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PROSE SECTION
INDIAN CIVILIZATION AND CULTURE | MAHATMA GANDHI
INTRODUCTION
 Mahatma Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 at Porbandar in Gujarat.
 He died on 30 January 1948 in New Delhi.
 He is known as Bapu or the father of the nation.
 He was more a spiritual leader than a politician.
 He wrote different articles for young India.
 From 1915 till 1948, he completely dominated Indian politics.
 He successfully used truth and non-violence as the chief weapons against the British rule in India and helped
India gain independence.
 His autobiography is ‘My Experiments with Truth’.
 His writings reveal him not only as an original thinker but also as a great master of chaste.
 ‘Indian Civilization and Culture’ is an essay.
 In this lesson Gandhiji talks about the solid foundation of Indian Civilization which has successfully withstood
the passage of time.

LESSON
1. I believe that the civilization India has evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown
by our ancestors. Rome went, Greece shared the same fate, the might of the Pharaohs was broken, Japan has
become westernized; of China nothing can be said, but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation.
The people of Europe learn their lessons from the writings of the men of Greece or Rome which exist no longer
in their former glory. In trying to learn from them, the Europeans imagine that they will avoid the mistakes of
Greece and Rome. Such is their pitiable condition.
2. In the midst of all this, India remains immovable and that is her glory. It is a charge against India is that her people
are so uncivilized, ignorant and stolid, that it is not possible to induce them to adopt any changes. It is a charge
really against our merit. What we have tested and found true on the anvil of experience, we dare not change. Many
thrust their advice upon India, and she remains steady. This is her beauty; it is the sheet anchor of our hope.
3. Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and
observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our minds and our
passions. So doing, we know ourselves. The Gujarati equivalent for civilization means “good conduct”. If this
definition be correct, then India, as so many writers have shown, has nothing to learn from anybody else, and this
is as it should be.
5. We notice that the mind is a restless bird, the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisfied. The
more we indulge in our passions, the more unbridled they become. Our ancestors, therefore, set a limit to our
indulgences. They saw that happiness was largely a mental condition.
6. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich, or unhappy because he is poor. The rich are often seen to be
unhappy, the poor to be happy. Millions will always remain poor. Observing all this, our ancestors dissuaded us
from luxuries and pleasures. We have managed with the same kind of plough as existed thousands of years ago.
We have retained the same kind of cottages that we had in former times and our indigenous education remains
the same as before. We have had no system of life- corroding competition. Each followed his own occupation or
trade and charged a regular wage. It was not that we did not know how to invent machinery, but our forefathers
knew that, if we set our hearts after such things, we would become slaves and lose our moral fibre. They,
therefore, after due deliberation decided that we should only do what we could with our hands and feet. They saw
that our real happiness and health consisted in a proper use of our hands and feet.
7. They further reasoned that large cities were a snare and a useless encumbrance and that people would not be
happy in them, that there would be gangs of thieves and robbers, prostitution and vice flourishing in them and
that poor men would be robbed by rich men. They were, therefore, satisfied with small villages.
8. They saw that kings and their swords were inferior to the sword of ethics, and they, therefore, held the sovereigns
of the earth to be inferior to the Rishis and the Fakirs. A nation, with a constitution like this, is fitter to teach others
than to learn from others. This nation had courts, lawyers and doctors, but they were all within bounds. Everybody

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knew that these professions were not particularly superior. Moreover, these Vakils and Vaids did not rob people;
they were considered people’s dependents, not their masters. Justice was tolerably fair. The ordinary rule was to
avoid courts. There were no touts to lure people into them. This evil too was noticeable only in and around
capitals. The common people lived independently and followed their agricultural occupation. They enjoyed true
Home Rule.
9. The Indian Civilization, as described by me, has been so described by its votaries. In no part of the world, and
under no civilization, have all men attained perfection. The tendency of Indian Civilization is to elevate the moral
being, that of the western civilization is to propagate immorality. The latter is godless; the former is based on a
belief in God. So understanding and so believing, it behoves very lover of India to cling to the old Indian civilization
even as a child clings to the mother’s breast.
10. I am no hater of the West. I am thankful to the West for many a thing I have learnt from Western literature. But I
am thankful to modern civilization for teaching me that if I want India to rise to its fullest height, I must tell my
countrymen frankly that, after years and years of experience of modern civilization, I have learnt one lesson from
it and that is that we must shun it at all costs.
11. What is that modern civilization? It is the worship of the brute in us - it is unadulterated materialism, and modern
civilization is nothing if it does not think at every step of the triumph of material civilization.
12. It is perhaps unnecessary, if not useless, to weigh the merits of the two civilizations. It is likely that the West has
evolved a civilization suited to its climate and surroundings, and similarly, we have a civilization suited to our
conditions, and both are good in their own respective spheres.
13. The distinguishing characteristic of modern civilization is an indefinite multiplicity of human wants. The
characteristic of ancient civilization is an imperative restriction upon, and a strict regulating of, these wants. The
modern or western insatiableness arises really from want of living faith in a future state and therefore also in
Divinity. The restraint of ancient or Eastern civilization arises from a belief, often in spite of ourselves, in a future
state and existence of a Divine Power.
14. Some of the immediate and brilliant results of modern inventions are too maddening to resist. But I have no
manner of doubt that the victory of man lies in that resistance. We are in danger of bartering away the permanent
good for a momentary pleasure.
15. Just as in the West they have made wonderful discoveries in things material, similarly Hinduism has made still
more marvellous discoveries in things of religion, of the spirit, of the soul.
16. But we have no eye for these great and fine discoveries. We are dazzled by the material progress that Western
science has made. I am not enamoured of that progress. In fact, it almost seems a though God in His wisdom
has prevented India from progressing along those lines, so that it might fulfil its special mission of resisting the
onrush of materialism.
17. After all, there is something in Hinduism that has kept it alive up till now. It has witnessed the fall of Babylonian,
Syrian, Persian and Egyptian civilizations. Cast a look around you. Where is Rome? Can you find today anywhere
the Italy of Gibbon, or rather the ancient Rome, for Rome was Italy?
18. Go to Greece. Where is the world-famous Attic civilization? Then coming to India, let one go through the most
ancient records and then look around you and you would be constrained to say, “yes, I see here ancient India still
living”.
19. True, there were dung-heaps, too, here and there, but there are rich treasures buried under them. And the reason
why it has survived is that the end which Hinduism set before it was not development along material but spiritual
lines.
20. Our civilization, our culture, our Swaraj depend not upon multiplying our wants- self-indulgence, but upon
restricting wants-self denial.
21. European civilization is, no doubt, suited for the Europeans but it will mean ruin for India if we endeavour to copy
it. This is not to say that we may not adopt and assimilate whatever may be good and capable of assimilation by
us, as it does not also mean that even the Europeans will not have to part with whatever evil might have crept into
it.
22. The incessant search for material comforts and their multiplication is such an evil and I make bold to say that the
Europeans themselves will have to remodel their outlook, if they are not to perish under the weight of the comforts
to which they are becoming slaves. It may be that my reading is wrong, but I know that for India to run after the
Golden Fleece is to court certain death. Let us engrave on our hearts the motto of a Western philosopher: “Plain
living and high thinking”. Today it is certain that the millions cannot have high living and we the few, who profess
to do the thinking for the masses, run the risk, in a vain search after high living, of missing high thinking.
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23. Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary
restriction of wants. This alone increase and promotes contentment, real happiness and capacity for service.
24. A certain degree of physical harmony and comfort is necessary but above a certain level it becomes a hindrance
instead of help. Therefore, the ideal of creating an unlimited number of wants and satisfying them seems to be a
delusion and a snare. The satisfaction of one's physical needs, even the intellectual needs of one's narrow self,
must meet at a certain point a dead stop, before it degenerates into physical and intellectual voluptuousness. A
man must arrange his physical and cultural circumstances so that they do not hinder him in his service of
humanity on which all his energies should be concentrated.

BHARAT IS MY HOME | DR ZAKIR HUSSAIN

INTRODUCTION
 Dr Zakir Hussain was born on 8 February, 1897 in Hyderabad.
 He died on 3 May 1969 in New Delhi.
 He was the third President of India and the country’s first Muslim President.
 He was the first to die in the office.
 He was one of the greatest freedom fighters as well as an eminent educationist.
 He became the President of India in 1967.
 Earlier he had served as the Governor of Bihar from 1957 to 1962 and as Vice
President of India from 1962 to 1967.
 He was also the co-founder of Zamia Milia Islamia.
 He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, in 1963.
 ‘Bharat Is My Home’ is an extract from the speech he gave in 1967 after taking the oath as President.

LESSON
1. I must confess that I am overwhelmed by the trust my people have placed in me by electing me to the highest
office in the land.
2. Dr Radhakrishnan brought to the Presidency a mental equipment, a degree of erudition and wealth of experience
rarely to be found anywhere. During a lifetime devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, he has done more
than probably any other man to bring out and explain Indian philosophical thought and the oneness of all true
spiritual values. He has never lost his faith in the essential humanity of man and he himself has never ceased to
champion the right of all men to live in dignity and with justice.
3. I can only assure you that I enter this office in a spirit of prayerful humility and total dedication. I have just taken
the oath of loyalty to the Constitution of India. It is the Constitution of a comparatively new state which its free
citizens have, for the first time in history, given to themselves. It is the young state of an ancient people who,
through the long millennia and through cooperation of diverse ethnic elements, have striven to realise of those
values. For, through some concrete realisation of a value may become inadequate with the change of
circumstance, the value remains eternally valid and presses for newer and fresher realisation. The past is not
dead and static, it is alive and dynamic and is involved in determining the quality of our present and the prospects
of our future.
4. The process of its constant renewal is, indeed, the process of growth of national culture and national character.
It is the business of education, as I see it, to minister this constant renewal; and I may be forgiven the presumption
that my choice to this high office has mainly, if not entirely, been made on account of my long association with
the education of my people. I maintain that education is a prime instrument of national purpose and that quality
of education is inescapably involved in the quality of the nation.
5. I, therefore, pledge myself to the loyalty of our past culture form wheresoever it may have come and by
whomsoever it may have been contributed. I pledge myself to the service of the totality to my country’s culture. I
pledge my loyalty to my country, irrespective of religion or language. I pledge myself to work for its strength and
progress and for the welfare of its people without distinctions of caste, colour or creed. The whole of Bharat is
my home and its people are my family. The people have chosen to make me the head of this family for a certain
time. It shall be my earnest endeavour to seek to make this home strong and beautiful, a worthy home for a great
people engaged in the fascinating task of building up a just and prosperous and graceful life.

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6. The family is big and is constantly growing at a rather inconveniently fast pace. We shall, each of us, have to
participate unsparingly in building its new life, each in his own way. Foe sheer size the tasks ahead of us are so
demanding that no one can afford to sit back and just watch or let frustration become endemic in our country.
The situation demands of us work, work and more work, silent and sincere work, solid and steady reconstruction
of the whole material and cultural life of our people.
7. This work, as I see it, has two aspects: work on one’s self and work for the society around. They are mutually
fruitful aspects of work. The work on one’s self is to follow the urge towards moral development as a free person
and under self-imposed discipline which alone can render that development possible. Its end-product is a free
moral personality. We can neglect the end-product only at our peril. This end-product cannot sustain itself
without seeking and exercising itself to bring about the approximation of the society to which it is privileged to
serve to a better, a juster and a more graceful way of life. The individual cannot grow in full perfection without a
corresponding advance of the collective social existence. Let us resolve to get wholeheartedly engaged in these
two aspects of work − individual and social.
8. This dual effort will give to the life of our state A special flavour. For the state to us will not be just an organisation
of power but a moral organisation. It is a part of national temperament and inheritance from the great leader of
our liberation movement, Mahatma Gandhi, that power should be used only for moral purposes. The peace of the
strong is what we shall dedicate ourselves to work for.
9. I have full faith in my people that they will bring forth the energy requisite for the satisfactory performance of this
dual task. It shall be my privilege to contribute my share to this enchanting enterprise.

A PINCH OF SNUFF | MANOHAR MALGAONKAR

INTRODUCTION
 Manohar Malgaonkar was born on 12 July 1913 and died on 14 June 2010.
 He was a well known novelist and short story writer.
 There are over 25 publications to his credit.
 ‘A Pinch of Snuff’ is a short story taken from Contemporary Indian Short Stories
in England.
 This story is full of wit and adventure.
 His important works are: Distant Drum, The Princes, A Bend in the Ganges, Bombay Beware

LESSON
1. Mother’s announcement shook me. “Nanukaka is coming,” she said.
2. “Oh, my God!” I said. “Couldn’t we send him a wire saying we are leaving that I am transferred or something?
3. “No, dear,” Mother said. He must be already on the train. Besides, she added reassuringly, he says he cannot stay
here for more than two or three days.”
4. “What is he coming to Delhi for - in this heat?
5. “He wants to see some Minister.”
6. “What! That means he will be here for weeks! Ministers don’t see people for weeks...months! Oh, my God!”
7. “If your Nanukaka wants to see a Minister, I am sure he will manage to see him,” Mother said, “any time of the
day or night.”
8. Mother has always been very loyal to her side of the family, and, after all, Nanukaka is her brother. I, on the other
hand, may have something of a complex about Ministers. I am an Under-Secretary, on probation, and as such
trained to regard Ministers as being two steps higher than God, the Secretaries being just one step higher.
9. I was waiting on the platform when the train came in. Nanukaka stood in the doorway of a second class carriage;
a striking figure, white haired, with an impressive moustache. He still wears the old-fashioned knee-length black
coat and the red silk pugree of the Deccani Brahmin, and drapes a white angocha round his shoulders.
10. As I went up, he handed me a basket. “Take it out, quick” he whispered. “I’ll join you outside the station.”
11. I asked no questions. I tucked the basket under my arm and turned, only to bump into an enormous Marwari
woman who had her head covered in a burka. But my apologies were drowned by the strange sounds emanating
from the basket: the protests of an outraged kitten. “Spitts.....strupst......meow...... meooow......meooow!”

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12. I ducked and ran, and mingled with the crowd and squeezed through the gate in the wake of a Sikh marriage party.
13. Nanukaka was long time coming. The station yard was nearly empty and the last tonga had gone when he
emerged, escorted by a fawning ticket inspector.
14. “No room in the third class, and they wouldn’t issue second class tickets without reservation,” Nanukaka
explained as he came up to me. “Had to travel second on a third-class ticket!” But it was all arranged quite
amicably. Such a nice young man, the TC. You saw how he even came right out with me, so that there should be
no trouble. The kitten, of course, travelled free. How is it?
15. “Very quiet,” I said. Perhaps it is dead, I thought hopefully.
16. We got into the car, and even before I had changed into second gear, Nanukaka asked: “When have you arranged
for the minister to see me? Can’t stay here for more than two days - three at the most.”
17. It was a time for frankness. “Look uncle.” I said. “I am merely an Under-Secretary, on probation, and it is more
than my job is worth to go asking for interviews with Ministers.”
18. “Oh! Nanukaka said. “I had rather hoped...oh, I see. Well, never mind.” He took a pinch of snuff, brushed his fingers
delicately on his angocha, and sat back, closing his eyes and puckering his eyebrows as though in deep thought.
He also clucked his tongue several times in a typically Deccani way, registering pity.
19. Mother was waiting on the doorstep, her face was wreathed in smiles. She went into squeals of delight
over the kitten and made a lot of fuss over Nanukaka. I also found that she had installed him in my bedroom, so
that I had to put a charpoy for myself in the back verandah.
20. At mother’s insistence, I had taken two days’ leave from the office, and in the afternoon, I drove Nanukaka to the
north Block. He went in to see the Minister and I waited in the car park. It was two hours before he returned
mumbling colourful Marathi swearwords. I didn’t dare ask him what had happened, and drove without saying a
word. He cooled down in a little while, though, and said:
21. “Two hours, I spent, being transferred from one chaprasi to another, tramping through the corridors, and in the
end, succeeded in getting a Deputy-Secretary to give me an appointment - three days from now! Shameful!
Shameful! Shameful! And there was another series of Marathi expletives. In a linguistic emergency my uncle
always turned to his mother tongue.
22. A garnish yellow sports car flashed past us, blaring its horn in an uninterrupted blast, and the young man at the
wheel waved his hand at me. “What a rude man! Who was that?” Nanukaka asked.
24. “Chap called Ratiram, works in the same Ministry as mine.”
25. “I see.”
26. “There was some talk about his going as Trade Commissioner to Hajarat Barkat Ali, you know, the Ambassador,
but they say it is all off now,” I said, just to make conversation.
27. “Why don’t you get sent out on one of these foreign assignments?” Nanukak asked.
28. “To get sent on a foreign assignment is in the same category as getting an interview with a Minister, Uncle,” I said,
somehow, unkindly. “It takes pull. Ratiram is the son of Sohanlal Ratiram, you know, the party Boss in Delhi.”
29. Nanukaka sat up with a jerk. “What was that?” what did you say? Sohanlal Ratiram’s son! How extraordinary! Well,
well!” he leaned back in his seat and stared at me for a long time. “Now let me see. You’ve got a close-collar
Jodhpur coat, haven’t you? Good! And can you tie a turban? No? Well, I’ll have to put it on you, although I am no
expert. This tie and collar business is no good these days. Let’s go home. After you have changed, we will go and
see him.”
30. “See whom?”
31. “Why, Lala Sohanlal, of course!”
32. “Do you know him at all?”
33. “Of course not,” Nanukaka said.
34. I changed into Jodhpur coat and Uncle Nanukaka tied a huge orange turban round my head. “Act as though you
were my, a short of A.D.C.,” he cautioned me as we started for Lala Sohanlal’s house.
35. A secretary in spotless white clothes received us and showed us into a cool white room before he asked our
business, very politely.
36. “Just dropped in,” Nanukaka said casually. “I had come to Delhi for the Zamindars’ convention, a rather unofficial
gathering you know, since we zamindars are not, not exactly, popular, these days. V.P. has also sent a cable, he
wants to see me, but he is not coming from Washington until tomorrow. I thought I might as well see Lalaji and
tell him what arrangements we, the zamindars, have made for the agricultural vote.....”

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37. Nanukaka sort of trailed off and I could see that he was not really making an impression on the secretary who
was just being polite, and playing it safe. “I’ll have to see whether Lalaji is free,” the secretary said. “He seldom
sees, visitors without a previous appointment.”
38. Lalaji must have been free, becuae from the adjoining room we could just hear the unhurried gurgle of the hookah,
and then we could hear the haughty secretary talking to him.
39. “What day is it, today?” Nanukaka asked me.
40. I thought he was speaking in an unusually loud voice. “Tuesday,” I told him.
41. “Ooh, only Tuesday, and think to think that on Sunday I was in Beirut. Amazing, isn’t it?
42. I swallowed hard, “Amazing,” I agreed.
43. “And if I had listened to Hajarat, I’d still be abroad. Old H.B. was just dying to drag me to the Foreign Minister.”
44. The steady gurgling of hookah in the next room had suddenly stopped.
45. “What did you say?” Nanukaka asked, although I hadn’t even opened my mouth. “Why didn’t I stay back? You know
how it was with H.B. the last time, when he was in Geneva. Get me involved in the cotton talks. Besides, from
Bombay, S.K. had been sending me cable after cable.....”
46. That was the moment Lala Sohanlal Ratiram came waddling out of the inner room with the secretary at his heels,
and from then on everything was smothered in the saccharine courtesy of the seasoned political campaigner. As
soon as the introductions were over, the secretary was sent bustling off to order coffee and sweetmeats and pan.
47. They sparred guardedly about zamindars and votes and the weather for a few minutes before coming to brass
tacks. “I hear you know Hajrat Barkat Ali, well,” Sohanlal said with An ingratiating grin.
48. Oh, old H.B.! how did you know I know H.B.? Actually, we were at school together , always regarded me as a sort
of elder brother. Rather touching, really: even today, he seldom takes a big decision without consulting me. When
the P.M. offered him Embassy, who do you think had make up H.B.’s mind for him?
49. “You?”
50. “That’s right, me. Good old H.B.”
51. “Ha, ha, ha, ha,” laughed Sohanlal, now showing all his pan-stained teeth. “In that case it is a lucky day that you
have come to my humble house. Very lucky, because my son - he is in the Balance Ministry here - he was going
as Trade Commissioner to Hajarat Barkat Ali. But you know how there are wheels within wheels. Someone seems
to have poisoned the Ambassador’s mind about my son; about some transaction concerning evacuee-property.
Actually, it was a perfectly legitimate.
52. Nanukaka waved away any further explanation. “That should be quite simple,” he announced. “I’ll write and tell
H.B. to do it. No, no. Don’t thank me at all. After all we are the men in the public eye, must do things for one
another, ha, ha. One good turn deserves another.
53. Nanukaka opened his silver snuffbox and took a pinch. Then, flicking on his angocha, he casually mentioned the
name of the Welfare Minister.
54. The fixed grin on Sohanlal’s face vanished. “Is he a friend of yours?” Nanukaka admitted, “No, not exactly.”
55. “I am so glad,” Sohanlal said, relieved. “So glad. That man; such ingratitude! I gave him a ticket, helped him in
every way, and what do I get in return?”
56. It turned out that the Minister and Lala Sohanlal, once the best of friends, were now at daggers drawn, since last
year, when the Minister had refused to consider a proposal for his daughter to marry Lalji’s son.
57. “He wants a prince!” Sohanlal snorted. “What is a prince, these days! Faugh! Confidential, I can tell you that the
Minister has burnt his boats; I’d be surprised if he is given a ticket for the next elections; very surprised. He turns
my son down, and wants a prince! Baah! And what is even more funny, I am told that so far they haven’t even
exchanged horoscopes; even the astrologers on both sides haven’t come together to decide whether it would be
an auspicious match!”
58. “Disgraceful!” Nanukaka snorted. “Disgraceful! What prince did you say?”
59. “Some twopenny state called Ninnore.”
60. We left the house soon after that, Nanukaka having again promised that he would write to “Old H.B.” that very
day. As we drove away, both Lalaji and his superior secretary were bowing to him from the porch.
61. Nanukaka was strangely silent that evening and went to bed soon after dinner, but in the morning, he was chirpy
again.
62. “We are going to the Minister’s house, this morning,” he announced.
63. “Not me, please, Uncle,” I appealed.

