creative and more resilient than one that knows only a single way of living.
Preservation does not mean freezing culture in the past. It means giving communities the freedom and resources to practise, teach and adapt their traditions. Schools can offer mother tongue instruction in the early grades, the media can broadcast in regional languages, and festivals can be recognised as public holidays across the country. Above all, young people need to feel proud rather than embarrassed about their heritage.
A nation is judged not only by its economic progress but by how it treats the many voices within it. By valuing every culture equally, Nepal protects both its heritage and its unity.
Write a paragraph in about 150 words describing a festival celebrated in your community.
Tihar, which is celebrated in autumn a few weeks after Dashain, is the festival that lights up my community every year. It lasts five days, and each day honours a different creature or relationship. On the first two days families feed cr...
Who was Julia Butterfly Hill, and why did she climb the redwood tree named Luna?
Julia Butterfly Hill is an American environmental activist who became famous as a tree-sitter. After a serious car accident made her reconsider the purpose of her life, she travelled to the redwood forests of northern California, where a...
Describe the hardships Julia faced while living on the platform in the tree.
Life in the tree was harsh in every season. Julia lived on a small wooden platform covered only with tarpaulins, so winter storms with violent winds and freezing rain shook her shelter and soaked her belongings. She suffered from cold, i...
How did the lumber company try to make Julia leave the tree?
The company used pressure rather than persuasion. Security guards were posted at the foot of the tree, and for a period they stopped her supporters from sending up food and water. Helicopters flew close to Luna, creating dangerous winds ...
What did Julia learn from Luna, and how did her protest end?
Julia came to regard Luna not as a piece of timber but as a living being older than any human institution. The tree taught her patience, humility and endurance; when storms struck, she learned from the branches to bend and sway rather th...
Why can an old-growth redwood not be replaced simply by planting new trees?
An old-growth redwood has taken many centuries to reach its height, and the forest around it has developed a complex web of life over the same period: deep soil held together by roots, streams kept clear and cool by shade, and habitats for birds, insects and animals that need the tall canopy and fallen trunks of ancient trees. A plantation of young trees is a crop, not an ecosystem. It cannot restore that lost soil, water balance and biodiversity within a human lifetime, so once ancient forest is clear-cut, it is effectively gone for good.
Write the meanings of the following words and use each in a sentence of your own: conservation, deforestation, activist, habitat, sustainable.
Conservation means the protection and careful use of natural resources so that they are not wasted or destroyed. Sentence: Community forestry has become a model of conservation in the hills of Nepal. Deforestation means the clearing of f...
Rewrite each pair of sentences as a single sentence using the connective given in brackets.
a. The storms were violent. Julia refused to come down. (although) b. Trees hold the soil in place. Deforestation causes landslides. (because) c. The company blocked her supplies. She did not give up. (however) d. She stayed in the tree. Luna would not be felled. (so that) e. The weather was terrible. She continued her protest. (in spite of)
a. Although the storms were violent, Julia refused to come down. b. Deforestation causes landslides because trees hold the soil in place. c. The company blocked her supplies; however, she did not give up. d. She stayed in the tree so tha...
Write an essay in about 300 words on "Deforestation in Nepal: Causes, Effects and Solutions".
Deforestation in Nepal: Causes, Effects and Solutions
Forests are the green wealth of Nepal. They hold the soil of the hills, feed the springs, shelter wildlife and supply fodder, fuel and timber to millions of rural families. Yet over the past decades large areas of forest have been cleared, and the loss continues in many districts. Deforestation is therefore one of the most serious environmental problems facing the country.
The causes are closely linked to poverty and population growth. Most rural households still depend on firewood for cooking, and growing families need more land for crops and grazing. Illegal logging by timber smugglers strips valuable trees from the Terai and the Chure hills. Roads, hydropower projects and new settlements are often built without proper planning, and forest fires set to clear land in the dry season frequently spread out of control. Weak enforcement of the law allows all of these to continue.
The effects are visible every monsoon. Bare slopes cannot hold rainwater, so landslides bury villages and roads, and rivers carrying eroded soil flood the plains. Springs that once flowed all year dry up, and women must walk further for water. Wildlife loses its habitat, so animals enter farms and conflict with people grows. In the long run, the loss of forests also reduces the country's ability to absorb carbon and to withstand climate change.
The solutions are known and some already work. Community forestry, in which local user groups manage and protect their own forest, has regrown many hillsides and should be extended. Alternative energy such as biogas, improved stoves and electricity from hydropower reduces the demand for firewood. Strict punishment of illegal loggers, careful planning of roads, and tree-planting campaigns in schools and communities all help. Above all, people must understand that a standing forest is worth more than the timber in it.
If Nepal protects its forests today, it protects its water, its soil and its future.
Write a paragraph in about 150 words on why forests matter to Nepal.
Why Forests Matter to Nepal Forests matter to Nepal more than to most countries because so much of the land is steep and so many people live directly from it. On the hills, tree roots bind the thin soil and slow the monsoon rain, so a wo...
According to the text, why is presenting yourself well as important as having qualifications?
The text argues that an employer can judge only what is shown. Qualifications and ability may be real, but they exist on paper and in the candidate's mind; the employer meets them first through a CV and a covering letter and then through...
