Passage 1: Blackout

The young woman waiting at the bus stop was not in the least nervous, in spite of the wave of panic that had
been sweeping the city about bands of hooligans roaming the streets after dark and assaulting unprotected
women. She was a sensible young woman to begin with, who realized that one good scream would be sufficient
to bring a score of respectable suburban householders running to her assistance. On the other hand she was
an American, and fully conscious of the tradition of American young women that they don’t scare easily.

Even that slinking black shadow that seemed to be materializing out of the darkness at the other side of the
street did not disconcert her. She was only slightly curious now that she observed that the shadow was
approaching her, slowly.

It was a young man dressed in conventional shirt and pants, and wearing a pair of canvas shoes. That was
what lent the suggestion of slinking to his movements, because he went along noiselessly—that, and the mere
suggestion of a stoop. He was very tall. There was a curious look of hunger and unrest about his eyes. But the
thing that struck her immediately was the fact that he was black; the other particulars scarcely made any
impression at all in comparison. In her country not every night a white woman could be nonchalantly
approached by a black man. There was enough novelty in all this to intrigue her. She seemed to remember that
any sort of adventure might be experienced in one of these tropical islands of the West Indies.

‘Could you give me a light, lady?’ the man said.

It is true she was smoking, but she had only just lit this one from the stub of the cigarette she had thrown
away. The fact was she had no matches. Would he believe her, she wondered? ‘I am sorry. I haven’t got a
match.’

The young man looked into her face, seemed to hesitate an instant and said, his brow slightly wrinkled in
perplexity: ‘But you are smoking.’

There was no argument against that. Still, she was not particular about giving him a light from the cigarette
she was smoking. It may be stupid, but there was a suggestion of intimacy about such an act, simple as it was,
that, call it what you may, she could not accept just like that.

There was a moment’s hesitation on her part now, during which time the man’s steady gaze never left her face.
There was pride and challenge in his look, curiously mingled with quiet amusement. She held out her cigarette
toward him between two fingers.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘you can light from that.’

In the act of bending his head to accept the proffered light, he came quite close to her. He did not seem to
understand that she meant him to take the lighted cigarette from her hand. He just bent over her hand to light
his.

Presently he straightened up, inhaled a deep lungful of soothing smoke and exhaled again with satisfaction.
She saw then that he was smoking the half of a cigarette, which had been clinched and saved for future
consumption.

‘Thank you,’ said the man, politely; and was in the act of moving off when he noticed that instead of returning
her cigarette to her lips she had casually, unthinkingly flicked it away. He observed this in the split part of a
second that it took him to say those two words. It was almost a whole cigarette she had thrown away. She had
been smoking it with evident enjoyment a moment before.

He stood there looking at her, with cold speculation.

In a way it unnerved her. Not that she was frightened. He seemed quite decent in his own way, and harmless;
but he made her feel uncomfortable. If he had said something rude she would have preferred it. It would have
been no more than she would have expected of him. But instead, this quiet contemptuous look. Yes, that was it.
The thing began to take on definition in her mind. How dare he; the insolence!

‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ she said, because she felt she had to break the tension somehow. ‘I am sorry I

made you waste a whole cigarette,’ he said.

She laughed a little nervously. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, feeling a fool.
‘There’s plenty more where that came from, eh?’ he asked.

‘I suppose so.’

This won’t do, she thought, quickly. She had no intention of standing at a street corner jawing with—well, with
a black man. There was something indecent about it. Why doesn’t he move on? As though he had read her
thoughts he said:

‘This is the street, lady. It’s public.’

Well, anyway, she didn’t have to answer him. She could snub him quietly, the way she should have properly
done from the start.

‘It’s a good thing you’re a woman,’ he said.

‘And if I were a man?’

‘As man to man maybe I’d give you something to think about,’ he said, still in that quiet, even voice.

In America they lynch them for less than this, she thought.

‘This isn’t America,’ he said. ‘I can see you are an American. In this country there are only men and women.
You’ll learn about it.’ She could only humour him. Find out what his ideas were about this question, anyway. It
would be something to talk about back home. Suddenly she was intrigued.

‘So in this country there are only men and women, eh?’

‘That’s right. So to speak there is only you an’ me, only there are hundreds and thousands of us.
We seem to get along somehow without lynchings and burnings and all that.’

‘Do you really think that all men are created equal?’

‘It don’t seem to me there is any sense in that. The facts show it ain’t so. Look at you an’ me, for instance. But
that isn’t to say you’re not a woman, the same way as I am a man. You see what I mean?’

‘I can’t say I do.’

‘You will though, if you stop here long enough.’

She threw a quick glance in his direction.’

The man laughed.

‘I don’t mean what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘You’re not my type of woman. You don’t have anything to fear
under that heading.’

‘Oh!’

‘You’re waiting for the bus, I take it. Well, that’s it coming now. Thanks for the light.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ she said, with a nervous sort of giggle.

He made no attempt to move along as the bus came up. He stood there quietly aloof, as though in the
consciousness of a male strength and pride that was justly his. There was something about him that was at
once challenging and disturbing. He had shaken her supreme confidence in some important sense.