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64. He inhaled some snuff before he spoke, and by that time he seemed to have forgotten what I had said. “This car
of yours, too old, too small. We’ll need something much more impressive. You noticed how that secretary treated
us coldly at first. If we had gone in a bigger car, he would have been quite different.”
65. “What about a taxi?”
66. “No; not a taxi. A private car, driven by a liveried chauffeur; the bigger the better.”
67. I remember that an acquaintance of mine has been trying to sell for some months an enormous, stately,
outlandish car that would have only been built for a court procession. I told Nanukaka about it.
68. “That’s it! We’ll take it out for a brief trial, he suggested breezily.
69. “I am sure we could,” I said, “if we looked like genuine buyers. But do we? These motor-car touts can smell a rich
man a mile off.”
70. “You leave that to me,” Nanukaka said. “You just leave the details to me.”
71. “And what the liveried chauffeur?” I asked.
72. “You, of course,” Nanukaka said blandly.
73. He took out his cheque-book and wrote a cheque for a thousand rupees. He folded it neatly and put it into the
inner pocket of an old coat of his. “Now call your dhobi,” he told me.
74. I called the dhobi , and Uncle gave him the coat and took him outside and had a talk with him. Then we drove over
to the Sikha Auto dealers and Nanukaka asked if he could try out the car we had in mind.
75. We had Barely got talking to the manager when the dhobi rushed into shop, holding Nanukaka’s old coat in one
hand and brandishing the cheque with the other. “Oh, there you are!” he panted. Look what you had left in this
coat of yours!”
76. Nanukaka held out the cheque at the arm’s length, and clucked his tongue several times. “How careless of me!”
he said. “I am always doing this sort of thing. Bearer cheque too; anyone could have cashed it. Here, my good
man,” he said to the dhobi, “here is a reward for you. There is nothing like honesty,” and he gave him a two-rupee
note and a pat on the back.
77. After this demonstration of wealth, it was quite easy about the car. I drove, wearing my white Jodhpur coat and
the orange turban, and Nanukaka sat regally at the back, looking every inch what he was supposed to be: a
hereditary pundit from a princely state.
78. We drove to the Minister’s house, and the servants and the secretary fussed around Nanukaka who refused to
state his business but merely called for the visitors’ book.
79. “I have just come to make a formal call,” he announced. “I have no wish to disturb the Minister. It is just a formality
that we in the old princely states still observe. His highness is a great stickler for these courtesies.” They brought
the visitors’ book, and I watched Nanukaka in admiration as he wrote his name with flourish and added, “
Hereditary Astrologer to the Maharaja of Ninnore.” At the end he gave his Delhi address: my address.
80. Without another word, and as though he were in a tearing hurry, he hpot into the car and said loudly:
81. “Take me to the Maharaja of Sukatta’s palace. I have to return all those horoscopes entrusted to me.” As the car
turned out of the gate, I glanced backwards and saw a huge dark, khaddar-clad figure peering at us from an upper-
storey window.
82. We had just finished tea, and we were trying to house-break the new kitten which had just made a puddle on the
floor when the car with the white triangle stopped in front of the house, and Nanukaka went out with folded hands
to receive the Welfare Minister who had come to see him.
83. Nanukaka left yesterday, his mission accomplished. I never found out what it was that he wanted to see the
Minister about. Also I wonder what is going to happen when the minister discovers that my uncle has never been
a hundred miles of place called Ninnore, although I am now convinced that Nanukaka will deal with the situation
without allowing a single fold of his angocha to fall of place.
84. Only, when it happens, I want to be somewhere far out of range.

I HAVE A DREAM | MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

INTRODUCTION
 Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on 15 January 1929 and died on 4 April 1968.
 He was assassinated on 4 April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
 He was a Baptist Minister by training.

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 He became a civil rights activist early in his career.

 He was influenced by Gandhiji.
 In 1964, he became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Prize for his efforts to
end segregation and racial discrimination.
 ‘I Have a Dream’ is a speech he delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on August 28,
1963.
 In his speech, he speaks about his dream of seeing Alabama as a developed state, free of racial distinction
between the whites and the blacks.
 His important works are: Stride towards Freedom, Strength to Love, Where do We Go from Here, Chaos or
Community, The Montgomery Story

LESSON
1. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation
Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had
been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
2. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later,
the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and chains of discrimination. One
hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.
One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an
exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.
3. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of colour are
concerned. Instead of honouring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad cheque which
has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse
to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of the nation. So we have come to
cash this cheque- a cheque that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We
have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage
in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of graduation. Now is the time to rise from the dark
and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit Path of racial injustice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the
quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
4. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of
the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating
autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the
Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to
business as usual. Negro is grated his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the
foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
5. But, there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace
of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to
satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
6. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative
protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting
physical force with soul force. The marvellous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not
lead us distrust all people, for many of our white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced their
presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is
inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
7. And as we walk, we make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those
who are asking the devotees of civil rights, ‘When will you be satisfied?’ We can never be satisfied as long as our
bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the
cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We
can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has
nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like
water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
8. I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come
fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by

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the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative
suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
9. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and
ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in
the valley of despair.
10. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.
It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
11. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. ‘We hold these truths
to be self-evident that all men are created equal.’
12. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave
owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
13. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
14. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not by judged by the colour of
their skin but by the content of their character.
15. I have a dream today.
16. I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of
interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and white girls and walk
together as sisters and brothers.
17. I have a dream today.
18. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough
places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall e it together.
19. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the
mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our
nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together,
to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
20. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, ‘ My country ‘tis of thee,
sweet Land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every
mountainside, let freedom ring.’
21. And if America is to be a great nation this must come true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of
New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening
Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
22. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado!
23. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!
24. But not only that; Let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia!
25. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
26. Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
27. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city,
we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children- black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics − will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at
last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’

IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND | BERTRAND RUSSELL

INTRODUCTION
 Bertrand Russell was born on 18 May 1872 and died on 2 February 1970.
 He was a British philosopher, historian, mathematician, prolific writer.
 He comments on sex, marriage, politics, religion, science, psychology, philosophy,
socialism, education, Christ, Marx, Budha etc.
 In 1950, Russell was awarded Nobel Prize in literature.
 In his writings, he champions humanitarian ideas and freedom of thought.

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 His writings emphasis reason, intelligence, human happiness, peace and liberty.
 ‘Ideas That Have Helped Mankind’ is an essay.
 His major works are- A History of Western Philosophy, Human Knowledge, Conquest of Happiness, Marriage
and Morals, Roads to Freedom, In Praise of Idleness, Why I am not a Christian

LESSON
1. Before we can discuss this subject we must form some conception as to the kind of effect that we consider a
help to mankind. Are mankind helped when they become more numerous? Or when they become less like
animals? Or when they become happier? Or when they learn to enjoy a greater diversity of experiences? Or when
they become more friendly to one another? I think all these things come into our conception of what helps
mankind, and I will say to preliminary word about them.
2. The most indubitable respect in which ideas have helped mankind is numerous. There must have been a time
when homo sapiens was a very rare species, subsisting precariously in jungles and caves, terrified of wild beasts,
having difficulty in securing nourishment. At this period the biological advantage of his greater intelligence, which
was cumulative because it could be handed on from generation to generation, had scarcely begun to overweigh
the disadvantages of his long infancy, his lessened agility as compared with monkeys, and his lack of hirsute
protection against cold. In those days, the number of men must certainly have been very small. The main use to
which, throughout the ages, men have put their technical skill has been to increase the total population. I do not
mean that this was the intention, but that it was, in fact, the effect. It is something to rejoice in, then we have
occasion to rejoice.
3. We have also become, in certain respects, progressively less like animals. I can think in particular of two respects:
first, that acquired, as opposed to congenital, skills play a continually increasing part in human life, and, secondly,
that assuming more and more dominates impulse. In these respects we have certainly become progressively less
like animals.
4. As to happiness, I am not sure. Birds, it is true, die of hunger in large numbers during the winter, if they are not
birds of passage. But during the summer they do not foresee this catastrophe, or remember how nearly it befell
them in the previous winter. With human beings the matter is otherwise. I doubt whether the percentage of birds
that will have died of hunger during the present winter (1946-47) is as great as the percentage of human beings
that will have died from this cause in India and central Europe during the same period. But every human death by
starvation is preceded by a long period of anxiety, and surrounded by the corresponding anxiety of neighbours.
We suffer not only the evils that actually befall us, but all those that our intelligence tells us we have reason to
fear. The curbing of impulses to which we are led by forethought averts physical disaster at the cost of
worry and general lack of joy. I do not think that the learned men of my acquaintance, even when they enjoy a
secure income, are as happy as the mice that eat the crumbs from their tables while the erudite gentlemen
snooze. In this respect, therefore, I am not convinced that there has been any progress at all.
5. As to diversity of enjoyments, however, the matter is otherwise. I remember reading an account of some lions
who were taken to a movie showing the successful depredations of lions in a wild sate, but none of them got any
pleasure from the spectacle. Not only music, and poetry, and science, but football, and baseball, and alcohol,
afford no pleasure to animals. Our intelligence has, therefore, certainly enabled us to get a much greater variety
of enjoyment than in open to animals, but we have purchased this advantage at the expense of a much greater
liability to boredom.
6. But I shall be told that it neither numbers nor multiplicity of pleasures that make the glory of man. It is his
intellectual and moral qualities. It is obvious that we know more than animals do, and it is common to consider
this one of our advantages. Whether it is, in fact, an advantage, may be doubted. But at any rate it is something
that distinguishes us from the brutes.
7. Has civilization taught us to be more friendly towards one another? The answer is easy. Robins (the English, not
the American species) peck and elderly robin to death, whereas men give an elderly man an old-age pension.
Within the herd we are more friendly to each other than are many species of animals, but in our attitude towards
those outside the herd, in spite of all that has been done by moralists and religious teachers, our emotions are as
ferocious as those of any animal, and our intelligence enables us to give them a scope which is denied to even
the most savage beast. It may be hoped, though not very confidently, that the more humane attitude will in time
come to prevail, but so far the omens are not very propitious.
8. All these different elements must be borne in mind in considering what ideas have done most to help mankind.
The ideas with which we shall be concerned may be broadly divided into two kinds: those that contribute to
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knowledge and technique, and those that are concerned with morals and politics. I will treat first those that have
to do with knowledge and technique.
9. The most important and difficult steps were taken before the dawn of history. At what stage language began is
not known, but we may be pretty certain that it began very gradually. Without it, it would have been very difficult
to hand on from generation to generation the inventions and discoveries that were gradually made.
10. Another great step, which may have come either before or after the beginning of language, was the utilization of
fire. I suppose that at first fire was chiefly used to keep away wild beasts while our ancestors slept, but the warmth
must have been found into the fire, but when it was taken out it was found to be much better, and so the long
history of cookery began.
11. The taming of domestic animals, especially the cow and the sheep, must have made life much pleasanter and
more secure. Some anthropologists have an attractive theory that the utility of domestic animals was not
foreseen, but the people attempted to tame whatever animal their religion taught them to worship. The tribes
that worshipped lions and crocodiles died out, while those to whom the cow or the sheep was a sacred animal
prospered. I like this theory, and in the entire absence of evidence, for or against it, I feel a liberty to play with it.
12. Even more important than the domestication of animals was the invention of agriculture, which, however,
introduced blood-thirsty practices into religion that lasted for many centuries. Fertility rites tended to involve
human sacrifice and cannibalism. Moloch would not help the corn to grow unless he was allowed to feast on the
blood of children. A similar opinion was adopted by the Evangelicals of Manchester in the early days of
industrialism, when they kept six-year old children working twelve to fourteen hours a day, in conditions that
caused most of them to die. It has now been discovered that grain will grow, and cotton goods can be
manufactured, without being watered by the blood of infants. In the case of grain, the discovery took thousands
of years; in the case of the cotton goods hardly a century. So perhaps there is some evidence of progress in the
world.
13. The last of the great prehistoric inventions was the art of writing, which was indeed a prerequisite of history.
Writing, like speech, developed gradually, and in the form of pictures designed to convey a message it was
probably as old as speech, but from picture to syllable writing and thence to the alphabet was a very slow
evolution. In China the last step was never taken.

THE ARTIST | SHIGA NAOYA

INTRODUCTION
 Shiga Naoya was born on 20 February 1883 and died on 21 October 1971.
 He was a Japanese novelist and short story writer.
 He is celebrated Japanese short story writer of the twentieth century.
 He wrote very sensitively about his people and their culture.
 ‘The Artist’ is a short story.

LESSON
1. Seibei’s parents knew that he often went out to buy himself gourds. He got them for few sen and soon had a
sizeable collection. When he came home, he would first bore a neat hole in the top of the gourd and extract the
seeds. Next he applied tea-leaves to get rid of the unpleasant gourd smell. He then fetched the sake which he
had saved up from the dregs in his father’s cup and carefully polished the surface.
2. Seibei was passionately interested in gourds. One day as he was strolling along the beach, absorbed in his
favourite subject, he was startled by an unusual sight: he caught a glimpse of the bald, elongated head of an old
man hurrying out of one of the huts by the beach. ‘What a splendid gourd!’ thought Seibei. The old man
disappeared from sight, wagging his bald pine pate. Only then did Seibei realize his mistake and he stood there
laughing loudly to himself. He laughed all the way home.
3. Whenever he passed a grocery, a curio-shop, a confectioner’s or in Fact any place that sold gourds, he stood for
minutes on end, his eyes glued to the window appraising the precious fruit.
4. Seibei was twelve years old and still at primary school. After class, instead of playing with the other children, he
usually wandered about the town looking for gourds. Then in the evening he would sit cross-legged in the corner
of the living-room working on his newly acquired fruit. When he had finished treating it, he poured in a little sake,

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inserted a cork stopper which he had fashioned himself, wrapped it in a towel, put this in a tin especially kept for
the purpose and finally placed the whole thing in the charcoal foot warmer. Then he went to bed.
5. As soon as he woke the next morning, he would open the tin and examine the gourd. The skin would be thoroughly
damp from the overnight treatment. Seibei would gaze adoringly at his treasure before tying a string round the
middle and hanging it in the sun to dry. Then he set out for school.
6. Seibei lived in a harbour town. Although it was officially a city, one could walk from one end to the other in a
matter of twenty minutes. Seibei was always wandering about the streets and had soon come to know every
place that sold gourds and to recognise almost every gourd on the market.
7. He did not care much about the old, gnarled, peculiarly-formed gourds usually favoured by collectors. The type
that appealed to Seibei was even and symmetrical.
8. ‘That youngster of yours only seems to like the ordinary-looking ones,’ said a friend of his father, who had come
to call. He pointed at the boy, who was sitting in the corner busily polishing a plain, round gourd.
9. ‘Fancy a lad spending his time playing around like that with gourds!’ said his father giving Seibei a disgusted look.
10. ‘See here, Seibei my lad,’ said the friend, ‘there’s no use just collecting lots of those things. It’s not the quantity
that counts, you know. What you want to do is to find one or two really unusual ones.’
11. ‘I prefer this kind,’ said Seibei and let the matter drop.
12. Seibei’s father and his friend started talking about gourds.
13. ‘Remember that Bakin gourd they had at the agricultural show last spring?’ said his father. ‘It was a real beauty,
wasn’t it?’
14. ‘Yes, I remember. That big, long one..........’
15. As Seibei listened to their conversation, he was laughing inwardly. The Bakin gourd had made quite a stir at that
time, but when he had gone to see it (having no idea, of course, who Bakin might be) he had found it rather a
stupid-looking object and had walked out of the show.
16. ‘I didn’t think so much of it,’ interrupted Seibei, ‘It’s just a clumsy great thing.’
17. His father opened his eyes wide in surprise and anger.
18. ‘What’s that?’ he shouted. ‘When you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’d better shut up!’
Seibei did not say another word.
19. One day when he was walking along an unfamiliar back-street, he came upon an old woman with a fruit-stall. She
was selling dried persimmons and oranges; on the shutters of the house behind the stall, she had hung a large
cluster of gourds.
20. ‘Can I have a look?’ said Seibei and immediately ran behind the stall and began examining the gourds. Suddenly
he caught sight of one which was about five inches long and at first sight looked quite commonplace. Something
about it made Seibei’s heart beat faster.
21. ‘How much is this one?’ he asked, panting out the words.
22. ‘Well,’ said the old woman, ‘since you’re just a lad, I’ll let you have it for ten sen.’
23. ‘In that case,’ said Seibei urgently, ‘Please hold it for me, won’t you?’ I’ll be right back with the money.
24. He dashed home and in no time at all was back at the stall. He bought the gourd and took it home.
25. From that time on, he was never separated from his new gourd. He even took it along to school and used to polish
it under his desk in class-time. It was not long before he was caught at this by one of the teachers, who was
particularly incensed because it happened to take place in an ethics class.
26. The teacher came from another part of Japan and found if most offensive that children should indulge in such
effeminate pastimes as collecting gourds. He never minded having his students sing Naniwabusi ballads,
however raucously. Now, when he found Seibei silently polishing his gourd, his voice trembled with fury.
27. ‘You’re an idiot!’ he shouted. ‘There’s absolutely no future for a boy like you.’ Then and there he confiscated the
gourd on which Seibei had spent so many long hours of work. Seibei stared straight ahead and did not cry.
28. When he got home, Seibei’s face was pale. Without a word, he put his feet on the warmer and sat looking blankly
at the wall.
29. After a while, the teacher arrived. As Seibei’s father was not yet home from the carpenter’s shop where he worked,
the teacher directed his attack on Seibei’s mother.
30. ‘This sort of thing is the responsibility of the family, ‘he said in a stern voice. ‘It is the duty of you parents to see
that such things don’t happen’. In an agony of embarrassment, Seibei’s mother muttered some apology.
31. Meanwhile, Seibei was trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible in the corner. Terrified, he glanced
up at his vindictive teacher and at the wall directly behind, where a whole row of fully-prepared gourds was
hanging. What would happen if the teacher caught sight of them?
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32. Trembling inside, he waited for the worst, but at length the man exhausted his rhetoric and stamped angrily out
of the house. Seibei heaved a sigh of relief.
33. Seibei’s mother was sobbing softly. In a querulous whine, she began to scold him, and in the midst of this, Seibei’s
father returned from his shop. As soon as he heard what had happened, he grabbed his son by the collar and gave
him a sound beating. ‘You’re no good!’ he bawled at him. ‘You’ll never get anywhere in the world, the way you’re
carrying on. I’ve a good mind to throw you out into the street where you belong!’ The gourds on the wall caught
his attention. Without a word, he fetched his hammer and systematically smashed them to pieces, one after the
other. Seibei turned pale but said nothing.
34. The next day the teacher gave Seibei’s confiscated gourd to an old porter who worked in the school. ‘Here, take
this,’ he said, as if handing over some unclean object. The porter took the gourd home with him and hung it on
the wall of his small, sooty room.
35. About two months later, the porter, finding himself even more hard-pressed for money than usual, decided to take
the gourd to a local curio-shop to see if he could get a few coppers for it. The curio-dealer examined the gourd
carefully, then assuming an uninterested tone handed it back to the porter, saying, ‘I might give you five yen for
it.’
36. The porter was astounded, but being quite an astute old man, replied coolly, ‘I certainly wouldn’t part with it for
that.’ The dealer immediately raised his offer to ten yen, but the porter was still adamant.
37. In the end the curio dealer had to pay fifty yen for the gourd. The porter left the shop, delighted at his luck. It
wasn’t often that the teachers gave one a free gift equivalent to a year’s wages! He was so clever as not to mention
the matter to anyone, and neither Seibei nor the teacher ever heard what had happened to the gourd. Yes, the
porter was clever, but he was not clever enough: little did he imagine that this same gourd would be passed on
by the curio-dealer to a wealthy collector in the district for 600 yen.
38. Seibei is now engrossed in his pictures. He no longer feels any bitterness either towards the teacher, or towards
his father who smashed all his precious gourds to pieces.
39. Yet gradually his father has begun to scold him for painting pictures.