What qualities should a good curriculum vitae have?
A good curriculum vitae is short, usually one or two pages, and clearly organised under headings such as personal details, education, experience, skills and referees, so that a busy employer can find every fact in seconds. It is tailored...
How should a candidate behave during a job interview?
The candidate should arrive a few minutes early, dressed neatly and suitably for the workplace, and should greet the interviewer with a smile, a firm handshake and a polite word. Sitting upright, keeping eye contact and listening careful...
What role do appearance and body language play in creating a first impression?
Appearance and body language speak before the candidate says a word. Clean, appropriate clothing and tidy grooming tell the employer that the candidate takes the occasion seriously and understands the workplace. Body language then confir...
What is the difference between confidence and arrogance, and why does the text warn against exaggeration?
Confidence is a quiet certainty about what one can do, shown by calm speech, steady eye contact and honest, direct answers. Arrogance is the display of superiority: boasting, interrupting, belittling others or claiming abilities one does not have. Employers value the first and distrust the second, because an arrogant employee is hard to train and hard to work with. The text warns against exaggeration for a practical reason: an inflated claim on a CV or in an interview is easily exposed by a probing question or a telephone call to a referee, and once one claim collapses, the employer doubts everything else the candidate has said.
Write the meanings of the following words and use each in a sentence of your own: vacancy, referee, shortlist, punctual, credentials.
A vacancy is a post that is unfilled and open to applicants. Sentence: The bank announced a vacancy for a junior accountant in its Butwal branch. A referee is a person who agrees to write or speak in support of an applicant. Sentence: My...
Join each pair of sentences into one sentence using a relative clause.
a. The candidate arrived late. He was not selected. b. I applied for a post. It was advertised in a national daily. c. Ms Shrestha interviewed me. Her company is in Lalitpur. d. This is the hall. The interviews will be held here. e. My teacher wrote my reference. She has known me for five years.
a. The candidate who arrived late was not selected. b. I applied for a post which was advertised in a national daily. (That may replace which here.) c. Ms Shrestha, whose company is in Lalitpur, interviewed me. d. This is the hall where ...
A private school in Pokhara has advertised a vacancy for a computer teacher in a national daily. Write a job application letter for the post and attach a curriculum vitae.
Bagar, Pokhara 33700 Kaski 16 September 2026
The Principal Himalaya Secondary School Lakeside, Pokhara
Subject: Application for the post of Computer Teacher
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing in response to your advertisement in a national daily on 10 September 2026 for a Computer Teacher at your school. I wish to apply for the post and have enclosed my curriculum vitae for your consideration.
I completed my Bachelor of Computer Application from Prithvi Narayan Campus, Tribhuvan University, in 2025 with first division, and I passed Grade 12 in the Science stream from the same city. During my final year I taught computer science to Grades 8 to 10 at a community school in Lekhnath as a volunteer, where I prepared lesson plans, set up the school's first computer lab and trained students for the district IT quiz. I am fluent in Nepali and English, comfortable with Windows and Linux systems, and confident in teaching programming basics, office applications and internet safety. I am patient with young learners and enjoy making technical topics simple.
I would welcome the opportunity to demonstrate my teaching in a class at your convenience. I can attend an interview on any working day and can join immediately if selected. Thank you for considering my application.
Yours faithfully,
Sujan Karki
Enclosure: Curriculum Vitae
Curriculum Vitae
Name: Sujan Karki Address: Bagar, Pokhara 33700, Kaski Date of birth: 12 March 2003 Nationality: Nepali Contact: mobile and email available on request
Objective: To teach computer science in a way that gives school students practical skills and confidence with technology.
Education: Bachelor of Computer Application, Prithvi Narayan Campus, TU, 2025, first division Grade 12 (Science), NEB, 2021, GPA 3.4 SEE, 2019, GPA 3.6
Experience: Volunteer Computer Teacher, Shree Janata Secondary School, Lekhnath, 2024 to 2025: taught Grades 8 to 10, set up computer lab, coached IT quiz team
Skills: Nepali and English (fluent), Windows and Linux, Python and C, MS Office, basic networking
Training: Teacher Training in ICT, 2024
Interests: Reading, trekking, open-source software
Referees: Head of Department, Computer Science, Prithvi Narayan Campus, Pokhara Head Teacher, Shree Janata Secondary School, Lekhnath
I declare that the information given above is true to the best of my knowledge.
Write a short essay in about 200 words on "Choosing the Right Career".
Choosing the Right Career Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions a young person makes, because it shapes not only income but daily happiness for decades. In Nepal the choice is often made for students by parents, by fas...
Why does the essayist regard walking as an ideal hobby? Give at least three reasons from the essay "On Walking".
The essayist regards walking as an ideal hobby for several reasons. First, it is the simplest and cheapest of all pastimes: it needs no equipment, no membership, no partner and no special ground, so it is open to rich and poor alike. Sec...
How, according to the essay, does walking help a person to think?
According to the essay, walking helps a person to think because the body settles into a steady, effortless rhythm and the mind is left free. Unlike a driver, a reader or a player, the walker does not have to keep the hands or the eyes bu...