As the bus moved off she was conscious of his eyes’ quiet scrutiny, without the interruption of artificial barriers,
in the sense of dispassionate appraisement, as between man and woman, any man, any woman.

She fought resolutely against the very natural desire to turn her head and take a last look at him. Perhaps she
was thinking about what the people on the bus might think. And perhaps it was just as well that she did not
see him bend forward with that swift hungry movement, retrieving from the gutter the half-smoked cigarette
she had thrown away.
 Passage 2: Telephone Conversation
The price seemed reasonable, location
Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. ‘Madam,’ I warned,
‘I hate a wasted journey—I am African.’ 5
Silence. Silenced transmission of
Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,
Lipstick-coated, long gold-rolled
Cigarette-holder tipped. Caught I was, foully.
‘HOW DARK?’ … I had not misheard …
‘ARE YOU LIGHT 10

OR VERY DARK?’ Button B. Button A. Stench

Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.
Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered
Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed
By ill-mannered silence, surrender 15
Pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the emphasis—
‘ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?’ Revelation came.
‘You mean—like plain or milk chocolate?’
Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light 20
Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted,
I chose. ‘West Africa sepia’—and as afterthought,
‘Down in my passport.’ Silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent

Hard on the mouthpiece.

‘WHAT’S THAT?’ conceding 25
‘DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.’ ‘Like brunette.’
‘THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?’ ‘Not altogether.
Facially, I am brunette, but madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused— 30
Foolishly madam—by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black—One moment, madam’ sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears— ‘Madam,’ I pleaded, ‘wouldn’t you rather
See for yourself?’ 35
 Passage 3: Marriages Are Made

Eunice de Souza (1940– ), poet and novelist, was born in Pune, educated there and in Mumbai
and the United States. For nearly thirty years from 1969, she taught English literature at St
Xavier’s College, Mumbai, retiring from there as head of the department. ‘Teaching was finally
about changing or modifying or touching the lives of students,’ she felt. Her first poetry
collection Fix (1979), ‘… hard-edged and somewhat violent’, led on to three more, Women in
Dutch Painting (1988), Ways of Belonging(1990) and Selected and New Poems (1994). Ways of
Belonging with its attempts at imagistic poetry was awarded a Poetry Book Society
recommendation in 1990. De Souza has written four collections of folk tales for children and
edited the anthologies Nine Indian Women Poets (1997), Women’s Voices: Selections from 19th
and early 20th century Indian Writing in English(2002),
and Purdah (2004). Dangerlok (2001), her novel about urban life and its absurdities, loneliness
and danger, was followed by Dev and Simran in 2003.

De Souza comes from the Goan Catholic community, and several of her poems are ironic
reflections on her community and background. Some of these poems also throw open questions
about the relation between institutionalized religion and gender issues.

My cousin Elena
is to be married
The formalities
have been completed:
her family history examined 5
for T.B. and madness
her father declared solvent
her eyes examined for squints
her teeth for cavities
her stools for the possible 10
non-Brahmin worm.
She’s not quite tall enough
and not quite full enough
(children will take care of that)
Her complexion it was decided 15
would compensate, being just about
the right shade
of rightness
to do justness to
Francisco X. Noronha Prabhu 20
good son of Mother Church.
Instructions: Write your name, roll number, and course at the top of the page. Students need to
attempt questions from both Part A and B. Total Marks = 20

(PART A)

Attempt questions based on any one the three passages provided in the test. (5 marks)

1. Passage 1: Analyze the ways in which race, class and gender affect the balance of power
between the two people in the story. (3 marks)

2. Passage 1: Provide the summary of the passage. (2 marks)

OR

3. Passage 2: The speaker describes his color as ‘West Africa sepia.’ This silences the landlady.
Why? Why does the writer produce so many fanciful names for shades of color, like ‘milk
chocolate’ and ‘peroxide blonde’? Which character employs politeness as a weapon, the
landlady or the speaker--- or both? (3 marks)

4. Passage 2: Provide the paraphrase of the passage. (2 marks)

OR

5. Passage 3: Analyze the ways in which gender and caste affect the balance of power in the poem.
How does it relate to the title, ‘Marriages are made’? (3 marks)

6. Passage 3: Provide the summary of the passage. (2 marks)

(PART B)
Attempt any 3 questions with proper formats entailed by the question. (15 marks)

7. Write a job application letter to work with an NGO which caters to the idea, ‘Beti Bachao, Beti
Padhao’. (5 marks)

8. Write a creative and critical blog about the poem, ‘Marriages are Made’. (5 marks)

9. Write a report to the principal about an instance of cyber bullying/trolling which happened to a
student in college. (5 marks)

10. Create an advertisement for students educating them about the communication protocols in
professional space. (5 marks)

11. Write an invitation to students about a workshop on critical thinking, communication strategies
and trust building which is going to be organized by Hindu College on 20th April 2024.
(5 marks)

12. Create a LinkedIn profile that defines your professional interests, goals, and objectives along
with the communication skills required to connect with people in your field. (5 marks)