A CHILD IS BORN | GERMAINE GREER

INTRODUCTION
 Germaine Greer was born on 29 January 1939.
 Germaine Greer is an Australian writer.
 She was born to a Catholic family.
 She is a twentieth century writer.
 She was educated at University of Melbourne, University of Cambridge and
The University of Sydney.
 She explores the social and cultural aspects of women.
 She is a famous feminist writer.
 ‘A Child is Born’ is an essay.
 ‘A Child is Born’ is an extract from her book ‘Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility’.
 ‘A Child is Born’ explores the cultural peculiarities of the East and the West regarding child-birth and parent-child
relationship.
 Her important works are− The Change, The Whole Woman, The Female Eunuch, Sex and Destiny: The Politics of
Human Fertility

LESSON
1. The way of managing childbirth is traditional societies are many and varied; their usefulness stems directly from
the fact they are accepted culturally and collectively so that the mother does not have the psychic burden of
reinventing and procedures. Even though the potential catastrophes are alive in the memory of her community
and the index of anxiety high, a ritual approach to pregnancy which hems the pregnant woman about with taboos
and prohibitions helps make the anxiety manageable. A woman who observes all the prohibitions and carries out
all the rites will be actively involved in holding the unknown at bay. She will have other reinforcements, for many
of the ritual observances of pregnancy involve the participation of others who should support her, primarily her

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husband, then her kinsfolk and then the other members of her community. Some of these behaviours will be
sensible and useful, others magical, but they will all increase her sense of security and her conviction that she is
conducting the pregnancy, not that it is conducting her. The remnants of this kind of prophylaxis can be found in
the persistence of old wives’ tales about pregnancy even in our own super rational and confused lifestyle. One
university graduate of my acquaintance who approached her pregnancy as if it were her term assignment,
meticulously footnoting every development, clung to her pre-natal exercises as a form of ritual observance as
well as helpful preparation for the physical exploit of childbirth, performing them in deep silence and total
recollection at the same time every day come hell or high water. As well, she observed the old diehard superstition
that acquiring equipment and apparel for baby before the birth was bad luck, and so one of my godchildren shot
into the world without crib or napkins. Considerable effort had gone into seeing that the mother had every
opportunity to enjoy her baby, but, after her training for unmedicated childbirth for months, in the vent the hospital
refused to believe she was in second stage labour until her daughter’s head had appeared. The hospital staff was
so uncooperative about breast-feeding that mother had daughter discharged themselves after two days.
2. This birth was virtually unattended. In non-technocratic societies, except for remarkable accidents, birth is always
attended.
3. Clearly infant and mother mortality is greater in traditional births, but in our anxiety to avoid death we may have
destroyed the significance of the experience for the vast majority who live. No one would deny that each infant
and particularly every maternal death is a tragedy to be prevented if at all possible, nor that modern obstetric care,
which has developed in the hospital setting, has been at least partly responsible for the dramatic decrease in both
maternal and pre-natal mortality over the past half century. But it is not necessarily perverse to question whether
our present priority should be to reach minimum figures for pre-natal mortality at any price when this includes
giving up things which free human beings have often felt to be more important than their own survival- such as
freedom to live their own lives their own way and to make individual choices in line with their own sense of values.
4. In many societies women still go forth from their mother’s houses at marriage to live with a mother-in-law and
the wives of their husbands’ brothers. It is a truism of anthropology that such women do not become members
of their new family until they have borne a child. If we consider that in such societies the marriage was quite likely
to have been arranged, it is understandable that the bride too longs for the child who will stand in the same
intimate relationship to her as she with her own mother. The western interpretation of such mores is that they are
backward, cruel and wrong; it is assumed that the sexual relations between the spouse are perfunctory and
exploitative and that all mother-in-law are unjust and vindictive. One of the greatest difficulties in the way of
feminists who are not chauvinistic and want to learn from women who still live within a female society is the
tendency of those women to withdraw into silent opposition when participating in international for a conducted
in languages which they cannot speak with fluency; Women officials of the Sudanese government told me that
they had given up going to international conferences, even though the trips were tired of being told about their
own lives instead of being consulted.
5. Thus we in the West would regard it as outrageous that a woman could lose her own name and become known as
the mother of her first-born, once she has borne it although of course most of us do not protest against the sinking
of the woman’s lineage under her husband’s name at marriage. In many traditional societies the relationship
between mother and child is more important than the relationship between husband and wife: indeed, the child’s
relationship with the rest of his family is as important as or even more important than either. A number of social
usages may stress the child’s relationship with the rest of his kin-group at the expense of that with his parents. His
aunts and uncles may be permitted greater physical intimacy with him in public than his parents. In many traditional
societies in Africa and India the biological family is deliberately weakened, by enforced abstinence or actual
separation of parents, in order to strengthen the extended family. Thus child are not born at the whim of the parents,
but in response to a broader pressure from the whole group.
6. The woman who satisfies the longings of her peers by producing the child they are all anxious to see, finds her
achievement celebrated in ways that dramatise her success. Among the few first-person accounts of how this
works in practice is this one from a young Sylheti woman: If a girl is lucky, and her parents are alive, she goes to
her mother’s house for the few months of her pregnancy and about the first three months of the baby’s life. There
she gets a lot of love and care. She is asked, “What would you like to eat? What do you fancy?” All the time she is
looked after. The matter of pregnancy is one of the celebrations. When the baby is born it is an occasion of joy
for the whole family. The naming ceremony is lovely. It is held when the boy is seven days old. A new dress is
brought for it and a new sari for the mother. There is feasting and singing until late night. The women and girls
gather and sing songs. Garlands of turmeric and garlic are worn to ward off evil spirits. That’s when the name is
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chosen. The ceremony is held for the birth of a boy or a girl. Of course it is considered better to have a boy, but
the birth of a girl is celebrated with the same joy by women in the family. We sit together eating pan and singing.
Some of us might be young unmarried girls, others aged ladies of forty or fifty. There are so many jokes, so much
laughter. People look so much funny eating pan and singing. The men don’t take much part. They may come and
have a look at the baby, but the singing, the gathering together at night - it is all women. The songs are simple
songs which are rarely written down. They are about the lives of women in Bengal.
7. Among the rewards of pregnancy in this case, as in many others, is that the woman gets go to home to visit her
mother and sisters; the nostalgic tone of the description, which is clearly tinged with rose, may be the product of
the contrast that this young woman finds in England. Another of the Asian women who found a voice in Amrit
Wilson’s book gives a similarly-rosy picture of rearing a child in Bangladesh: In Bangladesh children under the age
of five or six are looked after by the whole family. All the children of the joint family are looked after together.
They are taken to the pond for a bath perhaps by one daughter-in-law, and she bathes them all. Then they all come
in and sit down to eat. Perhaps the youngest daughter-in-law has cooked the meal. Another woman feeds them.
As for playing the children play out of doors with natural objects. Here people say that Asian children don’t play
with toys. In Bangladesh they don’t need toys. They make their own simple things. In the afternoon they love to
hear Rupthoka (fairy tales). May be there is a favourite aunt, she tells them these stories. But at night when they
get sleepy, they always go to their mothers and sleep in their embrace. But other women do help a lot, in fact, they
have such strong relationships with the child that it is not uncommon for them to be called Big Mother or Small
Mother.
8. All technological change causes social problems; the impact of Western medicine in traditional societies is one
of the most problematic areas of modernization. The prestige of the white-coats is enormous, the respect for
their miraculous hypodermics total. The pressure of expectation makes for aggressive and dramatic procedures
even when the health status of the patients is too poor to withstand them. Allopathic doctors in peasant
communities are dependent upon expensive drugs, sparkling equipment and lots of electricity, most of which
they have not got in sufficient quantity. Where foreign aid has established that temple of our religion, the hospital,
it must make a ritual display of its power with horrible results: Sheila Kitzinger visited an enormous modern
hospital for “Bantu patients” in South Africa, and this is what she saw: The delivery ward was full of groaning,
whirling women- the majority labouring alone. Oxytocin drips and pumps were in widespread use. This was the
meeting-place of the old Africa and the new technology of the West. Pools of blood lay on the floor like sacrificial
out-pourings, and Bantu nurses were happy to leave them there as a witness of the blessings of the earth, while
they busied themselves with technologically sophisticated modern equipment and ignored the labouring women
far as possible, which it was not so difficult to do as they did not speak the same languages anyway. Birth was
very far from normal here and it was conducted in such a way that I had seen before in African hospitals catering
for black ‘clinic’ patients from large urban ghettos: impersonal conveyor-belt obstetrics accompanied by a
plethora of technical innovations and machinery.
9. If we turn birth from a climactic personal experience into a personal disaster, it matters little that the result is
more likely to be a live child. Women will not long continue to offer up their bodies and minds to such brutality,
especially if there is no one at home to welcome the child, to praise the mother for her courage and to help her
raise it. In fact peasant communities are more level headed and sceptical of us and our methods than we realise
and they have resisted the intrusion of our chromium plated technology more successfully than we like to think.
They know that death attends too frequently in the traditional birthplace, but they also know that there are worse
fates than death. Nevertheless, all that stops our technology from reaching into every hut and hovel is poverty:
the cultural hegemony of Western technology is total.
10. The voices of the few women raised in warning cannot be heard over the humming and throbbing of our machines,
which is probably just as well, for if we succeed in crushing all pride and dignity out of child bearing, the population
explosion will take care of itself.

HOW FREE IS THE PRESS | DOROTHY L. SAYERS

INTRODUCTION
 Dorothy L. Sayers was born on 13 June 1893 and died on 17 December 1957.
 Dorothy L. Sayers was a renowned English crime writer and poet.

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 She was educated at Soverville College, Oxford.

 In 1915, Sayers became one of the first women to graduate from Oxford University.
 She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between
the First and Second World War.
 Dorothy L. Sayers says, ‘The people are the master and the state is the servant.’
 ‘How Free is the Press’ is an essay.
 Her important works are− Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, Lord Peter Views the Body, Nine Tailors, Gaudi
Night

LESSON
1. That without a free Press there can be no free people is a thing that all free people take for granted; we need not
discuss it. Nor will we at this moment discuss the restrictions placed upon the press in time of war. At such times
all liberties have to be restricted; free people must see to it that when peace comes full freedom is restored. In
the mean time, it may be wholesome to consider what that freedom is, and how far it is truly desirable. It may
turn out to be no freedom at all, or even a mere freedom to tyrannies, for tyranny is, in fact, the uncontrolled
freedom of one man, or one gang, to impose its will on the world.
2. When we speak of ‘the freedom of the press’, we usually mean freedom in a very technical and restricted sense−
namely, freedom from direction or censorship by the government. In this respect, the British press is, under
ordinary conditions, singularly free. It can attack the policy and political character of ministers, interfere in the
delicate machinery of foreign diplomacy, conduct campaigns to subvert the constitution, incite citizens to
discontent and rebellion, expose scandals and foment grievances, and generally harry and belabour the servants
of the State, with almost perfect liberty. On occasion, it can become a weapon to coerce the Government to
conform to what is asserts to be the will of the people.
3. So far, this is all to the good. Occasionally, this freedom may produce disastrous hesitations and inconsistencies
in public policy, or tend to hamper the swift execution of emergency measures; but, generally speaking, it works
to secure and sustain that central doctrine of Democracy as we understand it− that the State is not the master
but the servant of the people.
4. The Press, as a whole, and in this technical and restricted sense, is thus pretty free in a peaceful Britain. There is
no shade of political opinion that does not somehow contrive to express itself. But if we go on to imagine that
any particular organ of the Press enjoys the larger liberty of being a forum of public opinion, we are gravely
mistaken. Every newspaper is shackled to its own set of overlords and, in its turn, like the Unmerciful Servant,
exercises a powerful bondage upon its readers and on the public generally. Indeed, we may say that the heaviest
restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship of the Press, but the unofficial
censorship by a Press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it.
5. The editorial policy of a popular daily is controlled by two chief factors. The first is the interest of the advertisers
from whom it gets the money which enables it to keep up its large circulation. No widely circulated newspaper
dare support a public policy, however much in the national interest, that might conflict with the vested interests
of its advertisers. Thus, any proposal to control the marketing of branded goods will be violently opposed, on the
loftiest hygienic grounds, by the papers that carry the branded advertising. On the other hand, any product that
refuses to pay the high advertising rates of a powerful national organ will be (again on the highest moral and
hygienic grounds) denounced, smashed and driven off the market; yet you are not allowed to use any product
that dissociates itself from the advertising ring. All this is understandable, since a big circulation spells
bankruptcy if the paper has to depend on its sales for its revenue. Every newspaper lives in a perpetual precarious
balance; it must increase its sales to justify its advertising rates, and to increase its sales, it must sell itself far
below the cost of production; but if it sells more copies than its advertising will pay for, it faces financial disaster.
Consequently, the more widespread and powerful the organ, the more closely it has to sub serve vested interests.
6. This means that the cheap daily paper, which goes everywhere and has most influence, is far less free than the
more expensive weekly or monthly, which draws a higher proportion of its revenue from sales. Therefore, it is only
the comparatively rich who can afford to reward independent expressions of opinion.
7. The second chief source of a newspaper’s revenue is the wealth of the man or company that owns it; accordingly,
its policy is largely determined by the personal spites and political ambitions of its proprietor. The failure, for
example, of a great newspaper magnate to secure a government appointment may be the signal for the
unleashing of a virulent campaign, in every organ which he controls, against the minister or the party which has
disappointed his ambitions. The public, knowing nothing of the personal bias behind the attack and little of the
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vast network of control which ties up whole groups of the London and Provincial Press in the hands of a single
man or combine, sees only that great number of (what appear to him to be) independent organs are united in a
single, savage, and persistent condemnation. Unless he is exceptionally shrewd, exceptionally clinical, or of
exceptionally resolute and independent mind, he can scarcely help being influenced, and having his vote
influenced; and it is odds that he will never realise the nature of the pressure brought to bear upon him.
8. But still more serious, because more subtle, than the control applied to individual papers by various kinds of
interest is the control and censorship exercised by the Press upon the news and opinions which it disseminates.
The control rests upon and exploits two basic assumptions about the public: (a) that they have not the wit to
distinguish truth from falsehood; (b) that they do not care at all that a statesman is false, provided it is titillating.
Neither assumption is flattering; and indeed, between the Language used privately by the late Lord Northcliffe
about his British readers and the language used publicly by Hitler about his German readers there is very little to
choose. Both assume that readers can be made to believe anything. The result is that accurate reporting, which
used to be the pride of the old-fashioned independent newspaper, has largely given place to reporting which is at
best slipshod and at worst tendentious.
9. I should like to illustrate, with quite trivial examples drawn from personal experience, the various ways by which
both fact and opinion can be distorted, so that a kind of smear of unreality is spread over the whole newspaper
page, from reports of public affairs down to the most casual items of daily gossip.
10. 1. Sensational Headlines; False Emphasis; and Suppression of Context. This year (1941), at the Malvern
Conference, I read a paper dealing with the theological grounds for the Church’s concern with politics and
sociology, with the complimentary dangers of pietism and Caesarism, and with the importance of Incarnation
doctrine in this connection. Out of 8000 words, some 250 dealt with the connection between Caesarism and an
undue emphasis placed on sexual, as contrasted with financial, morality. This quite subsidiary paragraph was
reported everywhere, under sensational headlines, in such a manner as to convey that this passing allusion
formed the whole subject matter of my address. Out of the 800 words about theology, the reporters picked the
only one which they presumed their readers capable of understanding- to wit, ‘fornication’. You, the reader, will
appreciate the compliment. I will, however, add for you comfort that this report was not made (as you might well
suppose) by a Pressman from your favourite paper, specially selected for his understanding of ecclesiastical
affairs. All the distorted reports emanated from a News Agency; and the individual editors, when remonstrated
with, were for the most part content to disavow responsibility. This is how you learn what happens at public
meetings.
11. 2. Garbling. This is the special accomplishment of the Press interviewer. During the production of my latest play,
I was asked, “What were my plans for the future?” I replied that I never made plans; that I preferred writing plays
to novels, though novels paid better; and that, financial considerations notwithstanding, if the opportunity to write
a play were to present itself- for example, another commission for the Canterbury Festival- I should undoubtedly
write it. This reply duly appeared in the Press, in the form: ‘Miss Sayers said she would no more plays, except on
commission’.
12. Bland perversions of this kind, together with the interviewer’s playful habit of making statements himself and
attributing them to his victim make reported interviews singularly unreliable reading. One must allow for the
Pressman’s vivid imagination. I remember reading with interest that my eyes ‘glittered behind my glasses’ when
making some remark or other, since that particular interview was given by telephone, I could only conclude that
the interviewer’s own eyes must have been ‘double magnifying glass microscope of extra power’. But the last,
best word on Press interviews has been written by ‘Q’ in ‘From a Cornish Window’; those who believe that public
characters say everything they are reported as saying should read it and take warning.
13. 3. Inaccurate Reporting of Facts. Some time ago a daily paper reported that my flat had been broken into the
previous day, and that I had returned from (I think they said) Oxford, in time to disturb the thieves. This was true
enough, except that every detail was wrong. The date was three days earlier than alleged, I was not at Oxford
but at the King’s Garden Party, and the intruders had been disturbed, not by me, but most likely by the newspaper
boy. The interest here lies in the probable reason for the mis-statements. The date had to be changed to conceal
the fact that the news was already ‘cold’; and I was substituted for the boy, presumably for my greater snob value.
The altered date was a bad blunder- Buckingham Palace would have adorned the table to so much better
advantage.
14. 4. Plain Reversal of the Facts. On a summons for unshaded lights, a letter of mine was read to the Bench
explaining that my servant had carefully drawn the curtains, but that there had proved, unfortunately, to be a
defeat in the curtains themselves. The local paper daily reported: ‘Miss Sayers said that a servant had forgotten
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to draw the curtains.’ (This was calculated to cause pain and distress to my servant - but why should anybody
care?)
15. 5. Random and Gratuitous Invention. Without consulting me at all, a small and gossipy paper recently informed
its readers that two of my favourite hobbies were ‘gardening and keeping cats’. I do not see why anybody should
want to know my hobbies- but if they do it, it would surely be better to mention the right ones. This choice was
peculiarly unfortunate. If there is anything I detest, it is gardening; and although my household always includes a
necessary cat, which lives in the kitchen and is supposed to catch mice, I have little to do with it, except to remove
it and its hairs from the chairs and cushions, and open the door for it from time to time under protest. Shortage
of domestic staff has since constrained me to live on more intimate terms with the cat. But if he is a ‘hobby’, then
so are the ‘handyman’ and the ‘daily woman’.
16. 6. Deliberate Miracle-mongering. It was recently reported in various local papers that, in a public address, I had
delivered some 20, 000 words in the space of an hour and a quarter. This would in any case have been impossible.
Actually, the reporter had the full text of my speech in his hands, and could have seen for himself that it consisted
of almost exactly 8000 words. The error was thus precisely 150 percent, a useful figure on which to base one’s
estimate of truth in reporting.
17. Of these six forms of misrepresentation, the first two are the most dangerous. There is no remedy against them.
They do not come within the narrow range of the law of libel; for to misrepresent a man’s attitude and opinions is
no offence. Nor could one readily persuade a jury that a lie had been told about one, since a sort of formal veracity
in detail is used to convey a totally false impression of the speaker’s words as a whole. Consequently, it is next
door to impossible to secure either correction or apology. Which brings us to:
18. Flat Suppression: letters of protest may be written. These may be (a) ignored; (b) printed in full or in part,
accompanied by an editorial comment to the effect that the words reported were actually said, and that the
speaker must not expect to monopolise the whole of the paper’s valuable space; (c) answered privately by the
editor - a manoeuvre that does nothing to correct the false impression left in the public mind. Only occasionally,
and usually from a provincial paper, does not receive full apology and correction. Let me quote, honoris causa, a
note written to me from an editor of the older school: ‘Thank you for your letter, which we thought it our duty to
print...we try to preserve our reputation for balanced news.’ Here are three old-fashioned words, duty, reputation,
balanced: do they still represent what the reader demands, or expects, from Fleet Street?
19. To get misleading statements corrected entails, in any case, a heavy and exhausting effort of correspondence -
for the falsehood may be syndicated all over the worlds over-night and appear simultaneously in several hundred
papers. In addition, if one makes a fuss, or ventures to accuse the newspapers of lack of veracity, there always
lurks in the background the shadow of genteel blackmail. Any public person -writer, speaker, actor, politician - is
subtly made feel that if he offends the Press he will suffer for it.
20. No threat, of course, is openly uttered; but books and plays may be unfavourably noticed or silently ignored -
allusions sneering, though not actually libellous, may crop up in the gossip columns - a thousand hints will be
quietly conveyed that the Press can make or break reputations. Books which venture to criticize the Press are,
therefore, are, nor, is it easy to find a paper honest enough to print an article on the subject.
21. Speeches may be made, of course, but they will not reach the wider public, for they will not be reported in full; only
a carefully isolated sentence or so will funds its way into the papers under some such headline as: ‘Bishop Seeks
to Muzzle Press’, or ‘M.P. Attacks Press Liberty’, Indeed, the slightest effort to hinder the irresponsible
dissemination of nonsense is greeted by a concerned howl: ‘This is a threat to the Freedom of the Press!’
22. No wonder that within three days lately the Archbishop of York and a Minister of the Crown were heard to utter
the same despairing cry in face of journalistic misrepresentation and indiscretion: ‘We cannot control thee Press!’
23. The particular examples I have given are, you will say, of every small importance. True: That is what makes them
so symptomatic and so disquieting. They do not show any direct wresting of the truth towards a propagandist
end - against such attempts the reader may, with a little mental effort, efficiently arm himself. What they do clearly
show is an all-pervading carelessness about veracity, penetrating every column, creeping into the most trifling
item of news, smudging And blurring the boundary lines between fact and fancy, creating a general atmosphere
of cynicism and mistrust.
24. He that is unfaithful in little is unfaithful also in much; if a common court case cannot be correctly reported, how
are we to believe the reports of world events? If an interviewer misinterprets the novelist whom we have all seen,
what does he do with the foreign statesman whom we have never seen? If the papers can be convicted of False
Emphasis, Garbling, Inaccuracy, Reversal of the Fact, Random Invention, Miracle Mongering, and Flat Suppression
in cases where such distortions are of advantage to nobody, what are to suppose about those cases in which
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vested interests are closely connected? And, above all, what are we to make of the assumptions on which all this
is based - that the reader is too stupid to detect falsehood and too frivolous to even resent it?
25. Decent journalists do not like the present state of affairs. Nor do the more responsible editors. But the number
of editors and journalists who can maintain a high standard of ‘duty, balance, and reputation’ in the face of
pressure grows less day by day. It is difficult for any paper that presents its news soberly to maintain its
circulation; perhaps it is true that very nation gets the Press it deserves.
26. But supposing the reader does care about accuracy, does he resent attempt for his intelligence, does he want the
truth what is said and done - what steps is he to take? How is he to get at the facts which are withheld; or
smothered under these mountains of distortion and absurdity? How is he to make his will felt? Is he to write angry
letters, or transfer his daily penny from one organ to another? Will anybody care if he does? They will care if he
protests in sufficient numbers. But his penny is a small weapon to oppose against the vested interests and the
pooled money of the great combines. His helplessness is a measure of the freedom which the press enjoys- but
is the reader free?
27. The common has a vote in Parliament. He has a parliamentary representative whom he can badger and heckle
and whose tenure of office rests upon his consent. If he likes to make use of the machinery of a democracy, he
can have questions asked in the house; in the last resort, he can destroy one government and make another. But
there is no machinery by which he can control the organs which mould opinion. For that, his sole resource is a
penny a day and this native wit and will. In time of crisis, the newspapers are first with the cry: ‘Let the people
know the facts!’ But perhaps Facts is a deity invoked by the people only in the last emergency when the easy
gods of peace have failed them.