Does the essayist prefer walking alone or walking with a companion? Explain the reasoning behind this preference.
The essayist admits that a companion brings talk, cheerfulness and safety to a walk, but for the fullest satisfaction he prefers to walk alone. The reasoning is that walking, for the essayist, is a way of thinking as much as a form of ex...
What does the essay suggest about the effect of modern transport on the habit of walking?
The essay suggests that modern transport has weakened the habit of walking. Motor vehicles have made people impatient with distance, so that even short journeys are made on wheels and a walk of a few kilometres seems like a hardship. As a result, people lose not only physical fitness but also the pleasures that only a walker knows: noticing the seasons, the landscape and the small life of the roadside, and enjoying unhurried thought. The essayist therefore urges readers to recover the habit of walking for the health of the body and the peace of the mind.
Write the meanings of the following words and use each in a sentence of your own: pastime, stroll, solitude.
pastime: an activity that passes free time pleasantly; a hobby or amusement. Sentence: Reading detective novels is my favourite pastime on rainy evenings. stroll: a slow, relaxed walk taken for pleasure rather than to reach a place. Sent...
Complete the following sentences with the correct form, gerund or infinitive, of the verb given in brackets.
(a) My uncle enjoys (collect) old coins. (b) She has decided (join) a photography club. (c) They are interested in (learn) the flute. (d) I used (play) football every evening when I was a child. (e) Please stop (talk) and listen to the instructions.
(a) My uncle enjoys collecting old coins. (enjoy is followed by a gerund) (b) She has decided to join a photography club. (decide is followed by a to-infinitive) (c) They are interested in learning the flute. (a gerund follows the prepos...
Write an essay in about 300 words on "Hobbies and Their Importance in Student Life".
Hobbies and Their Importance in Student Life
A hobby is an activity that a person does regularly in free time for pleasure rather than for money. Reading, gardening, painting, playing a musical instrument, walking, photography and collecting stamps are all common hobbies. For a student, whose days are filled with classes, homework and examinations, a hobby is not a luxury but a necessity. It refreshes the mind, builds character and often opens doors that formal education never reaches.
The first benefit of a hobby is relaxation. A student who spends hours over textbooks needs a change of activity, and a hobby provides exactly that. An hour of gardening or an evening walk sends the student back to study with a clear head. Hobbies also protect young people from the boredom that so often leads to unhealthy habits such as endless scrolling on a mobile phone.
Secondly, hobbies develop skills and knowledge. A student who takes up photography learns about light, composition and patience. One who keeps a small library learns to read widely and think independently. Musicians learn discipline, since no instrument can be mastered without daily practice. These qualities of patience, concentration and persistence carry over into academic work and later into a career.
Thirdly, hobbies build character and friendships. Team hobbies such as football teach cooperation and fair play. Solitary hobbies such as walking or writing teach a student to enjoy his or her own company and to think calmly. Clubs and competitions bring together people with shared interests and create friendships that last long after school days are over.
Of course, a hobby must be kept in balance. A student who spends every hour on a hobby and neglects study defeats its purpose. The right approach is to give the hobby a fixed, regular place in the timetable.
In conclusion, hobbies make student life richer and more balanced. They relax the mind, sharpen skills, shape character and sometimes even grow into a profession. Every student should cultivate at least one hobby and guard it as carefully as any subject on the timetable.
Write a paragraph in about 150 words describing your favourite hobby, how you started it and what you gain from it.
My favourite hobby is walking in the early morning. I started it two years ago when a doctor advised my father to walk for his health and asked me to accompany him. At first I went unwillingly, but within a few weeks I began to look forw...
In what ways do human beings depend on animals, and in what ways do animals depend on human beings?
Human beings depend on animals in many ways. Domestic animals supply food such as milk, meat and eggs, and materials such as wool and leather. Oxen, buffaloes, horses and yaks provide labour and transport, especially in the hills of Nepa...
Distinguish between instinctive behaviour and learned behaviour in animals, giving one example of each.
Instinctive behaviour is inborn: an animal performs it correctly without ever being taught, because the pattern is inherited. A newly hatched turtle crawling towards the sea, or a spider spinning its web perfectly at the first attempt, s...
What are the main threats to wild animals today, and how are they connected to human activity?
The main threats to wild animals today are almost all connected to human activity. The greatest is habitat loss: forests are cleared for farmland, roads and settlements, wetlands are drained and rivers are dammed, so animals lose the space and food they need. Poaching is a second threat, driven by illegal trade in rhino horn, tiger skin, ivory and other animal parts. Pollution of air, water and soil poisons animals directly and destroys the plants and insects on which they feed. Climate change, caused largely by human burning of fossil fuels, shifts the seasons and pushes species out of their ranges. Finally, human and wildlife conflict grows as villages expand into forest: crops are raided, livestock is killed and animals are killed in return. Each threat begins with a human choice, which means each can be reduced by a better one.
How do animals communicate with one another without a language like ours?
Animals communicate through a rich variety of signals even though they lack human language. Sound is the most obvious: birds sing to claim territory and attract mates, monkeys give alarm calls that name particular dangers, and whales sen...