THE EARTH | H.E. BATES

INTRODUCTION
 H.E. Bates was born on 16 May 1905 and died on 29 January 1974.
 He was born at Northampton in Central England.
 He was a short story writer and novelist. He worked for some time as a journalist.
 His first novel was published when he was 21.
 His important works are: Fair Stood the Wind for France, The Purple Plain,
The Jacaranda Tree, The Scarlet Sword, The Darling Buds of May

LESSON
1. All that the Johnsons had was the earth. Very often it seemed as if it were all they had ever had.
2. It was true that they also had possessions − a plough, a two-wheeled cart, tools, a bony brown mare which slowly
dragged the plough and cart about their rough four-acre plot − but without the earth these things were useless.
It was true that they also had a son.
3. The Johnsons’ son was named Benjy, and it was more than thirteen years since they had surrendered to the idea
that he was not right in his head. It It was not that he was insane or imbecile or even that he could not read and
write and count figures, but only that he was simple, not quite like other people. And because he was their only
son, the Johnsons had spent many years being a little too kind, too anxious and too sacrificial towards him, so
that he had grown up to seem worse, in their eyes, than he really was. Benjy had the large loose limbs that often
belong to the simple-minded man, and thick soft fair hair on his face. He had the look of being a simple-hearted
man as well as a simple-minded man. His eyes were blue, and all day long he had a simple smile on his face. But
somewhere behind the blue eyes, the smile, and the soft childish hair, his simplicity seemed gradually to have
become a kind of cunning.
4. It was more than thirteen years since the Johnsons, realising that he was not quite like others, had taken Benjy to
a doctor. This doctor had persuaded them that he needed interests that would strengthen his mind. It would be
good if they gave him something to do, some occupation, which would help his development. It would help a great
deal if they gave him a special interest, to feed his sense of responsibility, ‘You are people on the land,’ the doctor
said, ‘let him keep hens.’

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5. So for many years Benjy had kept hens, and what the earth was to his mother and father the hens were to Benjy:
they were almost all he had. When he came from school, cut off by his simplicity from other children, Benjy went
straight home to his hens, which he kept in a wire coop that his father had made at the back of the house. At first,
he kept ten or a dozen hens, all colours and breeds, brown and speckled and black and white, and the coop was
small. He fed the hens simply, on scraps from the table, seeded cabbages strung from the wire, a little maize, and
on corn-ears which he gleaned in the late summer from his father’s acre of stubble. It is possible that a hen, being
simple creature, thrives best on simple treatment. Benjy understood the first and last thing about a hen: that it
exists for the purpose of laying eggs. In those days this simple process had not become scientific; nor it had
become highly complicated and commercialised. Eggs were cheap; hens mysteriously pecked nourishment off
the bare earth. They sat in a home-made nesting-box, on straw, and laid the eggs expected of them.
6. Benju understood another thing about the business of hens, and that was that eggs could be sold to callers at the
back door of their house, in scores and half-scores and fivers, and the money from these eggs was put carefully,
almost religiously, into a large white basin that stood on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard. The basin was
beyond Benjy’s reach. ‘But one day,’ his mother would tell him, ‘the money will be yours. You understand? Your
father and me are going to save the money. When there’s enough we shall put it in the bank. The bank will give
interest on it and then one day, when you’re twenty-one, it will be yours by rights. It’ll all be yours and you can do
what you like with it. Do you understand?’ Do you understand?’ And Benjy would simply smile at his mother and
say yes, he understood.
7. As time went on Benjy began to keep many more hens. Soon there were more eggs than could be sold at the back
door, and by the time Benjy had left school at fourteen he had forty or fifty hens and about as many laying pullets,
and these were producing an average of two hundred eggs a week. Soon he set off three times a week with a
large basket of eggs on a wheel-truck, and hawk them in Castor, the nearest town. By this time the money no
longer went into the basin, but straight into the bank. Benjy could read and a year or two afterwards he read in a
paper that it was better to segregate breeds of hens, keeping White Leghorns separate from Rhode Islands, and
young from old. This meant new coops, and at the same time Benjy read that hens needed air and exercise and
dry hygienic places to sleep. Benjy was very strong and understood a simple thing like nailing wire-netting to wood
and began himself to build new houses and coops for the new, segregated breeds of hens. For all this he needed
space, and so his father and mother gave him a strip of land running from the back of the house half-way across
the field. In this way they gave him something more precious than they had ever given before. For the first time,
without fully realising it, they gave him a piece of the earth.
8. All this time they themselves had struggled hard and almost vainly with the earth. At the back of their minds lay
a precious belief that Benjy would one day grow out of his simplicity. In the same way they cherished a silent
belief that the earth would one day outgrow its poverty. The earth had yielded stubbornly for them, and the reason,
like Benjy, was simple. The reason was not in the earth, but in themselves. For most of their lives they had put
rather more value on faith than sweat.
9. For many years Benjy’s father had been a local preacher, a man with quite a gift of talking. He liked not only to
talk on Sundays, to village congregations in small still chapels far out in the country side, but he liked to talk at
the back-door, over the field gate, in the road outside the house. He talked so much that he must have had an idea
that the earth, designed, created and nourished by God, would take care of itself. While he talked, thistles seeded
and chocked his wheat, rabbits broke in and gnawed his cabbages, storms smashed his standing corn. He
struggled on like a man chained by bad luck, and while knew that his land was poor and that Benjy was a simple
man, no one had ever had the need or courage to tell him that he himself was a lazy man with too large a trust in
Providence.
10. And while his father talked Benjy went on steadfastly with the simple business of making hens lay eggs. Part of
the field at the back of his father’s house began to resemble a quivering chequer-board of black and brown and
white feathers. For a long time now the eggs had been too many for the wheel-truck, and Benjy at regular intervals
borrowed his father’s horse and cart, taking the eggs not only down into the town but also into market. All the
time Benjy wore the simple smile of a simple-hearted man on his face, and all the time the money went religiously
into the bank in his name.
11. When Benjy was twenty-one his mother and father planned and carried out a little ceremony. They got his
passbook from the bank, and at supper his father made a sort of speech, almost in the tone of a public address,
in which he talked as if he had been a diligent man all his life, setting an example of thrift and industry, and that
this, the passbook was Benjy’s natural reward for following it. He talked as if he were talking to a child who still

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does not know one from two, and at last he gave Benjy the passbook. This is your money, Benjy,’ he said. ‘Now
you’re twenty-one, this is your money. Do you understand?’
12. ‘Yes,’ Benjy said, and he took the passbook. He opened it and looked at it, and saw in it an amount of more than
two hundred and thirty pounds. Then he shut the passbook and put it into his pocket.
13. Benjy’s mother and father did not speak. A strange tremor of a peculiar emotion went through them both: a
mixture of disappointment, fear, pride, and pain. The amount in Benjy’s passbook was more than they themselves
had ever amassed from the earth in their lives. They did not hope and did not mean that Benjy should give it back
to them, but there was something about the silent, simple finality of his putting the passbook into his pocket that
struck them like a blow in the face. They had expected something else: a word of thanks, perhaps a concession,
a willingness that they should share the money they had helped to save. It hurt them momentarily that Benjy
should appear so completely indifferent to them and to all they felt. Then they remembered why it was. It was
because Benjy was still simple. There were shades of feeling and conduct that were beyond his understanding.
They were touched with pity for him, and understood.
14. ‘What are you going to do with the money?’ they said.
15. ‘I’m going to buy a piece of land,’ Benjy said.
16. ‘Lands?’ they said. ‘What land? Where?’
17. ‘Mr Whitmore wants to sell the four acres next to us,’ Benjy said.
18. ‘But, Benjy,’ they said. How did know? How did you find out?’
19. Benjy had a very simple answer.
20. ‘I asked Mr Whitmore,’ he said.
21. ‘Well,’ they said, ‘that is a very good idea. A wonderful idea. You couldn’t do anything better.’
22. As time went on, and Benjy acquired the land, his father and mother not only felt that it was a good idea but they
felt very proud of him. They had that kind of pride in him that parents have in a child that says its first word or
takes its first step. Benjy, a simple-minded man, had taken his first step in normal, adult things. It was wonderful,
too, that he had taken the step without help, without force or prompting. All his life they had treated him as a child
that will not grow up and now, suddenly, he had grown up. Though they could scarcely realize it. Benjy was a man
of property.
23. For the next four or five years Benjy went on creating more houses for more hens, and then selling more eggs and
making more money. He was still a simple man. He could not have made a pair of boots; he knew nothing about
stock-markets; But he knew everything about a hen. His hens were still to him what the earth was to his parents:
all he had, and all he understood
24. There was only one difference between Benjy’s hens and his parents’ land. The hens belonged to Benjy. The land
had never belonged to his parents, who had rented it now for forty years, on a yearly tenancy, from a man named
Sanders. They had often spoken of buying the land, but somehow the scheme never came to anything. It was
easier for Benjy’s father to stand at the door and talk, or to talk in the pulpit and trust in God, than to make a
business proposition. And now, at sixty-five, they were too old to think of buying land, even if there had been any
money for buying land.
25. And suddenly the land was for sale: their land, their earth, which was all they had. The town was spreading, the
man named Sanders said, and everywhere people wanted land for building. Either he must sell the land for
building, or he must sell the land to them.
26. They felt lost and distracted. They had lived a vague, trusting life without system, with a simple-minded son to
rear, with an infinite faith in God but with little or no faith in fertilizers. As a result they had nothing. Even the earth,
which they had regarded as inviolate, was not theirs, and was about to be taken away from them.
27. Deeply and painfully upset, they went to the man named Sanders, and told him how it was.
28. ‘I don’t see no way of getting the money,’ Benjy’s father said. ‘So we must get out at Michaelmas. That’s all.’
29. ‘Don’t you worry,’ Sanders said. ‘Don’t surprise me you can’t see your way to do it. But I can tell you this, if you
can’t buy it, somebody not far away will.’
30. ‘Who’ll buy it?’ they said.
31. ‘Benjy,’ he said.
32. They went home feeling that this was the supremely important moment of their lives. It seemed like the moment
of reward. If their faith had been shaken, it was now completely whole again. They saw that there could be joy
and satisfaction and ultimate good, even in the raising of a simple-minded son.
33. ‘We never knew, Benjy. We never even suspected,’ they said. ‘What made you do it? What are you going to do?’
34. ‘I’m going to put up more incubator houses,’ Benjy said.
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35. Again, as when they had given Benjy the passbook, they did not speak. They had expected something else, without
quite knowing what: a word, a small concession perhaps an assurance that things would go on as before. But
there was nothing, only the same simple finality as when Benjy had taken possession of the passbook. They were
momentarily pinned. Then they knew again, why it was. There are some things which are forgivable to a simple-
minded man. The simple-minded, as they knew quite well, do not always understand.
36. By this time Benjy was almost forty, and it was only to them that he remained a simple-minded man. As his new
hygienic chicken houses began to cover first one strip of his father’s former land and then another, with the grey
patches of hen-dung eating their way into the brown tilled earth, he began to be the largest poultry farmer on that
side of the town. In appearance he had changed too. Always big limbed, he had now become rather fat. His eyes
were still a simple blue, and soft fair hair still grew thickly on his face, but now, set in fat flesh, the eyes seemed
much smaller. They were no longer the eyes of a simple-minded man. They were the eyes of a man who, in a
simple way, is quite cunning.
37. No one but Benjy, at this time, knew how many hens and chickens he possessed. No one knew how many eggs
the collective-system lorries fetched from him every week; No one knew the amount of his passbook. It was
possible to gauge his progress only by the new chicken houses covering his father’s former land, and by the fact
that he now employed people to help him.
38. One of these people was a girl named Florence. She had thick heavy legs and loose lips and unreflective grey
eyes that matched Benjy’s in their apparent simplicity. When Florence bent down to clean the chicken houses,
which were raised up off the ground, Benjy could see a gap of bare flesh above her grey stockings or the shadows
of deep breasts beneath her smock. In a little while Benjy was catching Florence about the waist in the warm dark
incubator houses, and for the first time in his life he had some other interest besides hens.
39. It became clear to him that his father and mother did not like Florence, this simple, undistinguished girl with ugly
legs and a mouth that would not keep shut. But Benjy did not need a distinguished, intelligent girl, even if one
would have looked at him. He needed a woman to help with the hens, and soon he was saying that he and Florence
would be married.
40. As with the passbook and the land, his father and mother were not prepared for that.
41. ‘Married?’ Aren’t you all right as you are? Don’t you time to consider it? Where are you going to live?’
42. ‘Here,’ Benjy said.
43. And that autumn, at the end of his fortieth year, Benjy moved into the house with Florence as his wife.
44. ‘We’ll want the front bedroom,’ Benjy said.
45. All their lives his father and mother had slept in the front bedroom. Now they vacated it and moved into the back.
This removal hurt them deeply. But because it was now Benjy’s house, because Benjy asked it, they moved without
protest, adding a little more to the long chronicle of sacrifice, forgiving Benjy because the simple-minded cannot
be expected to understand.
46. But the problem of the girl was different. It seemed to them that the girl was about to take Benjy away from them.
The air in the house became charged deeply with antagonism, the house itself invisibly but clearly divided. And
then presently it became divided in actuality. Up to that time the four people had eaten together. Suddenly Benjy’s
mother did not like the way Florence scoured the saucepans. ‘I always scour them with soda. Soda’s always been
good enough for me and always will.’
47. When Benjy heard of the quarrel, he had a very simple solution. ‘That settles it,’ he said. ‘Now you eat in the kitchen,
and we’ll eat in the other room.’
48. And throughout that winter Benjy and his wife lived in one part of the house, and his father and mother in the
other. To the old people the days began now to seem very long, and as they looked out on the land they could see
the reason. Where there had once been brown bare earth, rows of winter beams, patches of wheat, there were
now only Benjy’s chicken houses. The earth was still there, but the purpose of it no longer concerned them. The
plough, the mare, the cart, and their few tools stood about in the yard, but now it was truer than ever that without
the earth they were useless.
49. As the winter went on, and the four people were more and more confined indoors, the division in the house
became an enormous gap. The two women passed each other on the stairs with glances of antagonism, nor
speaking. When Benjy’s father walked out to preach on Sundays he walked slowly and brokenly, with the steps of
an old man. Only Benjy appeared not to be upset. Preoccupied with his hens, it was as if the emotions of normal
people never penetrated beyond his plump hairy face and the eyes that looked so harmless and simple still.
50. But in the end it was Benjy who made the decision.
51. ‘Mum and Dad,’ he said,’ ‘it would be lot better if you went somewhere else to live.’
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52. ‘Benjy,’ they said.

53. ‘A lot better,’ he said. ‘This is our house now. We want it. I bought the house, and I want it now.’
54. ‘Benjy.’
55. ‘I bought it and I want it,’ Benjy said again. ‘I want you to go.’
56. ‘Benjy we can’t go,’ his mother said. ‘We got nowhere to go. We got nowhere.’
57. ‘You’ve got to get out!’ Benjy shouted.
58. As he shouted they realised, more fully than at any time in their lives, that Benjy was really not right in his head.
His simple blue eyes were shot suddenly with a wild expression of insane anger. They not only knew that Benjy
was a simple-minded man who was not fully responsible for his actions, but for the first time, struck by his wild-
eyed burst of anger, they were frightened of Benjy too.
59. ‘All right,’ they said, ‘we’ll find some way to go.’
60. It was little more than a week later Benjy drove his mother and father down into the town. He now had a small
Ford van, and as he drove the van, with his mother and father on the driving seat, he showed no sign of normal
emotion. It was clear that he did not understand the meaning of affection, of bewilderment, or of despair. He felt
and spoke and thought only in the simplest terms, with the cruel simplicity of a child.
61. ‘You’ll better by yourselves in lodgings,’ he said. ‘You’ll be better by yourselves.’
62. They did not answer. They sat with faces made completely immobile by a kind of stupefied resignation very near
to grief. They listened silently and, because for forty years they had believed Benjy to be not right in his head, they
made allowances for the last time.
63. Down in the town the car stopped in a street filed entirely with houses. Benjy did not get out of the van, his father’s
and mother’s belongings had already gone on and now they alighted empty-handed. As they stood on the
pavement Benjy spoke a few words to them, looked at them with unmoved simple eyes, and then drove away.
64. When the van had gone they stood alone on the pavement, looking at the ground. They stood as if they had
alighted in a strange place, were not sure of themselves, and did not know what to do.
65. Once they had had the earth. Now it was not possible to tell, from their downcast and silent faces, whether they
altogether realised that it, too, had gone.

INDIA THROUGH TRAVELLER’S EYE | PEARL S. BUCK

INTRODUCTION
 Pearl S. Buck was born on 26 June 1892 and died on 6 March 1973.
 Pearl S. Buck was an American writer and novelist.
 Pearl S. Buck, American by Birth, was reared in China by her missionary parents.
 Her Chinese name was Sai Zhenzhu.
 She is known for her travelogue and memoirs.
 Pearl S. Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1938.
 She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize.
 She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932.
 ‘India Through Traveller’s Eye’ is an essay.
 ‘India Through Traveller’s Eye’ is an extract from ‘My Several Worlds’.
 Her important works are− The Good Earth, Come My Beloved, My Several Worlds, The Big Wave, Imperial
Woman

LESSON
1. India had always been part of the background of my life, but I had never seen it whole and for myself until now.
Yet the stories that our Indian family doctor and his wife told me when I was child had woven themselves into my
grooving dreams, and I had long read everything that I could find about that country. From my father I had learned
of it through Buddhism and the life history of the Lord Budha.

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2. The very word colour reminds me of the variety of hue that is Indian life, as various as our own American human
scene. In Kashmir, where the white barbarian invaders from Europe long ago penetrated India, the people are
often fair. Auburn-haired, blue-eyed women are beauties there. A young Indian friend of mine has recently married
a Kashmiri man, who though his hair is dark, has eyes of a clear green. The skin colour of the Kashmiri is a lovely
cream and the features are as classic as the Greek. But all the people of India must be reckoned as belonging to
the Caucasian race, whatever the colour of the skin in the South, though it be as black as any African’s.
3. And India has an amazing way of appearing unexpectedly in other life, as for example, today in the life of South
Africa, the Indians make a third group between the South Africans, and the black and white. For that matter there
was our Indian family doctor, and why should there have been an Indian doctor in a Chinese port to tend an
American family? And rumours of India persist, for they are memorable people, dramatic and passionate and
finding dramatic lives.
4. You see how India has a way of permeating human life? And consider how India has managed, merely by
maintaining her independence, and yes, by producing superior individuals, to influence the world in these few
short years of freedom, they have put to good use the benefits the English gave and left, the knowledge of the
West, the pure and exquisitely enunciated English tongue of men and women educated on both sides of the globe-
witness Nehru and with him a host of men learning how to govern, and the first woman to be the President of the
General Assembly of the United Nations a woman of India, and the men in charge of the prisoner exchange in
Korea an Indian General, who won trust from all. Even the blustering and accusation at home and abroad have
not changed the quiet confidence of the new India, and this confidence, founded in unyielding idealism, permeates
our world life.
5. What did I go to India to see? Not the Taj Mahal, although I did not see it and by moonlight, not Fatehpur Sikri,
although I did see it, and not the glories of empire in New Delhi, although I did see them. I went to India to see and
listen to two groups of people, the young intellectuals in the cities and the peasants in the villages. These I met
in little rooms in the city, in little house in the villages, and I heard their plans for freedom. Already the intellectuals
believed that another World War was inevitable. They had been bitterly disappointed after the First World War by
what they felt were the broken premises of England. The English, they declared, had no real purpose to restore
India to the people. I could believe it, fresh as I was from China, where the period of People’s Tutelage seemed
endless and self government further off every year. ‘When you are ready for independence,’ conquers have always
said to their subjects, etcetera! But who is to decide when that moment comes, and how can people learn to
govern themselves except by doing it? So the intellectuals in India were restless and embittered, and I sat through
hours watching their flashing dark eyes and hearing the endless flow of language, the purest English, into which
they poured their feelings.
6. The plan then was that when the Second World War broke, India would rebel immediately against England and
compel her, by this complication, to set her free. They would not be forced, as they declared they had been in the
First World War, to fight at England’s command.
7. ‘And then;’ I asked.
8. ‘And then;’ young India said proudly, ‘we will ourselves decide whether we wish to fight at England’s side - or
against her.’
9. What they did not reckon on, when the time came, was the savagery of Nazism and the aggressions of Japan in
Asia. When they perceived that they must choose between the axis and the English, they chose the English, aware
that in spite of many injustices they were choosing barbarism and civilization. They postponed their plans for
freedom, Gandhi meanwhile doing his work within his own country until the war was over, and by then the wisest
minds in England, understanding the new world, returned India to her people, in spite of all opposition from English
men and others who did not have sufficient understanding of Asia to know what wisdom was. Not even Churchill’s
prophecy of blood bath, partly fulfilled at that, could prevent the inevitable. India had waited as long as she could,
and peasants and intellectuals were on the same side in the old invincible combination. It was Gandhi’s strength
that made him know very early that both peasant and intellectual must be won to work together for their country,
his hold was equally strong upon both, and so he achieved his end, without war. Perhaps, we Americans do not
yet fully understand the great lesson that India has to teach in thus winning her freedom. Beside her might triumph
of a bloodless revolution our War of Independence shrinks in size and concept. India has taught humanity a
lesson, and it is to our peril if do not learn it. The lesson? That war and killing achieve nothing but loss, and that a
noble end is assured only if the means to attain it are of a piece with it and also noble.
10. The real indictment against colonialism, however, was to be found in the villages of India. There was rot at the
top, too in the thousands of young intellectuals trained in English schools for jobs that did not exist except in the
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limited Civil Service. The towns and cities were frothing with unhappy young men, cultured and well educated,
who could find no jobs and were not allowed by the old superstructure of empire to create them. But the real
proof of evil, I say again, was in the miserable villages. I thought I had seen poverty enough in China, yet when I
saw the Indian villages I knew that the Chinese peasant was rich in comparison. Only the Russian peasant was a
very different creature, and inferior in many ways. For the Indian peasant was like the Chinese in being a person
innately civilized. The maturing culture of an organised human family life and profound philosophical religions
had shaped his mind and soul, even though he could not read and write. And the children, the little children of the
Indian villages, how they tore at my heart, thin, big bellied, and all with huge sad dark eyes! I wondered that any
Englishman could look at them and not accuse himself. Three hundred years of English occupation and rule, and
could there be children like this? Yes, and millions of them! And the final indictment surely was that the life span
in India was only twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years! No wonder, then, that life was hastened, that a man
married very young so that there could be children, as many as possible, before he died. I loved England,
remembering all the happy journeys there, but in India I saw an England I did not know. And I was forced to see
that if the English, in many ways the finest people on earth, people who blazed the way for all of us to achieve the
right of men to rule themselves, if colonialism could so corrupt even these, then indeed none of us could dare
become the rulers of empire.
11. It seemed to me, as I lived with Indian friends, new and old, that all the ills of India could easily have been mended
if there had been a government whose purpose was first of all to benefit the people rather than to live upon them.
The desert-dry country, for example, the fruitless land between Bombay and Madras, was already famished
although it was only February, and the sun hot enough to fertilize any seed, had there been water. And why was
there no water? Why not sink artesian wells, or even dig shallow wells, since I was told, the water table was high?
But the enervated and exhausted people had not the strength to take such initiative after the years of colonialism.
It was more than that. The worst result, perhaps, of the colonial system was to provide the subject people with
an infinite excuse against work and so against helping themselves. ‘You are responsible for me,’ is always the
sullen attitude of the subject to the ruler. ‘You have undertaken to feed me and clothe me and govern me. If I die,
it is your fault.’ There were always the British to blame, and certainly the blame was not always just. Yet essentially
perhaps it was, for when the heart of people is gone, their spirit dies with it.
12. Looking back, I find that among the many impressions of the people of India, absorbed while I lived among them,
and still clear in my mind, is their reverence for great men and women. Leadership in India can only be continued
by those whom the followers consider to be good- that is, capable of renunciation, therefore, not self-seeking.
This one quality for them contains all others. A person able to renounce personal benefit for the sake of an
idealistic and is by that very fact also honest, also high-minded, therefore also trustworthy. I felt that the people,
even those who know themselves venal and full faults, searched for such persons.
13. The devotion given nationally to Gandhi and finally even internationally is well known, but I found the same
homage paid to local persons who in their measure were also leaders because of their selflessness. Thus, I
remember a certain Indian village where I had been invited to visit in the home of a family of some modern
education, though not much, and some means, though not wealth. The house was mud-walled and the roof was
made of thatch. Inside were several rooms, however, the floors smooth and polished with the usual mixture of
cow dung and water. The active master of the house was not the head of the family, but a younger brother. This
I discovered when I arrived, for before we entered the house, my host led me to a curious sort of cage standing
well above the ground on four posts. Inside the cage, made of wire netting, I saw to my amazement an ageing
man lying on his back, his head supported by a pillow.
14. ‘My eldest brother,’ my host explained. ‘He has had a stroke of paralysis, and though we beg him to live in the
house, he chooses to live out here so that he may be ready to listen to the villagers when they come to him.’
15. My host spoke fair English, but the elder brother spoke none; and we could only exchange greetings and look at
each other with friendliness. What I saw was intelligent thin, pain-sharpened face, whose eyes were at once wise
and piercing. The body was quite helpless, but it was scrupulously clean and the cotton garments were snow-
white. We exchanged a few remarks, and then a group of villagers approached, no to see me but to talk with the
elder brother, and so my host led me into the house to meet his young wife and children.
16. All during my stay I watched that cage, and seldom indeed did I see it except surrounded by people, and never, as
long as daylight lasted, without at least one man squatting on the ground, taking earnestly and then listening. My
host said, ‘My brother has always been our wise man. Now he is our saint.’

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17. My host, I observed, had his own place, too, in the village life, for twice while we were seating our luncheon that
day he rose from his corner of the room and went out, to answer a shout, apparently from a neighbour. When he
came back, he made the same explanation.
18. ‘I was called to kill a dangerous snake.’
19. The luncheon was plain country fare, lentils, rice, spinach boiled very much, condiments. Before we ate, an old
cousin brought in a brass ewer of water and a clean homespun towel for us to cleanse our hands with, a necessary
preliminary to eating with the fingers. Chopsticks I had used all my life and preferred them to knife and fork, but
after I had got used to eating with my right hand, I liked it as well. After all, what is so clean as one’s own right
hand washed? And from babyhood the Indian children are taught that the right hand is for clean services such as
eating, and left hand may perform more lowly task.
20. Another cleanliness was that our food was served on fresh green banana leaves instead of plates. Well-cooked
rice piled on a broad green leaf is a pleasant sight and stimulates the appetite. In any household where caste was
observed the food was placed on such leaves or on dishes of fresh pottery, broken after we had finished with
them. My host fulfilled the requirements of his caste by eating in the opposite corner of the room, and sitting on
the floor with his back to us. By now I had learned to overcome my first feeling about a distance such as this. It
was simply a private devotion to a religious feeling and not inhospitality.
21. Religion is ever-present in Indian life, in its best as well as in its worst aspects, for there, as elsewhere, fanaticism
reaches into evil. I liked the simple acceptance of religious motive, however, and the perfect freedom to behave
as one’s religion moved the soul. Thus in my first Indian family, an intellectual and fairy well-to-do one, while I sat
and talked with my hostess in her living-room, an Indian gentleman came in without speaking to us and moved
gracefully to the far end of the room, his bare feet silent upon the floor. There he knelt his head bowed, and so
remained for perhaps a quarter of an hour. When I glanced at him curiously my hostess said in a manner entirely
casual. ‘It’s my husband’s eldest brother. He comes here during the day at his prayer times, since his own home
is at some distance from his place of business.’
22. When the prayer was over the brother went away again, and it was not until later that I met him, and then it was
outside of prayer hours.
23. My life has been too crowded with travels and many people for me to put it all within the covers of one book,
however, and indeed all my books have not been enough to tell the things I would like to tell. Years after I left India
I wrote Come, My Beloved against its background. Strange, the Americans, except for a few, have not understood
the real meaning of that book, but the Indian readers understand. We have not lived long enough, perhaps, to
know universally that the price of achievement, whatever the goal, is an absolute.
24. In my book I chose three Christian missionaries to prove it, for of all the people that I have ever known the
missionary is, in his way, the most dedicated, the most single-hearted. He believes that God is the One, the Father
of mankind and that all men are brothers. At least the Christian says he so believes and so he preaches. Then
why has he failed to change the world in spite of his sacrifices? Alas, they have not been enough, and he has not
been willing to pay the full price for faith. He pays only part, unable to accept utterly the full meaning of his creed.
I see the same refusal here in my own country, over and over again, and only among Christians. But the people of
India know what it is to be willing to pay the last full measure of the cost of and idealism. They understand, and
to them my book is not a puzzlement.

A MARRIAGE PROPOSAL | ANTON CHEKHOV

INTRODUCTION
 Anton Chekhov was born on 29 January 1860 and died on 15 July 1904.
 Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer.
 Anton Chekhov began his literary career by writing comic sketches.
 He was a doctor by profession.
 He lived in Russia during the rule of Czars.
 He had a considerable influence on twentieth century drama.
 He is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history.
 George Bernard Shaw paid tribute to him in ‘Heartbreak House’
 ‘A Marriage Proposal’ is a play/drama.

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 His important works are− Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, The Wood Demon

LESSON
CHARACTER INTRODUCTION
Stepan Stepanovich Choobookov: A land owner
Natalia Stepanova: His twenty-five year old daughter
Ivan Vassilievich Lomov: Their neighbour, a healthy and well-fed but terribly hypochondriac landowner

The action takes place in the drawing room of CHOOBOOKOV'S country house

SCENE-I
(CHOOBOOOKOV and LOMOV: The latter enters, wearing tails and white gloves)
CHOOBOOOKOV (going over to welcome his guest): Why, of all people! My old friend, Ivan Vassilievich! How nice to see
you! (shakes hand.) This really is a surprise, old boy.... How are you?
LOMOV: Very well, thank you. And may I ask how you are?
CHOOBOOOKOV: Not bad at all, old friend, with the help of your prayers and so on....Please have a seat.... Now, really,
it's not very nice of you to neglect your neighbours, my dear boy. And what are you all dressed up for? Morning coat,
gloves, and so on! Are you off on a visit, old boy?
LOMOV: No, I'm just calling on you, my esteemed neighbour.
CHOOBOOOKOV: But why the morning coat, old friend? Thus isn't New Year's Day!
LOMOV: Well, you see, the fact of the matter is... (Takes his arm.) I've burst in on you like this, Stepan Stepanovich, my
esteemed neighbour, in order to ask a favour of you. I've already had the honour more than once of turning to you for
help and you've always, so to speak, uh!... but forgive me, my nerves... I must have a sip of water, dear Stepan
Stepanovich. (Drinks some water.)
CHOOBOOOKOV (aside): He's after money. Fat chance! (to LOMOV) What is it, my dear fellow?
LOMOV: Well, you see, my Stepan dearovich, uh! I mean dear Stepanovich... uh! I mean, my nerves are in a terrible
condition, which you yourself are so kind as to see. In short, you're the only one who can help me, although, of course,
I've done nothing to deserve it and ... and I don't even have the right to count on your help...
CHOOBOOOKOV: Now, now; don't beat about the bush, old friend. Out with it!... Well?
LOMOV: All right, here you are. The fact of the matter is, I've come to ask for your daughter Natalia's hand in marriage.
CHOOBOOOKOV (overjoyed): My dearest friend! Ivan Vassilievich. Could you repeat that -I'm not sure I heard right!
LOMOV: I have the honour of asking
CHOOBOOOKOV (breaking in): My oldest and dearest friend... I'm so delighted and so on.... Yes really, and all that sort
of thing. (hugging and kissing him): I've been yearning for this for ages. It's been my constant desire. (sheds a tear.) And
I've always loved you like a son, you wonderful person, you. May God grant you love and guidance and so on, it's been
my most fervent wish... but why am I standing here like a blockhead? I'm dumbstruck by the sheer joy of it, completely
dumbstruck. Oh, with all my heart and soul... I'll go get Natasha, and so on.
LOMOV: (deeply moved): Stepan Stepanovich, my esteemed friend, do you think I may count on her accepting me?
CHOOBOOOKOV: A handsome devil like you? How could she possibly resist? She's madly in love with you, don't worry,
madly, and so on... I'll call her right away.

SCENE-II
LOMOV(alone): It's so cold... I'm shaking all over, like before a final exam. The important thing is to make up your mind.
If you think about it too long, or waver, talk about it too much, and wait for the ideal woman or for true love, you'll never
marry..... Brr! It's cold! Natalia Stepanovna is an excellent housekeeper, she's not bad-looking, and she's got some
education What more could I ask for? Oh, I'm so nervous; I can hear a buzzing in my ears. (Drinks some water.) It would
be best for me to get married... first of all, I'm thirty-five years old already - and that, as they say, is a critical age. And
then, I have to start leading a steady and regular life. I've got a heart condition, with palpitations all the time... I've got an
awful temper and I'm always getting terribly wrought up... Even now, my lips are trembling and my right eyelid is
twitching.... But the worst thing is when I try to sleep. The instant I get to bed and start dropping off, something stabs
me in my left side - Ungh! And it cuts right through my shoulder straight into my head - Ungh! I jump like a lunatic, walk

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about a little, and then I lie down again, but the moment I start to doze off. I feel it in my side again-Ungh! And it keeps
on and on for at least twenty times...

SCENE-III
(NATALIA STEPANOVNA and LOMOV)
NATALIA (entering): Ah, it's you. And Papa said a customer had come for the merchandise. How do you do, Ivan
Vassilievich!
LOMOV: How do you do, my esteemed Natalia Stepanovna!
NATALIA: I'm sorry about my apron and not being dressed ... We're shelling peas for drying. Where've you been yourself?
Have a seat.... (They sit down.) Would you like a bite of lunch?
LOMOV: Thank you so much, but I've already eaten.
NATALIA: Well, then have a cigarette... The matches are over here.... The weather's magnificent today, but yesterday it
rained so hard that the men couldn't do a thing all day long. How much hay did you get done? Can you imagine, I was
so greedy that I had the whole meadow mown, and now I regret it, I'm sacred that all my hay may rot. I should have
waited. But what's this? I do believe you're wearing a morning coat! How original! Are you going to a ball or something?
Incidentally, you're getting quite handsome.... But honestly, why are you all dolled up?
LOMOV(nervously): You see, my esteemed Natalia Stepanovna... the fact is I've made up my mind to ask you to listen
to me..... Naturally you'll be surprised and even angry, but I.... (aside): God, it's cold!
NATALIA: What is it? (pause) Well?
LOMOV: I'll try to be brief. You are well aware, my esteemed Natalia Stepanovna, that for a long time now, in fact since
my childhood, I have had the honour of knowing your family. My late aunt and her husband, whose estate as you know
I inherited, always held your father and your late mother in utmost esteem. The Lomov family and the Choobookov
family have always maintained extremely friendly, one might even say, intimate relations. Furthermore, as you know, my
property borders on yours. Perhaps you will be so kind as to recall that my Ox Meadows run along your birch forest.
NATALIA: Excuse me for interrupting you. You said "my Ox Meadows".... Are they yours?
LOMOV: Of course....
NATALIA: Oh, come now! The Ox Meadows belong to us, not you! LOMOV: Oh no! They're mine, dear Natalia Stepanovna.
NATALIA: That's news to me. How did they ever get to be yours?
LOMOV: What do you mean? I'm talking about the Ox Meadows that are wedged in between your birch forest and the
Burnt Marsh.
NATALIA: Exactly..... They're ours.
LOMOV: No, you're mistaken, dear Natalia Stepanovna - they're mine.
NATALIA: Do be reasonable, Ivan Vassilievich! Since when have they been yours?
LOMOV: Since when? They've always been ours, as far back as I can remember.
NATALIA: Excuse me, but this is too much!
LOMOV: You can look at the documents, dear Natalia Stepanovna. At one time, there were some quarrels about the OX
Meadows, you're quite right. But now, everyone knows they're mine. Why argue about it? If you will permit me to explain:
my aunt's grandmother lent them to your paternal great grandfather's peasants for an indefinite period and free of
charge in rerun for their firing her bricks. Your great grandfather's peasants used the Meadows free of charge for some
forty years and began thinking of them as their own..and then after the Emancipation, when a statute was passed-
NATALIA: You've got it all wrong! Both my grandfather and great-grandfather regarded their property as reaching all the
way to the Burnt Swamp- which means that the Ox Meadows were ours. What's there to argue about? I don't understand.
How annoying!
LOMOV: I'll show you the documents, Natalia Stepanovna. NATALIA: No, you're joking or trying to tease me ..... What a
surprise! We've owned the land for practically three hundred years and now suddenly we're told it's not ours! I'm sorry,
Ivan Vassilievich, but I just can't believe my ears. Those Meadows don't mean a thing to me. The whole area probably
doesn't come to more than forty acres, it's worth about three hundred rubles; but I'm terribly upset by the injustice of it
all. You can say what you like, but I simply can't stand injustice.
LOMOV: Please listen to me, I beseech you. Your paternal great-grandfather's peasants, as I have already had the honour
of telling you, fired bricks for my aunt's grandmother. Now, my aunt's grandmother, wishing to do them a favour in return-
NATALIA: Grandfather, grandmother, aunt..... I don't know what you're talking about! The Meadows are ours, and that's
that.
LOMOV: They're mine!