Write the meanings of the following words and use each in a sentence of your own: habitat, endangered, predator.
habitat: the natural home or environment in which an animal or plant lives. Sentence: The grassland of Chitwan is the natural habitat of the one-horned rhinoceros. endangered: at serious risk of dying out completely. Sentence: The snow l...
Join each pair of sentences into one sentence using a suitable relative pronoun (who, which, that, whose, where).
(a) The red panda is a shy animal. It lives in the bamboo forests of eastern Nepal. (b) My grandmother keeps goats. She lives in a village near Pokhara. (c) The elephant damaged the maize field. Its herd had left the forest at night. (d) Chitwan is a national park. Rhinos and tigers are protected there. (e) The documentary was about wolves. We watched it last night.
(a) The red panda is a shy animal which (or that) lives in the bamboo forests of eastern Nepal. (b) My grandmother, who lives in a village near Pokhara, keeps goats. (non-defining clause, so commas are used and that is not possible) (c) ...
Write an essay in about 300 words on "Wildlife Conservation in Nepal".
Wildlife Conservation in Nepal
Nepal is a small country with an extraordinary variety of wildlife. Within a few hundred kilometres its land rises from the hot plains of the Tarai to the highest mountains on earth, and each zone has its own animals: the one-horned rhinoceros and Bengal tiger in the lowland forests, the red panda in the temperate hills and the snow leopard on the high slopes. Protecting these animals is one of the country's greatest responsibilities, and wildlife conservation has become a matter of national pride.
The threats to Nepal's wildlife are serious. Forests have been cleared for farmland, roads and settlements, leaving animals with smaller and more scattered habitats. Poachers hunt rhinos for their horns and tigers for their skins and bones, feeding an illegal international trade. As villages spread to the edge of forests, conflict grows: elephants trample crops, leopards take goats, and frightened farmers sometimes kill the animals in return. Pollution of rivers and the changing climate add further pressure.
Nepal has answered these threats with several strong measures. National parks and conservation areas such as Chitwan, Bardiya, Sagarmatha and Annapurna give animals protected space. The army and park staff patrol against poachers, and the country has several times recorded a full year without a single rhino being poached. Community forestry hands the management of local forests to the villagers who live beside them, so that the people who once saw wildlife as a threat now benefit from tourism and forest products. Buffer zones and compensation schemes reduce the losses that farmers suffer.
Much remains to be done, and students can contribute. They can refuse products made from wild animals, plant trees, keep rivers clean, join eco clubs and spread awareness in their communities. Above all, they can learn to see animals not as enemies or resources but as fellow inhabitants of a shared land.
In conclusion, wildlife conservation in Nepal is a story of real progress built on protection, community participation and awareness. If the present generation continues this work, the tiger, the rhino and the snow leopard will still roam Nepal's forests and mountains long into the future.
Write a paragraph in about 150 words describing an animal you admire, mentioning its appearance, habitat, behaviour and relationship with humans.
The animal I admire most is the snow leopard, the ghost of the Himalaya. It is a medium sized cat with thick, smoky grey fur marked with dark rosettes, a long bushy tail that it wraps around itself for warmth, and wide paws that act like...
What are human rights? Why are they called universal?
Human rights are the basic freedoms and protections that belong to every person simply because he or she is a human being. They include the right to life, liberty, equality before the law, freedom of thought and expression, education and...
Why was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948? What does its first article say?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948, soon after the Second World War. The war had shown the world the horrors that follow when a state decides that some groups ...
What is meant by human dignity, and why is it considered the basis of human rights?
Human dignity means the inherent worth that every person has simply by being human. It is not earned by wealth, position, talent or good behaviour, and it cannot be lost through poverty, disability or imprisonment. Dignity is considered the basis of human rights because rights are the practical way of respecting that worth. If every person has equal worth, then every person must be allowed to live, to speak, to believe, to learn and to be treated fairly by the law. When a child is forced into labour or a person is refused entry to a temple because of caste, the deeper wrong is that their dignity has been denied. Rights, in this view, are not gifts granted by rulers but recognitions of a worth that already exists in each human being.
Do human rights carry responsibilities? Explain briefly.
Yes. Rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same idea. If I claim the freedom to express my opinion, I must accept that others have the same freedom, and I must not use my speech to attack their dignity or spread hatred. If I e...
Give the meanings of the following words and use each in a sentence of your own: discrimination, inalienable, violation.
Discrimination means treating a person or group unfairly because of caste, sex, religion, race or a similar reason. Sentence: Discrimination against Dalit students in the classroom is both illegal and immoral. Inalienable means unable to...
Change the following sentences into the passive voice:
(a) The government must protect the rights of every citizen. (b) Nobody can take away our fundamental freedoms. (c) The United Nations adopted the Declaration in 1948. (d) They have denied thousands of girls an education. (e) Who wrote the first article of the Declaration?
(a) The rights of every citizen must be protected by the government. (b) Our fundamental freedoms cannot be taken away. (c) The Declaration was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. (d) Thousands of girls have been denied an education. ...
Write an essay on the human rights situation in Nepal in about 300 words.
Human Rights in Nepal
Human rights are the basic freedoms that belong to every person from birth: the right to life, equality, education, expression and fair treatment before the law. Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, countries around the world have promised to honour these rights. Nepal has made the same promise, yet the distance between the promise and everyday life remains one of the country's most serious challenges.