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NATALIA: They're ours! You can keep arguing for two days, you can put on fifteen morning coats if you like, but they're
ours, ours, ours!.... I don't desire your property, but I don't care to lose mine.... Do as you like!
LOMOV: I don't need the Meadows, Natalia Stepanovna, but it's the principle of the thing. If you want, I'll give them to
you.
NATALIA: It would be my privilege to give them to you, they're mine!... All this is rather odd-to put it mildly, Ivan
Vassilievich. Up till now we've always considered you a good neighbour and friend. Last year we let you borrow our
threshing machine, and as a result we couldn't finish our own grain until November, and now you're treating us like
Gypsies. You're giving me my own land. Excuse me, but that's not a neighbourly thing to do! To my mind, it's impertinent,
if you care to-
LOMOV: Are you trying to tell that I'm a landgrabber? Madam, I've never seized anyone else's property, and I won't allow
anyone to say I have .... (Hurries over to the carafe and drinks some water.) The Ox Meadows are mine!
NATALIA: That's not true. They're ours.
LOMOV: They're mine.
NATALIA: That's not true. I'll prove it to you! I'll send my men over to mow them this afternoon.
LOMOV: What?
NATALIA: My men will be there this afternoon!
LOMOV: I'll kick them out!
NATALIA: You won't dare!
LOMOV: (clutching at his heart): The Ox Meadows are mine! Do you hear! Mine!
NATALIA: Stop shouting! Please! You can shout your lungs out in your place, but I must ask you to control yourself here.
LOMOV: Madam, if it weren't for these awful, excruciating palpitations and the veins throbbing in my temples, I'd speak
to you in a totally different way! (Shouting): The Ox Meadows are mine.
NATALIA: Ours!
LOMOV: Mine!
NATALIA: Ours!
LOMOV: Mine!

SCENE-IV
(Enter CHOOBOOKOV)
CHOOBOOKOV: What's going on? What's all the shouting about?
NATALIA: Papa, please tell this gentleman whom the Ox Meadows belong to us or him.
CHOOBOOKOV (to LOMOV): Why, the Meadows belong to us, old friend.
LOMOV: But for goodness' sake, Stepan Stepanovich, how can that be? Can't you be reasonable at least? My aunt's
grandmother lent the Meadows to your grandfather's peasants for temporary use and free of charge. His peasants used
the land for forty years and got in the habit of regarding it as their own, but after the Land Settlement-
CHOOBOOKOV: Excuse me, old boy ... You're forgetting that our peasants didn't pay your grandmother and so on
precisely because the Meadows were disputed and what not.... But now every child knows that they're ours. I guess
you've never looked at the maps.
LOMOV: I'll prove they're mine!
CHOOBOOKOV: You won't prove a thing, my boy.
LOMOV: I'll so prove it!
CHOOBOOKOV: My dear boy, why carry on like this? You won't prove a thing by shouting. I don't want anything of yours,
but I don't intend to let go of what's mine. Why should I? If it comes to that, dear friend, if you mean to dispute my
ownership of the Meadows, and so on, I'd sooner let my peasants have them than you. So there!
LOMOV: I don't understand. What right do you have to give away other people's property?
CHOOBOOKOV: Allow me to decide whether or not I've got the right. Really, young man, I'm not accustomed to being
spoken to in that tone of voice, and what not. I'm old enough to be your father, and I must ask you to calm down when
you speak to me, and so forth.
LOMOV: No! You're treating me like an idiot, and laughing at me. You tell me that my property is yours, and then you
expect me to remain calm and talk to you in a normal fashion. That's not a very neighbourly thing to do, Stepan
Stepanovich. You're no neighbour, you're robber baron.
CHOOBOOKOV: What? What did you say, my good man?
NATALIA: Papa, have the men mow the Ox Meadows right now!
CHOOBOOKOV (to LOMOV): What did you say, sir?
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NATALIA: The Ox Meadows are our property, and I won't let anyone else have them. I won't, I won't, I won't!
LOMOV: We'll see about that! I'll prove to you in court that they're mine.
CHOOBOOKOV: In court? My good man, you can take it to court, and what not. Go right ahead! I know you, you've just
been waiting for a chance to litigate, and so on. You're a quibbler from the word go. Your whole family's nothing but a
bunch of pettifoggers. All of them!
LOMOV: I must ask you not to insult my family. The Lomovs have always been law-abiding folk. None of them was ever
hauled into court for embezzlement the way your uncle was...
CHOOBOOKOV: Every last one of them was insane.
NATALIA: Every last one of them, every last one!
CHOOBOOKOV: Your grandfather drank like a fish, and the whole country knows that your youngest aunt, Nastasia, ran
off with an architect, and what not-
LOMOV: And your mother was a hunchback! (clutching at his heart): There's a twitching in my side .... My head's
throbbing.... Oh, God... Water!
CHOOBOOKOV: And your father was a gambler and he ate like a pig!
NATALIA: And no one could beat your aunt at scandalmongering.
LOMOV: My left leg's paralysed.... And you're a schemer.... Oooh! My heart! .... And it's no secret to anyone that just
before the election you... There are stars bursting before my eyes..... Where's my hat?
NATALIA: Vermin! Liar! Brute!
CHOOBOOKOV: You're a spiteful, double-dealing So there!
LOMOV: Ah, my hat.... My heart. Where am I? Where's the door? Oooh! ... I think I'm dying.... My foot's totally paralysed.
(Drags himself to the door.)
CHOOBOOKOV: (calling after him): And don't ever set your foot in my home again!
NATALIA: Go to court! Sue us! Just wait and see! (Lomov staggers out.)

SCENE-V
(CHOOBOOKOV and NATALIA STEPANOVNA)
CHOOBOOKOV: He can go straight to hell, damn him! (Walks about, all wrought up.)
NATALIA: Isn't he the worst crook? Catch me trusting a good neighbour after this!
CHOOBOOKOV: The chiseler! The scarecrow!
NATALIA: The monster! He not only grabs other people's property, he calls them names, to boot.
CHOOBOOKOV: And that clown, that .... freak had the colossal nerve to ask me for your hand in marriage, and so on.
Can you imagine? He wanted to propose.
NATALIA: Propose?
CHOOBOOKOV: Exactly! That's what he came for. To propose to you.
NATALIA: Propose? To me? Why didn't you say so?
CHOOBOOKOV: And he got all dolled up in a morning coat. That pipsqueak. That upstart.
NATALIA: Propose? To me? Ohhh! (collapses into an armchair and wails): Bring him back. Get him. Ohh! Get him!
CHOOBOOKOV: Get whom?
NATALIA: Hurry up, hurry! I feel sick. Bring him back. (hysterical).
CHOOBOOKOV: What is it? What's wrong? (Grabbing his head) This is awful. I'll shoot myself. I'll hang myself. They've
worn me out.
NATALIA: I'm dying! Bring him back!
CHOOBOOKOV: Alright. Stop yelling! (Runs out)
NATALIA: (alone, wailing): What've we done? Bring him back! Bring him back!
CHOOBOOKOV: (running in): He's coming and all that, goddamn him. Ughh! You talk to him, alone. I really don't feel
like....
NATALIA: (wailing): Bring him back!
CHOOBOOKOV: (shouting): He's coming, I tell you. Oh God! What did I ever do to deserve a grown-up daughter? I'll cut
my throat. I swear, I'll cut my throat. We insulted and abused him, and it's all your fault!
NATALIA: My fault? It was yours!
CHOOBOOKOV: Now I'm the culprit! (LOMOV appears at the French doors. CHOOBOOKOV exists.)

SCENE-VI

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(NATALIA and LOMOV)

LOMOV: (entering, exhausted) What horrible palpitations....my foot's gone numb....there's a jabbing in my side....
NATALIA: My apologies, Ivan Vassilievich, we got so worked up.... I do recall now that the Ox Meadows are actually
your property.
LOMOV: My heart's palpitating.... The Meadows are mine.... There are stars bursting in my both eyes. (They sit down.)
NATALIA: We were wrong.
LOMOV: It's the principle of the thing.... I don't care about the land, it's the principle of the thing-
NATALIA: Exactly, the principle.... Let's talk about something else.
LOMOV: Particularly since I have proof. My aunt's grandmother let your paternal great grandfather's peasants-
NATALIA: All right, all right.... (aside): I don't know how to go about it.... (to LOMOV) Will you start hunting soon?
LOMOV: Yes, for grouse, Natalia Stepanovna. I think I shall begin after the harvest. Oh, have you heard what bad luck I
had? My hound Guess - you know the one- he's gone lame.
NATALIA: What a pity! How did it happen?
LOMOV: I don't know. he must have twisted his leg, or else some other dog bit him .... (sighs) My very best hound, not
to mention the money! Why, I paid Mironov a hundred and twenty-five rubles for him.
NATALIA: You overpaid him, Ivan Vassilievich.
LOMOV: I don't think so. It was very little for a wonderful dog.
NATALIA: Papa bought his dog Leap for eighty-five rubles, and Leap is vastly superior to your Guess!
LOMOV: Leap superior to Guess? Oh, come now, (laughs) Leap superior to Guess!
NATALIA: Of course he is! I know that Leap is still young, he's not a full-grown hound yet. But for points and action, not
even Volchanietsky has a better dog.
LOMOV: Excuse me, Natalia Stepanovna, but you're forgetting that he's pug-jawed, which makes him a poor hunting
dog.
NATALIA: Pug-jawed? That's news to me.
LOMOV: I can assure you, his lower jaw is shorter than his upper jaw.
NATALIA: Have you measured it?
LOMOV: Indeed, I have. He'll do for pointing, of course, but when it comes to retrieving, he can hardly hold a cand-
NATALIA: First of all, our Leap is a pedigreed greyhound-he's the son of Harness and Chisel, whereas your Guess is so
piebald that not even Solomon could figure out his breed.... Furthermore, he's as old and ugly as a broken- down nag-
LOMOV: He may be old, but I wouldn't trade him for five of your Leaps.... The very idea! Guess is a real hound, but Leap...
Why argue? It's ridiculous.... Every huntsman's assistant has a dog like your Leap. At twenty-five rubles he'd be
overpriced.
NATALIA: You seem to be possessed by some demon of contradiction, Ivan Vassilievich. First you fancy that the Ox
Meadows are yours, then you pretend that Guess is a better hound than Leap. If there's one thing I don't like it's a person
who says the opposite of what he thinks. You know perfectly well that Leap is a hundred times better than .... than that
stupid Guess of yours. Why do you insist on denying it?
LOMOV: You obviously must think, Natalia Stepanovna, that I'm either blind or mentally retarded. Can't you see that your
Leap has a pug jaw?
NATALIA: That's not true.
LOMOV: A pug jaw.
NATALIA: (screaming): That's not true.
LOMOV: Why are you screaming, Madam?
NATALIA: Why are you talking such rubbish? It's exasperating! Your Guess is just about ready to be put out of his misery,
and you compare him to Leap.
LOMOV: Excuse me, but I can't keep on arguing like this. My heart's palpitating.
NATALIA: I've noticed that the sportsmen who argue most don't understand the first thing about hunting.
LOMOV: Madam, pleeeease, keep quiet.... My heart's bursting.... (shouts): Keep quiet!
NATALIA: I won't keep quiet until you admit that Leap is a hundred times superior to your Guess!
LOMOV: He's a hundred times inferior. Someone ought to shoot him. My temples ... my eyes... my shoulder....
NATALIA: No one has to wish that idiotic mutt of yours dead, because he's just skin and bones anyway.
LOMOV: Keep quiet! I'm having heart failure!
NATALIA: I will not keep quiet!

SCENE-VII
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CHOOBOOKOV (entering): What's going on now?

NATALIA: Papa, tell me, honestly and sincerely: which is the better dog - our Leap or his Guess?
LOMOV: Stepan Stepanovich, I beseech you, just tell me one thing: is your Leap pug-jawed or isn't he? Yes or no?
CHOOBOOKOV: So what! Who cares? He's still the best hound in the country, and what not.
LOMOV: And my Guess isn't better? Tell the truth.
CHOOBOOKOV: Don't get all worked up, old boy.... Let me explain.... Your Guess does have a few good qualities..... He's
pure-bred, he's got solid legs, he's well put together, and what not. But if you must know, my good man, your dog's got
two basic faults: He's old, and his muzzle's too short.
LOMOV: Excuse me; my heart's racing madly.... Let's examine the facts.... Please, don't forget that when we were hunting
in the Mapooskin Fields, my Guess ran neck and neck with the count's dog Waggy, while your Leap lagged behind by
half a mile.
CHOOBOOKOV: That was because the count's assistant struck him with his riding crop.
LOMOV: Naturally. All the other dogs were chasing the fox, but yours started running after sheep.
CHOOBOOKOV: That's a lie! My dear boy, I fly off the handle easily, so, please let's stop arguing. The man whipped him
because people are always envious of everyone else's dogs. Yes, they're all filled with spite! And you sir, are no
exception. Why, the minute you notice that anyone else's dog is better than your Guess, you instantly start up something
or other ... and what not. I've got the memory of an elephant!
LOMOV: And so do I.
CHOOBOOKOV: (mimicking him): "And so do I"... and what does your memory tell you?
LOMOV: My heart's palpitating.... My foot's paralysed... I can't anymore...
NATALIA: (mimicking): "My heart's palpitating..." What kind of hunter are you anyway? You ought to be home in bed
catching cockroaches instead of out hunting foxes. Palpitations! .....
CHOOBOOKOV: That's right, what kind of hunter are you? If you've got palpitations, stay home; don't go wobbling around
the countryside on horseback. It wouldn't be so bad if you really hunted, but you only tag along in order to start
arguments or meddle with other people's dogs, and what not. We'd better stop, I fly off the handle easily. You, sir, are
not a hunter, and that's that.
LOMOV: And you are, I suppose. The only reason you go hunting is to flatter the count and carry on your backstabbing
little intrigues.... Oh, my heart! .... You schemer!
CHOOBOOKOV: Me, a schemer. (shouting): Shut up!
LOMOV: Schemer!
CHOOBOOKOV: Upstart! Pipsqueak!
LOMOV: You old fogy! You hypocrite!
CHOOBOOKOV: Shut up, or I'll blast you with a shot gun like a partridge.
LOMOV: The whole country knows that - Oh, my heart! -your late wife used to beat you. My leg.. my temples... I see
stars.... I'm falling, falling..
CHOOBOOKOV: And your housekeeper henpecks you all over the place!
LOMOV: There, you see.... my heart's burst! My shoulder's torn off .... Where's my shoulder?.... I'm dying! (collapses into
armchair) Get a doctor! (faints)
CHOOBOOKOV: Pipsqueak. Weakling. Windbag. I feel sick. (drinks some water) I feel sick.
NATALIA: What kind of hunter are you anyway? You don't even know how to sit in a saddle! (to her father): Papa! What's
the matter with him? Papa! Look, Papa! (screams) Ivan Vassilievich! He's dead!
CHOOBOOKOV: I feel sick!.... I can't breathe!.... Air!
NATALIA: He's dead! (tugs at LOMOV's sleeves) Ivan Vassilievich! Ivan Vassilievich! What've we done! He's dead.
(collapses into easy chair) Get a doctor. (She becomes hysterical.)
CHOOBOOKOV: Oh!.... What is it? What's wrong?
NATALIA (moaning): He's dead.... He's dead!
CHOOBOOKOV: Who's dead? (glancing at Lomov): He really is dead! Oh, my God! Get some water! Get a doctor! (holds
a glass to Lomov's mouth) Go ahead and drink!.... He won't drink .... I guess he's dead and so on..... Why does everything
have to happen to me? Why didn't I cut my throat? What am I waiting for? Give me a knife! Give me a gun! (Lomov stirs.)
He's reviving, I think.... Drink some water!.... That's right.
LOMOV: Stars.... fog.... where am I?
CHOOBOOKOV: You two'd better hurry up and get married.... Dammit! She accepts .... (joins Lomov's hand with Natalia's)
She accepts.... My blessings and so forth..... Just do me a favour and leave me in peace.
LOMOV: What? (getting up) Who?
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CHOOBOOKOV: She accepts. Well? Kiss her and.... the two of you can go straight to hell.
NATALIA (moaning): He's alive.... I accept, I accept ....
CHOOBOOKOV: Kiss and make up.
LOMOV: What? Who? (kisses Natalia) Enchante.... Excuse me, but what's going on? Oh yes, I remember.... My heart....
stars.... I'm very happy, Natalia Stepanovna. (kisses her hands) My leg's paralysed....
NATALIA: I.... I'm very happy, too….
CHOOBOOKOV: That's a load off my back.... Whew!
NATALIA: But.... all the same, why don't you finally admit that Guess isn't as good as Leap.
LOMOV: He's much better.
NATALIA: He's worse.
CHOOBOOKOV: The launching of marital bliss! Champagne!
LOMOV: He's better.
NATALIA: Worse! Worse! Worse!
CHOOBOOKOV (trying to outshout them): Champagne! Champagne !

POETRY SECTION
SWEETEST LOVE I DO NOT GOE | JOHN DONNE
INTRODUCTION
 John Donne was born in 1572 and died in 1631.
 He was born in London into a prosperous Roman Catholic Family when England was
Anti-Catholic.
 Donne was forced to leave Oxford University without a degree because of his religion.
 Donne studied law and theology at Oxford University.
 Donne was secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton.
 John Donne was briefly sent to prison for secretly marrying his patron’s niece Anne Morre.
 Donne started writing in 1590’s.
 Donne lived through the Jacobean Age (1603 – 1625).
 The Age of Donne comprising the last decade of the 16 th century and early decades of the 17th.
 John Donne is a Metaphysical poet.
 He is well known for his songs, sonnets, satires, elegies and sermons.
 ‘Sweetest Love I Do Not Goe’ is a love song.
 The occasion of this poem is Donne’s continental trip.
 It is believed to have been addressed to his beloved wife Anne at the time of his departure for Europe in 1611.
 In 1615, at the age of 42, Donne accepted ordination in the Anglican Church and soon became one of the greatest
preachers of his time.
 Some important works of Donne are–
The Good Morrow, The Sun Rising, Love’s Growth, The Indifferent, The Will, Death Be Not Proud, Oh My Blacke
Soul, Goe And Catche a Falling Starre

LESSON
Sweetest love, I do not goe, Yesternight the Sunne went hence,
For wearinesse of thee, And yet is here to day,
Nor in the hope the world can show He hath no desire nor sense,
A fitter love for mee; Nor halfe so short a way:
But since that I Then feare not mee,
Must dye at last, ‘tis best, But beleeve that I shall make
To use my selfe in jest Speedier journeys, since I take
Thus by fain’d deaths to dye. More wings and spurres then hee.

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O how feeble is mans power, When thou weep’st, unkindly kinde,

That if good fortune fall, My lifes blood doth decay.
Cannot adde another houre,
It cannot bee
Nor a lost houre recall! That thou lov’st mee, as thou say’st,
But come bad chance, If in thine my life thou waste,
And we joyne to it our strength, Thou art the best of mee.