On paper, Nepal's record is strong. The Constitution of Nepal (2015) guarantees fundamental rights, including the right to equality, the right to education, the right against untouchability and discrimination, and the rights of women, children and marginalised communities. The National Human Rights Commission monitors violations, and the country is a party to major international human rights treaties. Free and compulsory basic education, quotas for women and excluded groups, and laws against caste discrimination and child marriage all show a genuine legal commitment.
In practice, however, many rights are still violated. Children continue to work in hotels, transport and brick kilns instead of attending school. Dalits are still refused entry to some temples and homes, and inter-caste couples face violence. Women suffer domestic abuse, dowry pressure and, in some districts, the practice of chhaupadi. Migrant workers are cheated by agents and die abroad without justice. Victims of the armed conflict are still waiting for truth and compensation. In each case the right exists in law but not in life.
The way forward lies in enforcement and education. Laws must be applied without fear or favour, and officials who ignore violations should be punished. Schools should teach rights and duties together so that a new generation refuses to accept discrimination as tradition. Citizens, including students, must speak up when they see injustice around them.
Human rights are not a foreign idea imposed on Nepal; they are the modern expression of the dignity our own culture claims to value. Turning constitutional words into daily reality is the responsibility of every Nepali.
Write a letter to the editor of a national daily drawing attention to the problem of child labour in your town and suggesting what should be done about it.
Bharatpur, Chitwan 15 September 2026 The Editor The Kathmandu Post Kathmandu Subject: Child labour in our town must end Sir, Through your respected newspaper I wish to draw the attention of the authorities and the public to the growing p...
What is leisure? How is it different from idleness?
Leisure is the free time that remains after work, study and household duties have been completed, and the activities a person chooses to fill that time with. It is different from idleness because idleness means doing nothing and wasting time, while leisure is time used deliberately for rest, enjoyment or personal growth. A person reading a novel, playing football, learning the flute or walking with friends is enjoying leisure; that time refreshes the mind, builds skills and strengthens relationships. Idleness, by contrast, leaves a person bored and restless. The unit's reading treats leisure as a necessary part of a healthy life, not as laziness.
Why does leisure matter for a person's health and productivity?
Leisure matters because the human body and mind cannot work without rest. Continuous work or study produces fatigue, stress and irritability, and over a long period it leads to burnout and illness. Free time spent walking, playing a spor...
How has entertainment changed from the time of our grandparents to the present day? Mention both gains and losses.
In our grandparents' time entertainment in Nepal was shared and largely home-made. People gathered for festivals, fairs, folk songs, dances, storytelling and card games, and later listened together to the radio. The arrival of cinema, te...
Distinguish between active and passive leisure with examples.
Active leisure means free-time activities in which the person does something that engages the body or the mind: playing volleyball, trekking, cycling, cooking, painting, writing poems, learning the madal or gardening. The person is a par...
Give the meanings of the following words and use each in a sentence of your own: sedentary, pastime, rejuvenate.
Sedentary means involving a great deal of sitting and very little physical movement. Sentence: A sedentary lifestyle of long hours in front of a screen is harming the health of many teenagers. Pastime means an activity done regularly for...
Rewrite the following sentences using the words in brackets without changing the meaning:
(a) I like reading more than watching television. (prefer) (b) She wants to go trekking instead of staying at home this weekend. (would rather) (c) In the past, villagers gathered every evening to sing folk songs, but they do not any more. (used to) (d) I would like to learn the guitar rather than the piano. (would prefer) (e) Working at night is normal for me now. (be used to)
(a) I prefer reading to watching television. (b) She would rather go trekking than stay at home this weekend. (c) Villagers used to gather every evening to sing folk songs. (d) I would prefer to learn the guitar rather than the piano. (e...
Write an essay on the importance of leisure and entertainment in a student's life in about 300 words.
The Importance of Leisure and Entertainment in a Student's Life
Leisure is the free time left after classes, homework and household duties are done, and entertainment is what we choose to fill it with. Many parents and even students believe that every hour not spent studying is an hour wasted. The truth is the opposite: a student who never rests learns less, and well-chosen leisure is one of the most valuable parts of education.
The first reason is health. Long hours bent over books produce tired eyes, stiff backs, headaches and stress. Playing football in the evening, cycling, dancing or simply walking with friends keeps the body fit and clears the mind. Exercise improves sleep, and a student who sleeps well remembers more of what he or she has read. Rest is not the enemy of study; it is the condition for it.
The second reason is personal growth. Hobbies teach what textbooks cannot. A student who learns the madal develops patience and rhythm; one who paints learns to observe; one who reads novels gains vocabulary, imagination and sympathy for people unlike herself. Games teach teamwork and how to lose gracefully. Many careers, from music to sport to writing, begin as leisure interests.
The third reason is relationship and culture. Festivals, picnics, drama clubs and quiz competitions bring students together and connect them with their community and traditions. Friendships formed in free time often last longer than anything learned for an examination.