And wee teach it art and length, Let not thy divining heart
Nor a lost houre recall! Forethinke me any ill,
But come bad chance, Destiny may take thy part,
And we joyne to it our strength, And may thy feares fulfil;
And wee teach it art and length, But thinke that wee
It selfe o’r us to advance Are but turn’d aside to sleepe;
They who one another keepe
When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not winde, Alive, ne’r parted bee.
But sigh’st my soule away,

SONG OF MYSELF | WALT WHITMAN

INTRODUCTION
 Walt Whitman was born on 31 May 1819 and died on 26 March 1892.
 He was born in West Hills, town of Huntington on long Island, New York.
 Walt Whitman is an American Poet.
 He is called the ‘People’s poet’.
 He began working as a carpenter before his twelfth birthday.
 He also worked as teacher, editor, volunteer during the Civil War.
 Whitman’s all poetry is collected in ‘Leaves of Grass’.
 First edition of ‘Leaves of Grass’ was published in 1855 with 12 poems.
 Last edition of ‘Leaves of Grass’ was published in 1892 with 400 poems.
 ‘Song of Myself’ is a lyric.
 ‘Song of Myself’ has been divided into fifty-two numbered sections.
 Some important works of Whitman are -
Leaves of Grass, Drum Taps, Beat! Beat! Drums!, A Glimpse, I Hear America Singing, Gliding O’er All America

LESSON
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass;
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents, born here from parents the same,
and their parents the same,

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I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death,

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbour for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

NOW THE LEAVES ARE FALLING FAST | W.H. AUDEN

INTRODUCTION
 Wystan Hugh Auden, an English-American poet was born on 21 February 1907
in England and died on 29 September 1973 in Austria.
 Auden left England in 1939 and moved to the United States, he became an
American citizen in 1946.
 He was a poet, verse dramatist, critic, translator and editor.
 He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for ‘The Age of Anxiety’.
 Poetry to Auden was a serious game.
 ‘Now The Leaves Are Falling Fast’ is a lyric.
 In this poem he enacts the frustration inherent in human life.
 It is a pessimistic-cum-optimistic poem.
 His important works are -
The Age of Anxiety, For the Time Being, The Shield of Achilles, The Dyer’s Hand

LESSON
Now the leaves are falling fast, Arms raised stiffly to reprove
Nurse’s flowers will not last; In false attitudes of love.
Nurses to the graves are gone,
And the prams go rolling on. Starving through the leafless wood
Trolls run scolding for their food:
Whispering neighbours, left and right, And the nightingale is dumb.
Pluck us from the real delight: And the angle will not come.
And the active hands must freeze
Lonely on the separate knees. Cold, impossible, ahead
Lists the mountain’s lovely head
Dead in hundreds at the back Whose white waterfall could bless
Follow wooden in our track, Travellers in their last distress.

TO AUTUMN | JOHN KEATS

INTRODUCTION
 John Keats was born on 31st October 1795 and died of tuberculosis on 23rd
February 1821 at the age of 26.
 He was born at Moonfields, London and died in Rome.
 Keats grew into a voracious reader especially of Greek mythology.
 Keats’ ambition to become a poet was fired by his first acquaintance with

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Spenser’s Faerie Queene.

 John Keats was a Romantic poet and letter writer.
 John Keats was deeply interested in cricket and boxing.
 His first poem was ‘Lines in the Imitation of Spenser’. It was published in 1814.
 His first volume of poetry entitled ‘Poems’ published in 1817.
 His poem ‘Endymion’ was well appreciated by William Wordsworth. It was published in 1818.
 ‘Ode to Autumn’ is an ode. It was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820.
 Keats says “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” and “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
 His important works are -
Endymion, On Indolence, On a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche Ode to a Nightingale, On Melancholy, Lamia, Hyperion

LESSON
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozing hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wail choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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AN EPITAPH | WALTER DE LA MARE

INTRODUCTION
 Walter de la Mare was born on 25 April 1873 and died on 22 June 1956.
 He was born in the village of Charlton in Kent, England and died in Vence, France.
 He was a poet of Children.
 He belonged to 20th Century.
 He was a British poet, novelist, short story-writer.
 He showed fresh interest in old themes.
 Queen Elizabeth II honoured him with the Order of Merit in 1953.
 He is best remembered for his works for children.
 The tone of the poem ‘An Epitaph’ is melancholy.
 His important works are -
Songs for Children, The Listeners, Peacock Pie, Grass, O Lovely England, The Snowdrop, The Return, Ding Dong
Bell

LESSON
Here lies a most beautiful lady,
Light of step and heart was she;
I think she was the most beautiful lady
That ever was in the West Country.
But beauty vanishes; beauty passes,
However, rare - rare it be; And when I crumble, who will remember
This lady of the West Country?

THE SOLDIER | RUPERT BROOKE

INTRODUCTION
 Rupert Brooke was born on 3 August 1887 and died on 23 April 1915.
 Rupert Brooke was born in a well-to-do academic family.
 Rupert Brooke’s father was a housemaster at Rugby school.
 Rupert Brooke completed his college degree in King’s college, Cambridge.
 He died of septicaemia, off the island of Lemnos in the Aegean.
 He died on his way to a battle at Gavipoli.
 He was a war poet.
 He inspired patriotism in the early phase of the First World War.
 His reputation chiefly rests on five war sonnets.
 The famous Irish poet W.B. Yeats described him the handsomest young man in England.
 ‘The Soldier’ is a sonnet.
 It is a patriotic poem.
 His important works are -
Peace, Safety, The Dead, A Channel Passage, Beauty and Beauty, Day and Night, Dead Men’s Love, Clouds, Dawn

LESSON
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field

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That is forever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives, somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

MACAVITY: THE MYSTERY CAT | T.S. ELIOT

INTRODUCTION
 T.S. Eliot was born on 26 September 1888 and died on 4 January 1965.
 He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. but eventually settled in England.
 He moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25.
 He was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, social critic and dramatist.
 He belonged to 20th Century.
 He was awarded ‘Nobel Prize’ for Literature in 1948.
 ‘Macavity: The Mystery Cat’ is from his collection called ‘Old Possum’s Book of
Practical Cats’. It is a humorous poem.
 His important works are -
The Wasteland, Ash Wednesday, Four Quarters, Murder in the Cathedral, The Cocktail Party, Egoist, Before
Morning, Morning at the Window, The Hollow Men

LESSON
Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw-
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.

He’s the bafflement of Scotland yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:

For when they reach the scene of crime - Macavity’s not there!
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity.
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.

His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,

And when you reach the scene of crime- Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air-
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!

Macavity’s a ginger cat; he’s very tall and thin;

You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.

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His brow is deeply lined with thoughts, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movement like a snake;
And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity.

For he’s fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square-
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!
He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s.

And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,

Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
Or the green house glass is broken, and the trellis past repair
Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!

And when the foreign office find a Treaty’s gone astray,

Or the Admiraltry lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair-
But it’s useless to investigate, - Macavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
‘It must have been Macavity!’ but he’s a mile away.

You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,

Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity.

There never was a cat of such deceitfulness and suavity,

He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place- Macavity wasn’t there!

And they say that all the cats whose

wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

FIRE-HYMN | KEKI N. DARUWALA

INTRODUCTION
 Keki N. Daruwalla was born in Lahore in January 1937.
 He is a major Indian poet and short story-writer in English language.
 He is also a former Indian Police Service Officer.
 He was awarded ‘Sahitya Academy Award’ in 1984 for his poetry collection and
Commonwealth Poetry Award in 1987.

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 He was also awarded Padam Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India, in 2014.
 His poetry is totally impressionistic recording of subjective responses.
 The themes of his poetry are love, death, domination, cynicism, plight of human society and violence.
 His important works are -
Under Orion, The Keeper of Dead, Crossing of Rivers, A Summer of Tigers, Landscapes, Apparition in April, Night
River

LESSON
The burning ghat erupted phosphorescence:
and wandering ghost lights frightened passers-by
as moonlight scuttled among the bones.

Once strolling at dawn past river-bank and ghat

we saw embers losing their cruel redness
to the grey ash that swallows all, half-cooked limbs
bore witness to the fire’s debauchery.

My father said, “You see those half-burnt fingers

And bone-stubs? The fire at times forgets its dead!”
A Zoroastrian I, my child - fingers clenched
Into a little knot of pain,
I swore to save fire
From the sin of forgetfulness.

It never forgot, and twenty years since

As I consigned my first-born to the flames-
The nearest Tower of Silence was a thousand miles-
The fire-hymn said to me, “You stand forgiven,”
Broken, yet rebellious, I swore this time
To save it from the sin of forgiving.

SNAKE | D.H. LAWRENCE

INTRODUCTION
 D.H. Lawrence was born on 11 September 1885 and died on 2 March 1930.
 He was born at Eastwood, Town in England.
 He grew up amid the strife between his gentle and educated mother and his coarse
and miner father.
 He was an English poet, novelist and essayist.
 Some of the issues Lawrence explores are- sexuality, emotional health, vitality,
spontaneity and instinct.
 His important works are -
Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, A Collection of Poems, The White Peacock, The Trespasser,
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Plumbed Serpent

LESSON
A snake came to my water-trough:
On a hot, hot day, and I in Pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange scented shade of the great dark carobtree

I came down the steps with my pitcher
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And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank though his straight gums, into his slack long body, Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,

And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,

Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth

On the day of Sicilian July with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me

He must be killed, For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,

How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth.
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:

If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,

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And slowly turned his head,

And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole.

Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after.
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,

But suddenly that part of him that was left behind
convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
into the black hole, the earth lipped fissure in the wall front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!

I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,

Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords of life.

And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

MY GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE | KAMALA DAS

INTRODUCTION
 Kamala Das was born on 31 March 1934 and died on 31 May 2009.
 She was an Indian English poetess, novelist and short story-writer.
 She has earned respectable place in both English and Malayalam literature.
 She is known for sexual adventures in her writings.
 Kamala Das’ Poetry is primarily autobiographical and her theme is love of a lonely
heart.
 My Grand Mother’s House is Published in 1965. It is a lyric.
 Her autobiography published in 1976.

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 In 1984, she was short listed for the Nobel Prize for literature.
 Her important works are -
Summer in Kolkata, Sirens, The Descendants, Yaa Allah, The Old Playhouse and Other Poems, The Stranger Time,
Only Saint Knows How to Sing, The Anamalai Poems

LESSON
There is a house now far away where once I received love.
That woman died, the house withdrew into silence.
Snakes moved among books I was then too young to read,
And my blood turned cold like the moon.

How often I think of going there,

To peer through blind eyes of windows or just listen to the frozen air,
Or in wild despair, pick an armful of darkness to bring it here
to lie behind my bedroom’s door like a brooding dog.

You cannot believe, darling

Can you, that I lived in such a house and was proud, and loved.
I who have lost my way and beg now at strangers’ doors to receive love,
at least in small change ?

Chapterwise Vocabulary
Indian Civilization and Culture 22. Merit – गुण 46. Dissuade – मना करना
1. Evolve – विकसित करना 23. Anvil – ननहाई 47. Luxury – भोग विलाि
2. Beat – पराजित करना 24. Thrust – थोपना, धकेलना 48. Pleasure – इच्छा, मज़ा
3. Equal – बराबरी करना 25. Steady – स्थिर, गंभीर 49. Plough – हल
4. Ancestor – पूिवि 26. Sheet – चादर 50. Retain – कायम रखना
5. Fate – अंत, ननयनत, नकस्मत 27. Anchor – िहारा 51. Cottage – मकान
6. Might – शक्ति 28. Mode – प्रकार 52. Indigenous – स्वदेशीय
7. Somehow or other – नकिी तरह 29. Conduct – चल-चलन 53. Life-corroding – िानलेिा
िे, िैिे-तैिे 30. Path of duty – कमवपथ 54. Follow – पालन करना
8. Sound – अक्षत, ज्यों का त्यों, िही 31. Observance – अनुिरण 55. Occupation – धंधा
िलामत 32. Morality – धमावचरण 56. Trade – व्यापार
9. Exist – अस्तित्व में होना, जिन्दा होना 33. Convertible – िमान 57. Charge – दाम मााँगना
10. Former – भूतपूिव 34. Attain – प्राप्त करना 58. Wage – मिदूरी
11. Glory – गौरि 35. Mastery – वििय 59. Invent – आविष्कार करना
12. Avoid – बचना, दूर रहना, न करना 36. Passion – मनोिेग 60. Forefather – पूिवि
13. Pitiable – दयनीय 37. Equivalent – िमतुल्य 61. Set heart – मन लगाना
14. In the midst of – के बीच 38. Notice – देखना 62. Slave – गुलाम
15. Immovable – स्थिर 39. Restless – व्याकुल, बेचैन 63. Fibre – आदशव
16. Charge – आरोप 40. Indulge – ललप्त होना 64. Deliberation – िानबूझकर
17. Uncivilized – अिभ्य 41. Unbridled – बेलगाम 65. Consist – में होना
18. Ignorant – अज्ञानी 42. Indulgence – विलासिता 66. Further – आगे
19. Stolid – मंदबुसि 43. Largely – मुख्य रूप िे 67. Reason – बताना
20. Induce – प्रेररत करना, मनाना 44. Necessarily – आिश्यक रूप िे 68. Snare – फंदा
21. Adopt – अपनाना 45. Observe – देखना, िमझना 69. Encumbrance – बाधा

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70. Prostitution – िेश्यािृनत 115. Merit – गुण 161. Endeavour – प्रयाि करना
71. Vice – दुराचार 116. Climate – िातािरण 162. Adopt – अपनाना
72. Flourish – बढ़ना, फलना-फूलना 117. Surroundings – पररिेश, माहौल 163. Assimilate – िम्मिललत करना
73. Rob – लूटना 118. Respective – अपना-अपना 164. Part – अलग करना
74. Sword – तलिार 119. Sphere – क्षेत्र 165. Creep – घुिना
75. Ethics – िदाचार 120. Distinguishing – मुख्य 166. Incessant – लगातार
76. Sovereign – रािा 121. Characteristic – विशेिता 167. Multiplication – बहुलीकरण
77. Inferior – अधीन, छोटा 122. Indefinite multiplicity – अनंत 168. Remodel – बदलना
78. Constitution – व्यििा फैलाि 169. Outlook – दृनष्टकोण
79. Fitter – योग्य, उपयुि 123. Want – इच्छा 170. Perish – खत्म होना, मरना
80. Bound – िीमा 124. Ancient – प्राचीन 171. Golden fleece – िोने की चादर
81. Superior – बनढ़या 125. Imperative – आिश्यक 172. Court – बुलाना
82. Moreover – इिके बाििूद 126. Restriction – रोक 173. Certain – ननलित
83. Consider – िमझना 127. Strict – िही, िख्त 174. Engrave – बैठा लेना, अंनकत करना
84. Dependent – िेिक 128. Regulate – ननयंवत्रत करना 175. Motto – सििान्त, आदशव िाक्य
85. Tolerably – ठीक-ठाक, 129. Insatiableness – अिंतोि 176. Profess – स्वीकार करना
कामचलाऊ ढंग िे 130. Arise – बढ़ना 177. Masses – िन-िंघ
86. Fair – उजचत 131. Divinity – ईश्वर 178. Vain – बेकार
87. Tout – दलाल 132. Restraint – िंयम, िंतोि 179. Deliberate – िंकस्थित, िुविचाररत
88. Lure – फंिाना 133. In spite of – के बाििूद 180. Voluntary – स्वैच्छच्छक
89. Evil – बुराई 134. Immediate – तुरंत, तात्काललक 181. Increase – िृसि करना
90. Capitals – बड़े-बड़े शहर 135. Maddening – पागल कर देने िाला 182. Promote – प्रोत्साहहत करना
91. Agricultural – कृनि 136. Resist – रोकना 183. Contentment – िंतुनष्ट, िंतोि
92. Home Rule – स्वराज्य 137. Barter – अदला-बदली करना 184. Degree – मात्रा
93. Describe – िणवन करना 138. Momentary – क्षलणक 185. Harmony – मेल, िंगनत
94. Votary – िमथवक, भि 139. Just as – जिि प्रकार 186. Hindrance – अिरोध
95. Tendency – स्वभाि 140. Similarly – उिी प्रकार 187. Ideal – िोच
96. Elevate – बढ़ाना 141. Marvellous – शानदार 188. Satisfy – पूरा करना
97. Propagate – फैलाना 142. Spirit – िीि 189. Delusion – माया, छल
98. Immorality – दुराचार, अनैनतकता 143. Soul – आत्मा 190. Intellectual – मानसिक
99. Behove – आिश्यक होना 144. Dazzled – चौंवधयाना 191. Narrow – िंकीणव, छोटा
100. Cling – जचपकना 145. Enamoured – मोहहत 192. Dead stop – ठहराि, अंनतम िीमा
101. Breast – िीना, छाती (स्त्री का) 146. Prevent – रोकना 193. Degenerate – वबगड़ना
102. Thankful – शुक्रगुिार 147. Fulfil – पूरा करना 194. Voluptuousness – विलासिता
103. Rise – ऊपर उठाना 148. Onrush – बाढ़, प्रिाह 195. Circumstances – हालात
104. Frankly – िाफ-िाफ, स्पष्ट रूप िे 149. Alive – िीवित 196. Concentrate – लगाना, इकट्ठा
105. Shun – त्याग करना 150. Up till now – अभी तक करना
106. At all costs – हर हाल में 151. Witness – देखना
107. Worship – िेिन 152. Cast a look – निर दौड़ाना
Bharat is My Home
1. Confess – स्वीकार करना
108. Brute – पशुता 153. Go through – पढ़ना
2. Overwhelmed – गदगद
109. Unadulterated – पूणव रूप िे, 154. Constrained – वििश
3. Elect – चुनना
विशुि 155. Dung-heaps – गोबर के ढेर
3. Highest office – ििोच्च पद
110. Materialism – भौनतकिाद 156. Treasure – ख़िाना
4. Land – देश
111. Triumph – िीत 157. Buried – दबा होना, गड़ा होना
5. Presidency – राष्ट्रपनत पद
112. Perhaps – शायद 158. Survive – बचना
6. Mental equipment – बौसिक
113. Unnecessary – अनािश्यक 159. Denial – त्याग
उपकरण
114. Weigh – तुलना करना 160. Ruin – विनाश

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7. Degree of erudition – विद्वता का 48. Constant – ननरंतर 91. Dual – दोहरा