Leisure, however, must be balanced. Endless scrolling on a phone or binge-watching series late into the night is passive entertainment that leaves a student more exhausted, not refreshed. The aim should be active leisure, planned as carefully as a revision timetable and enjoyed without guilt.
A student's life needs both the desk and the playground. Leisure well used produces healthier bodies, sharper minds and fuller human beings, and that, in the end, is what education is for.
Write a paragraph describing your favourite leisure activity and explaining why you enjoy it.
My favourite leisure activity is cycling along the riverside path outside our town early in the morning. I set off just after sunrise, when the air is still cool and the road is almost empty, and ride for about an hour before returning f...
Why does the reading in the unit Music and Creation treat music as a human creation rather than a mere entertainment?
The reading presents music as a human creation because it is something people actively make, not something they simply receive. A singer or composer takes raw materials such as the voice, a string or a drum and shapes them into a pattern...
What social functions of music does the unit's reading describe? Support your answer with examples from Nepali life.
The reading shows that music does important social work. It gathers people together at weddings, funerals, festivals, worship and public gatherings, and it gives those occasions a shared mood. It also builds a sense of belonging, because...
In what sense can music be called a universal language?
Music is called a universal language because it communicates feeling without depending on words. A listener who knows nothing of Spanish can still sense the sadness of a Spanish lament, and a Nepali folk tune can move a foreign visitor w...
How does music benefit an individual, according to the unit?
For the individual, music is first a source of comfort. A familiar song can calm anxiety, lift a low mood or help a person through grief. It also supports the mind: background music can aid concentration during study, and setting facts to a tune makes them easier to remember, which is why children learn alphabets and tables through songs. Learning an instrument develops discipline, patience and coordination. Music further gives young people a sense of identity and a means of self expression, letting them say through a song what they cannot say in plain words. Finally, creating music brings the satisfaction of making something new and sharing it with others, an experience the digital age has opened to almost anyone with a phone.
Use the following words in meaningful sentences of your own to show that you understand their meanings: melody, rhythm, improvise, genre, composer.
melody: The melody of the old folk song was so simple that the whole class could hum it after hearing it once. rhythm: The dancers could not keep up because the madal player kept changing the rhythm without warning. improvise: When the s...
Join each pair of sentences into one sentence using a suitable relative pronoun (who, which, whose, where, when).
Write an essay in about 250 words on the importance of music in human life.
The Importance of Music in Human Life
Music is one of the oldest creations of humankind. Long before writing was invented, people sang to their children, drummed for their gods and chanted as they worked. Every society on earth has its own music, and every child moves to a rhythm before it can speak. Music is therefore not a luxury but a basic part of what it means to be human.
For the individual, music is a source of comfort and strength. A favourite song can calm a troubled mind after a hard day, and a lively tune can lift a low mood. Students often find that gentle music helps them concentrate, and facts set to a melody stay in the memory far longer than facts learned from a page. Learning an instrument teaches patience, discipline and the pleasure of steady improvement. Above all, music lets people express feelings that ordinary words cannot carry.
Music also holds society together. In Nepal the panche baja announces a wedding, Deusi Bhailo songs bring neighbours to every door at Tihar, and dohori turns a village fair into a shared celebration. Bhajans unite worshippers, and national songs remind citizens of a common identity. Through such music, values and stories pass from grandparents to grandchildren without a single written line.
In the modern world music has also become a career and an industry. A young Nepali can record a song on a phone and reach listeners across the globe within hours. This opens new opportunities, though it also challenges us to preserve our folk traditions while creating new forms.
In conclusion, music comforts the individual, binds the community and carries culture forward. A life without music would be poorer in feeling, in memory and in belonging. We should value both the songs we inherit and the new music each generation creates.
Write a review of a musical performance or concert you attended, in about 200 words. Describe what you heard and saw, and give your opinion with reasons.
A Night of Folk Music at the School Hall Last month our school invited a local folk group to perform in the assembly hall for the annual cultural evening, and it turned out to be the best event of the year. The group of six musicians pla...
Define the terms diaspora, homeland and hostland as they are used in the reading Dediasporization: Homeland and Hostland.
A diaspora is a population that has left its country of origin and settled in another country, but which continues to think of itself as a community linked to the place it left. Its members keep the homeland language, festivals and custo...
What is dediasporization? Explain the two ways in which it can take place.
Dediasporization is the process by which a diasporic group stops being a diaspora, that is, it no longer lives between two countries but belongs fully to one. The reading describes two opposite routes. The first is return to the homeland. When migrants go back permanently and are reintegrated into the society they left, the diasporic condition ends, though the reading notes that returnees must readjust and are not always welcomed as insiders. The second route is assimilation into the hostland. Over one or more generations, migrants and their descendants adopt the citizenship, language, customs and loyalties of the host society so completely that the tie to the homeland fades, and they become simply members of that society. In both cases dediasporization is a gradual process rather than a single moment.
Why does returning to the homeland not automatically end a migrant's diasporic condition?
Return does not automatically end the diasporic condition because the migrant has changed while abroad. Years in the hostland alter a person's habits, speech, expectations and values, so the returnee often finds that the homeland he reme...
How does assimilation into the hostland bring about dediasporization?
Assimilation brings about dediasporization by slowly dissolving the ties that make a group diasporic. The first generation of migrants usually keeps the homeland language, food, religion and marriage customs, stays in touch through visit...
How can a homeland government influence its diaspora? Relate your answer to Nepal.
According to the reading, the homeland is not passive toward its diaspora. A government can strengthen the bond by granting dual or non-resident citizenship, giving migrants voting rights, offering investment schemes and bonds for remitt...
Complete each sentence with the correct form of the verb in brackets to make a suitable conditional sentence.
Fill in the blanks with the correct form of the word given in brackets: migrate, assimilate, repatriate.
Write an essay in about 250 words on the causes and effects of migration from Nepal.
Causes and Effects of Migration from Nepal
Migration has become a defining feature of Nepali life. Almost every village has households whose sons and daughters are working in the Gulf, Malaysia, India or the West, and the departure hall of Tribhuvan International Airport is one of the busiest places in the country. Understanding why people leave, and what their leaving does to Nepal, is essential for planning the country's future.
The causes are mainly economic. Unemployment and underemployment are high, wages are low and agriculture no longer supports growing families on shrinking plots of land. Political instability and slow development have weakened faith in opportunities at home. At the same time, higher salaries abroad, easy recruitment through agencies and the example of relatives who have already left pull young people outward. Students also migrate for education and often settle where they study.
The effects are mixed. On the positive side, remittances form a large share of the national income, pay for food, schooling, health care and houses, and have reduced poverty. Migrants return with new skills, savings and wider outlooks. On the negative side, Nepal suffers a brain drain of its nurses, engineers and teachers. Families are separated for years; children grow up without a parent, and elderly parents are left alone. Workers face exploitation, accidents and even death abroad. Villages empty, fields lie fallow and local production declines while dependence on imports grows.
Migration cannot and need not be stopped, but it should become a choice rather than a necessity. The government must create jobs through industry, tourism and modern agriculture, make recruitment safe and honest, and help returnees invest their savings and skills at home. If Nepal offers its young people a fair future, many will choose to build it here.
Write a paragraph in about 150 words on the problems faced by Nepali migrant workers who return home, and suggest how they can be supported.
Nepali migrant workers who return home after years abroad often discover that coming back is harder than leaving. Many have spent their savings on the recruitment fees that sent them abroad in the first place, so they return with little ...
Why did Audre Lorde write an open letter to Mary Daly?
Audre Lorde wrote to Mary Daly after reading Daly's book Gyn/Ecology. She had read the book with high expectations and found much to agree with, but she was troubled by the way it treated women who were not European. The book used only E...
What does Lorde object to in Daly's use of goddess images?
Lorde objects that Daly, when she wants to show the strength, creativity and ancient power of women, draws entirely on European goddess images and European traditions. The goddesses of Africa, whom Lorde names as Afrekete, Yemanje, Oyo a...
How, according to Lorde, do African women appear in Gyn/Ecology, and why does this trouble her?
According to Lorde, African women appear in the book only as victims. They are introduced in the discussion of genital mutilation, in the part of the book that deals with the harm done to women, and nowhere else. They are never shown as ...
What does Lorde ask Daly about the writing of Black women, and what point does the question make?
Lorde asks Daly whether she has actually read the work of Black women, or whether she has only taken their words, including Lorde's own poems, to decorate an argument that leaves Black women out. The question makes the point that quoting someone is not the same as listening to them. Daly used Lorde's lines but did not engage with the Black experience they came from. Lorde's larger point is that ignoring the differences between women, and treating Black women's history as unimportant, uses the same tools of dismissal that patriarchy uses against all women. Real solidarity, she suggests, requires white feminists to learn from Black women's work rather than merely borrow from it.
Use the following words in sentences of your own so that their meaning is clear: oppression, marginalise, accountability.
Oppression: For centuries the caste system kept many families in a state of oppression, denying them education, land and dignity. Marginalise: A society that fails to give women equal representation in parliament will marginalise half of...
Change the following sentences into the passive voice.
(a) The government silenced the critics. (b) People believe that power corrupts. (c) The committee will announce the results tomorrow. (d) Someone has ignored the report on corruption.
(a) The critics were silenced by the government. (b) It is believed that power corrupts. (Alternatively: Power is believed to corrupt.) (c) The results will be announced by the committee tomorrow. (d) The report on corruption has been ig...
Write an essay on the topic "Power without accountability leads to abuse" in about 300 words.
Power without accountability leads to abuse
Power is the ability to make decisions that shape the lives of others. In itself it is neither good nor bad; a doctor, a teacher and a prime minister all hold power of some kind. What decides whether power serves people or harms them is accountability, the duty of the powerful to explain their actions and to face consequences when they go wrong. History and everyday experience both suggest that when this duty disappears, abuse follows.
The first reason is human nature. People who are never questioned begin to believe that their judgement cannot be wrong. Rulers who abolished parliaments and courts, from ancient emperors to modern dictators, rarely set out to be cruel, yet without anyone able to say no, small acts of unfairness grew into persecution. Absolute power did not create their faults; it simply removed every brake on them.
The second reason is that unaccountable power hides information. Corruption thrives in darkness. When budgets are secret, when journalists are threatened and when officials cannot be sued, public money quietly moves into private pockets. Nepal's own struggles with corruption show that laws alone are not enough; what is needed is the certainty that misuse will be exposed and punished.
The third reason is that accountability protects the weak. Audre Lorde's open letter to Mary Daly reminds us that even inside a movement for equality, the group with more influence can silence others without noticing. Only when the less powerful can speak and be heard does power stay honest.
Some argue that strong leaders need freedom from constant criticism to act decisively. Yet decisiveness and accountability are not opposites. A leader who is confident in the rightness of a decision should welcome the chance to explain it.
In conclusion, power must always be paired with answerability. Free elections, independent courts, a free press and an informed public are the tools that keep power in the service of the people rather than of the powerful.
Imagine you are a student leader. Prepare a short speech for a school assembly on why young people should take an interest in politics. Write it in about 200 words.
Respected principal, teachers and dear friends, good morning. Many of us say that politics is dirty and that it is a game for old men in the capital. I want to argue this morning that politics is too important to be left to them. Politic...
Why was the summer of 1947 different from other Indian summers?
The summer of 1947 was different not because of the weather, which was as hot and dry as usual with the monsoon arriving late, but because of the political climate. British India was being divided into India and Pakistan, and the divisio...
Describe the village of Mano Majra as it is presented in the excerpt.
Mano Majra is a tiny village on the banks of the Sutlej river, close to the new border between India and Pakistan. It has only three brick buildings, the house of the Hindu moneylender Lala Ram Lal, the Sikh gurdwara and the mosque, whil...
How do the trains govern daily life in Mano Majra?
Although only slow passenger trains stop at its little station, Mano Majra measures its whole day by the trains that pass. The morning mail train from Delhi is the signal for the mullah to call the faithful to prayer, and the Sikh priest...
What happened when the train from Pakistan arrived, and how did the villagers realise the truth?
One day a train arrived from Pakistan that was unlike any other. It came in silence; no passengers got down and nobody moved on it. Soldiers and police quickly surrounded the station and kept the villagers away. Then the officials went f...
Match the words with their meanings: refugee, ceasefire, atrocity, reconciliation. Meanings: (i) an extremely cruel act in war; (ii) restoring friendly relations after conflict; (iii) a person forced to leave home to escape war; (iv) an agreement to stop fighting.
refugee: (iii) a person forced to leave home or country to escape war or persecution.
ceasefire: (iv) an agreement, often temporary, to stop fighting.
atrocity: (i) an extremely cruel or violent act, usually committed in war.
reconciliation: (ii) the restoring of friendly relations between people or groups after a conflict.
These four words trace the arc of the unit's theme: war produces refugees and atrocities, a ceasefire halts the fighting, and reconciliation is the harder, slower work of rebuilding trust between communities that once lived together, as the people of Mano Majra did.
Complete the following conditional sentences with the correct form of the verbs in brackets.
(a) If the two sides (sign) the ceasefire, the refugees (return) home. (b) If the leaders (talk) to each other, thousands of lives (be) saved. (c) If Partition (be managed) carefully, the trains (not carry) the dead. (d) If a country (go) to war, ordinary people (suffer) most.
(a) If the two sides sign the ceasefire, the refugees will return home. (First conditional: a real future possibility, present simple in the if clause and will in the main clause.) (b) If the leaders talked to each other, thousands of li...
Write an essay on "War brings only loss" in about 300 words.
War brings only loss
Every war begins with a promise. Leaders promise security, honour or justice, and crowds cheer as soldiers march away. Yet when the fighting ends, the promises are rarely kept, and what remains is loss: of lives, of wealth and of the trust that holds communities together. The history of the last century, and the excerpt from Train to Pakistan that we studied, both show that war brings only loss.
The first and greatest loss is human. Soldiers die, but so do far more civilians. Children are orphaned, women are widowed and whole villages are emptied. The silent train that arrives in Mano Majra, carrying the dead of Partition, is a picture of this cost. The people on that train had done nothing except belong to the wrong community at the wrong time. Behind every casualty figure in a news report there is a family that will never be whole again.
The second loss is economic. War destroys roads, bridges, schools and hospitals that took decades to build, and it consumes money that could have gone to education and health. Countries that have fought long conflicts often remain poor for a generation afterwards, because their young people were fighting instead of learning and their fields were battlegrounds instead of farms.
The third and most lasting loss is moral. War teaches people to hate. In Mano Majra, Sikhs and Muslims had shared a deity, a routine and a village for centuries, yet a single summer of politics turned neighbours into suspects. Such wounds outlive the treaties that end the fighting and are passed on to children who never saw the war.
It is true that some wars are fought to stop a greater evil, and that a nation must defend itself when attacked. But even a just war is a failure of something better: dialogue, patience and the willingness to share. Peace is not merely the absence of fighting; it is the presence of justice.
In conclusion, war may change borders and governments, but it never adds to human happiness. It only takes away. That is why every generation must learn again to choose the harder path of peace.
Write a short report for your school magazine on a peace rally organised by students in your community. Write it in about 200 words.
Students March for Peace By a staff reporter More than three hundred students from five schools in our community gathered on Saturday morning to take part in a peace rally organised by the student councils of the participating schools. T...