िर 49. Minister – प्रबंध करना 92. Effort – प्रयाि
8. Wealth of experience – अनुभिों 50. Presumption – अनुमान 93. Flavour – रूप
की िम्पदा 51. Entirely – पूरी तरह िे 94. Organisation – िंगठन
9. Devote – िमनपित रहना 52. Association – लगाि 95. Power – ित्ता, शक्ति
10. Pursuit – खोि 53. Maintain – ननियपूिवक कहना, 96. Temperament – स्वभाि
11. Probably – िंभितः कायम रखना 97. Inheritance – विराित
12. Bring out – िामने लाना 54. Inescapably – अननिायव रूप िे 99. Liberation movement –
13. Explain – िमझाना 55. Loyalty – ननष्ठा, िफ़ादारी स्वतंत्रता आंदोलन
14. Philosophical thought – 56. Totality – िमग्रता 100. Dedicate – लगाना, िमनपित करना
दाशवननक विचार 57. Irrespective – का ध्यान नकए वबना, 101. Bring forth –िामने लाना
15. Oneness – एकता ननरपेक्ष 102. Requisite – आिश्यक
16. Spiritual values – आध्याम्मत्मक 58. Welfare – कल्याण, भलाई 103. Privilege – िौभाग्य
मूल्य 59. Distinction – भेदभाि 104. Contribute – योगदान देना
17. Essential – मौललक 60. Earnest endeavour – परम प्रयाि 105. Enchanting – महान
18. Humanity – मानिता 61. Worthy – लायक 106. Enterprise – कायव
19. Cease – रोकना 62. Fascinating task – आकिवक कायव
20. Champion – िमथवन करना 63. Just – न्यायिंगत
A Pinch of Snuff
1. Wire – पत्र
21. Dignity – ििान 64. Prosperous – िमृि
2. Reassuringly – आश्वि करते हुए
22. Justice – न्याय 65. Graceful – शोभनीय
3. Complex – मनोग्रस्ति, िंकुल
23. Assure – विश्वाि हदलाना 66. Inconveniently – अिुविधािनक
4. Under-secretary – उपिजचि
24. Spirit – भािना 67. Pace – गनत
5. Train – प्रजशजक्षत करना
25. Prayerful – विनयशील 68. Unsparingly – एक होकर
6. Probation – परख अिवध
26. Humility – भला मन 69. Sheer – बड़ा
7. Doorway – द्वारमागव
27. Oath – शपथ 70. Frustration – ननराशा, हताशा
8. Carriage – डब्बा
28. Loyalty – ननष्ठा, िफादारी 71. Endemic – महामारी
9. Striking figure – कड़क चेहरा,
29. Comparatively – तुलनात्मक रूप 72. Sincere – िच्चा
आकिवक व्यक्ति
िे 73. Reconstruction – पुनननिमावण
10. Impressive – बड़ी-बड़ी, शानदार
30. Millennia – हिार ििव 74. Aspect – भाग, पहलू
11. Moustache – मूाँछ
31. Co-operation – िहयोग 75. Mutually – पारस्पररक
12. Drape – ओढ़ना, लपेटना
32. Diverse ethnic elements – 76. Fruitful – लाभप्रद
13. Hand – िौंपना, देना
वभन्न-वभन्न िानतयााँ 77. Urge – प्रेरणा, इच्छा
14. Basket – टोकड़ी
33. Strive – प्रयाि करना 78. Self-imposed – स्व-ननवमित
15. Quick – िल्दी िे
34. Absolute – िम्पूणव 79. Render – करना
16. Whisper – फुिफुिाना, कान में
35. Peculiar – अनूठा 80. End-product – पररणाम
बोलना
36. Pledge – शपथ लेना 81. Sustain – हटकना
17. Take out – ले िाना
37. Value – आदशव 82. Seek and exercise – घुलना-
18. Tuck – दबाना
38. Concrete – ठोि वमलना
19. Bump – टकराना
39. Inadequate – अपयावप्त 83. Bring about – प्रकट करना
20. Enormous – विशालकाय, बहुत बड़ा
40. Eternally – हमेशा 84. Approximation – िमीपता
21. Apology – क्षमायाचना
41. Press – प्रेररत करना 85. Privileged – अपेजक्षत
22. Drown – दब िाना, बाधा डालना
42. Static – स्थिर 86. Corresponding advance –
23. Emanate – ननकलना
43. Dynamic – गनतशील िाननध्य
24. Strange – अिीब
44. Determine – ननधावरण करना 87. Collective – कुल, पूणव
25. Protest – विरोध
45. Prospects – हदशा, उन्ननत 88. Resolve – ननिय करना
26. Outraged – उग्र, भीिण
46. Renewal – निीनीकरण 89. Engage – लगाना
27. Kitten – वबल्ली का बच्चा
47. Indeed – िािि में 90. Wholeheartedly – पूरे मन िे

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28. Duck – बचने के ललए िर झुकाना 74. Flash past – बगल िे तेिी िे 115. Bustle off – दौड़-धूप करना, भागे-
29. Mingle – वमल िाना गुिरना भागे िाना
30. Squeeze – ननचोड़ना 75. Blare – शोर मचाना 116. Spar – बहि करना, बात छे ड़ना
31. Wake – िुलूि, िनिभा 76. Uninterrupted – लगातार 117. Guardedly – िािधानी िे
32. Yard – प्रांगण, अहाता 77. Wave – हाथ हहलाना 118. Brass tacks – मुख्य बात, छुपी बात
33. Nearly – लगभग 78. Rude – अजशष्ट, बद्तमीि 119. Ingratiating – अनुग्रह, चापलूिी
34. Empty – खाली 79. Chap – लौंडा, छोकरा 120. Grin – मुस्कुराहट, हंिी
35. Emerge – बाहर आना 80. Ministry – मंत्रालय 121. Regard – मानना, िमझना
36. Escorted – अनुरक्षक, मागवरक्षक 81. Trade Commissioner – व्यापार 122. Touching – हदल के करीब
37. Fawning – चापलूि, खुशामदी आयुि 123. Consult – राय लेना
38. Room – िगह 82. Ambassador – रािदूत 124. Embassy – रािदूतािाि
39. Issue – िारी करना 83. Conversation – बातचीत 125. Stained – दाग लगा हुआ
40. Amicably – मैत्रीपूणव ढंग िे 84. Foreign – विदेशी 126. Humble house – िाधारण घर
41. Trouble – परेशानी, हदक्कत 85. Assignment – काम, ननयुक्ति, 127. Balances Ministry – िंतुलन
42. Perhaps – शायद कायवभार मंत्रालय
43. Get into – चढ़ना 86. Somehow – नकिी तरह, िैिे-तैिे 128. Poison – कान भनाव, भड़काना
44. Frankness – स्पष्टिाहदता 87. Unkindly – कठोरता िे 129. Transaction – लेन-देन
45. Worth – औकात 88. Take pull – मुाँह लटक िाना 130. Concerning – िे िंबंवधत
46. Merely – केिल 89. Jerk – झटका 131. Evacuee-property – बेनामी
47. Never mind – कोई बात नहीं 90. Extraordinary – अिामान्य िंपवत्त, िुरजक्षत िंपवत्त
48. Pinch – चुटकी 91. Lean – झुकना 132. Legitimate – उजचत, कानूनी, िैध
49. Snuff – िुाँघनी 92. Stare – ताकना 133. Wave away – हाथ हहलाकर रोकना
50. Brush – रगड़ना 93. Turban – पगड़ी 134. Explanation – िफ़ाई, स्पष्टीकरण
51. Delicately – आराम िे 94. Tie – बांधना 135. Deserve – योग्य होना, हकदार होना
52. Pucker – सिकोड़ना 95. Caution – हहदायत देना, िमझाना 136. Snuffbox – नििार की नडवबया
53. Eyebrow – भौंह 96. Spotless – िाफ-िुथरा, बेदाग 137. Flick – झाड़ना
54. Cluck tongue – िुबान बिाना 97. Casually – यूाँ ही, िंयोग िे 138. Mention – जिक्र करना
55. Register – दिव करना, प्रकट करना 98. Convention – ििेलन, िभा 139. Welfare Minister – कल्याण मंत्री
56. Pity – दया, पछतािा 99. Unofficial – अनौपचाररक, 140. Vanish – गायब हो िाना
57. Doorstep – चौखट गैरिरकारी 141. Relieve – राहत वमलना
58. Wreathed – वघरा हुआ, िुिज्जित 100. Gathering – भीड़, िमाि, िलिा 142. Ingratitude – नमक हराम
59. Squeal – नकलकारी, जचल्लाहट 101. Trail off – कमिोर पड़ना, फीका 143. In every way – हर तरह िे
60. Delight – खुशी, आनंद होना 144. At daggers drawn – िानी-दुश्मन
61. Fuss – हलचल, हाँगामा 102. Impression – प्रभाि 145. Snort – फुफकारना
61. Install – लगाना, वबछाना 103. Adjoining – िटा हुआ 146. Confidential – गोपनीय
62. Verandah – बरामदा 104. Unhurried – धीरे-धीरे 147. Burn boat – अपने पैर पर कुल्हारी
63. Insistence – अनुरोध, आग्रह, जज़द 105. Gurgle – गड़गड़ाहट मारना
64. Leave – छुट्टी 106. Haughty – गुिाख़, अवभमानी 148. Exchange – अदला-बदली करना
65. Mumble – बुदबुदाना 107. Swallow – िह िाना, पी िाना 149. Horoscope – िन्मकुंडली
66. Swearword – गाली, दुिवचन 108. Abroad – बाहर, विदेश 150. Astrologer – ज्योनतिी
67. Dare – हहित करना 109. Suddenly – अचानक 151. Auspicious – शुभ
68. Tramp – पैदल चलना 110. Waddle – डगमगाते हुए चलना 151. Match – िोड़ी
69. Corridor – बरामदा, गैलरी 111. Smother – दबाना, ढकना 152. Bow – झुकना
70. Shameful – शमवनाक 112. Saccharine – मधुर 153. Porch – द्वारमंडप, ओिारा
71. Expletive – गाली, दुिवचन 113. Courtesy – शालीनता 154. Chirpy – प्रिन्न
72. Linguistic – भािा िंबंधी 114. Seasoned – अनुभिी 155. Appeal – विनती करना
73. Garnish – अलंकृत 115. Campaigner – आंदोलन का िदस्य 156. Inhale – िांि लेना

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157. Treat coldly – बुरा व्यिहार करना 197. Puddle – कीचड़ में लोटना, पेशाब 35. Honour – ििान देना, मानना,
158. Liveried – िदीधारी करना भुगतान करना
159. Chauffeur – कर चालक 198. Accomplish – पूरा करना 36. Sacred – पुण्य, पवित्र
160. Acquaintance – पररजचत 199. Convinced – दृढ़ ननियी 37. Obligation – दावयत्व
161. Stately – भव्य 200. Deal with – िंभाल लेना 38. Insufficient fund – अपयावप्त राजश
162. Outlandish – विजचत्र, विदेशी 201. Far – दूर 39. Bankrupt – हदिाललया
163. Court procession – राििी यात्रा, 202. Range – क्षेत्र, पहुाँच 40. Vault – भंडार, नतिोरी
शोभायात्रा 41. Opportunity – अििर
164. Brief – थोड़े िमय का, अिकालीन
I Have a Dream 42. Demand – मााँग
1. Shadow – छाया
165. Trial – परीक्षण 43. Security – िुरक्षा
2. Emancipation proclamation –
166. Breezily – प्रिन्नजचत ढंग िे 44. Hallowed – पवित्र
मुक्ति उद्घोिणा
167. Tout – दलाल 45. Spot – िगह
3. Momentous – महत्वपूणव
168. Blandly – नीरि तरीके िे 46. Remind – याद हदलाना
4. Decree – आदेश
169. Rush into – भागे-भागे आना 47. Fierce – भयंकर, प्रचंड
5. Beacon – प्रक्ष, आकाशद्वीप
170. Barely – मुस्थिल िे 48. Urgency – िंकिना, िरूरत
6. Slave – गुलाम
171. Brandish – लहराना 49. Tranquilizing – शांत करने िाली
7. Sear – झुलिाना
172. Pant – हााँफना 50. Drug – दिा
8. Flame – आग
173. Hold – पकड़ना 51. Gradualism – िुिी, धीमा
9. Withering injustice – भीिण
174. At the arm’s length – दूर िे 52. Desolate – िुनिान
अन्याय
175. Cash – भंिाना 53. Valley – घाटी
10. Joyous – उल्लाि
176. Demonstration – प्रदशवन 54. Sunlit path – धूपभरे पथ
11. Daybreak – प्रभात
177. Regally – रािा की तरह, शान के 55. Racial – िातीय
12. Captivity – कैद, दािता
िाथ 56. Quick sands – तेि रेत
13. Tragic – दुःखद
178. Hereditary – िंशानुगत 57. Rock – चट्टान
14. Sadly – बुरी तरह िे
179. Fuss around – चारों तरफ िे घेर 58. Brotherhood – भाईचारा
15. Crippled – िकड़ा हुआ
लेना 59. Fatal – घातक
16. Manacles – हथकड़ी
180. Refuse – इंकार करना 60. Overlook – निरंदाि करना
17. Segregation – अलगाि
181. Formality – औपचाररकता 61. Underestimate – कम आाँकना
18. Chain – ज़ंिीर
182. Observe – मानना, पालन करना 62. Determination – िंकिना
19. Discrimination – भेदभाि
183. Highness – महाराि 63. Sweltering summer – प्रचंड गमी
20. Loney – एकांत
184. Stickler – तरफ़दार, िादी 64. Legitimate – उजचत
21. Island – द्वीप
185. Courtesy – जशष्टाचार 65. Discontent – अिंतुनष्ट
22. Poverty – गरीबी
186. Flourish – गिोक्ति, प्रिन्नजचत भाि 66. Invigorating – िान डालने िाली
23. Vast – विशाल
िे 67. Blow off – बाहर ननकालना
24. Prosperity – िमृसि
187. Astrologer – ज्योनतिी 68. Steam – गमी
25. Languish – हदन काटना, िड़ना
188. Tearing hurry – बहुत तेिी िे 69. Content – िंतुष्ट
26. Exile – देश ननकाला, ननिावसित
189. Palace – महल 70. Rude awakening – प्रचंड िागरण
27. Dramatize – हदखाना
190. Entrust – िौंपना 71. Grate –मााँग तेि करना
28. Appalling condition – भयािह
191. Glance backwards – पीछे की ओर 72. Whirlwind – चक्रिात
स्थिनत
देखना 73. Revolt – विद्रोह, आंदोलन
29. Obvious – प्रत्यक्ष, स्पष्ट
192. Clad – कपड़ा पहने हुए 74. Shake – हहलाना
30. Default – पूरा नहीं करना, मुकर
193. Figure – व्यक्ति 75. Foundation – नींि
िाना
194. Peer – देखना 76. Emerge – उदय होना
31. Promissory note – िचन पत्र
195. Upper-story – ऊपरी मंजिल 77. Threshold – दहलीि
32. insofar – िहााँ तक
196. House-break – घर में का तोड़- 78. Thirst – प्याि
33. Concerned – िंबंवधत
फोड़ 79. Bitterness – कड़िाहट
34. Instead of – के बिाए
80. Hatred – नफरत

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81. Forever – हमेशा 128. Symphony – मधुर ध्वनन 34. Occasion – अििर
82. Conduct – चलाना 129. Liberty – आिादी 35. Acquired – उपाजिित, प्राप्त
83. Dignity – गररमा 130. Prodigious – बहुत बड़ा, विशाल 36. Opposed to – के विपरीत, न की
84. Rise – ऊपर उठाना 131. Mighty – शक्तिशाली 37. Congenital – िन्मिात
85. Militancy – उग्रिाद 132. Snow-capped – बफव िे ढाका हुआ 38. Assume – किना करना
86. Engulf – ननगलना 133. Curvaceous – िुडौल, घुमािदार 39. Dominate – हािी होना
87. Evidenced – प्रमालणत होना 134. Molehill – छोटा पहाड़ 40. Impulse – आिेग, प्रभाि
88. Destiny – नकस्मत 135. Hamlet – कस्बा, छोटा गााँि 41. Hunger – भूख
89. Inextricably – अटूट 136. Almighty – ििवशक्तिमान 42. During – के दौरान
90. Bound – िंबंध 43. Passage – मागव
91. March ahead – आगे बढ़ना
Ideas That Have Helped 44. Foresee – पूिावनुमान लगाना
92. Devotee – आिािान Mankind 45. Catastrophe – आपवत्त, विनाश
93. Fatigue – थकान 1. Discuss – चचाव करना 46. Befall – घहटत होना, आ पड़ना
94. Lodging – आिाि 2. Conception – धारणा, खाका 47. Otherwise – अन्यथा, नहीं तो
95. Mobility – गनतशीलता 3. Effect – प्रभाि 48. Starvation – भुखमरी, अकाल
96. Ghetto – यहूदी बिी 4. Diversity – विविधता 49. Precede – पूिवकालीन होना
97. Righteousness – िच्चाई 5. Preliminary – प्रारक्तिक 50. Anxiety – जचिंता, दुःख
98. Stream – धारा, प्रिाह 6. Indubitable – ननविििाद 51. Corresponding – िदृश, तदनुरूप
99. Unmindful – बेखबर 7. Homo sapiens – मानि-िानत 52. Curbing – रोक
100. Trial – परीक्षा 8. Species – प्रिानत 53. Forethought – अग्रिोच
101. Tribulation – यातना 9. Rare – दुलवभ 54. Avert – रोकना, टालना
102. Narrow – िंकीणव, छोटा 10. Subsist – रहना 55. Disaster – आपदा, मुिीबत
103. Cell – िेल 11. Cave – गुफा 56. Mice – चूहे
104. Quest – खोि 12. Terrified – आतंनकत, दारा हुआ 57. Crumbs – अनाि का टुकड़ा, िूठन
105. Batter – मार पड़ना 13. Wild beast – िंगली िानिर 58. Erudite – विद्वान
106. Storm – तूफ़ान 14. Secure – प्राप्त करना 59. Snooze – ऊाँघना
107. Persecution – उत्पीड़न 15. Nourishment – आहार 60. Convinced – यकीन करने िाला,
108. Stagger – विचललत करना 16. Biological advantage – िैविक िहमत
109. Brutality – बबवरता लाभ 61. Diversity – विविधता
110. Veteran – सिपाही 17. Intelligence – बुसि 62. Depredation – विध्वंश, हत्या
111. Suffering – कष्ट, दुःख 18. Cumulative – िंचयी, बढ़ता हुआ 63. Spectacle – निारा, दृश्य
112. Redemptive – मुक्तिदायक 19. Generation – पीढ़ी 64. Afford – प्रदान करना, देना
113. Slum – गंदी बिी 20. Scarcely – मुस्थिल िे 65. Enable – योग्य बनाना
114. Wallow – िमाना 21. Overweigh – बड़ा होना, महत्व 66. Purchase – खरीदना, प्राप्त करना
115. Rooted – ननहहत्त रखना 67. At the expense of – की कीमत पर
116. Oppression – अत्याचार 22. Infancy – लड़कपन 68. Liability – दावयत्व, जज़िेदारी, ऋण
117. Oasis – िुखद िगह 23. Lessened – कम 69. Boredom – ऊब, नीरिता
118. Content – गुण 24. Agility – फुती 70. Obvious – िाहहर िी बात है, स्पष्ट
119. Drip – टपकना 25. Lack – कमी 71. Distinguish – अलग करना
120. Interposition – अंतिावपन 26. Hirsute – बल 72. Brute – पशु
121. Nullification – ननरिीकरण 27. Protection – बचाि 73. Peck – चोंच मारना
122. Exalt – आबाद होना 28. Throughout – िम्पूणव 74. Whereas – िबनक
123. Crooked – टेढ़े-मेढ़े 29. Skill – कौशल, बुसि 75. Herd – िमूह
124. Reveal – प्रकट होना 30. Technical – तकनीकी 76. In spite of – के बाििूद
125. Flesh – प्राणी 31. Increase – बढ़ाना 77. Moralist – नैनतकतािादी
126. Hew out – ननकालना 32. Intention – इरादा 78. Ferocious – खूाँखार, हहिंिक
127. Jangling discord – रोि का झगड़ा 33. Rejoice – खुशी मनाना 79. Deny – इंकार करना

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80. Savage – िहशी, हहिंिक 5. Fetch – लाना 50. Fancy – अलबेला, विजचत्र
81. Humane – मानिीय 6. Dregs – तलछट, बचा-खुचा 51. Disgusted – घृणास्पद, क्रोधपूणव
82. Prevail – चालू होना, प्रबल होना 7. Surface – ितह 52. Prefer – महत्व देना, अवधक पिन्द
83. Omen – लक्षण 8. Passionately – पूरे मन िे करना
84. Propitious – शुभ 9. Stroll – घूमना 53. Inwardly – अंदर िे, मन ही मन
85. Dawn – शुरू, उदय 10. Beach – िमुद्र तट 54. Stir – हलचल, बेचैनी, तहलका,
86. Utilization – उपयोनगता 11. Absorbed – लीन, मग्न, खोया हुआ िनिनी
87. Chiefly – मुख्य रूप िे 12. Startle – चौंकना 55. Interrupt – बीच मेन बोलना
88. Warmth – गमी 13. Bald – गंिा, टकला 56. Clumsy – बेडौल, भद्दा
89. Agreeable – िुखद 14. Elongated – लंबा 57. Unfamiliar – अंिान, अपररजचत
90. Presumably – िंभितः 15. Hut – झुग्गी, झोंपड़ी 58. Persimmons – तेंदू फल
91. Anthropologist – मानि विज्ञानी 16. Splendid – शानदार 59. Cluster – झुंड, गुच्छा
92. Theory – सििान्त 17. Sight – दृश्य 60. Immediately – तुरंत
93. Attempt – प्रयाि 18. Wag – हहलाना 61. Commonplace – िामान्य
94. Tame – पालतू बनाना 19. Pine – देिदार 62. Pant – हााँफना
95. Tribe – िगव, िानत 20. Pate – सिर, खोपड़ी 63. Dash – दौड़ना, भागना
96. Die out – विलुप्त हो िाना 21. Grocery – नकराने की दुकान 64. Separate – अलग करना
97. Absence – अनुपस्थिनत 22. Curio-shop – कलाकृनत की दुकान 65. Particularly – विशेि रूप िे
98. Evidence – प्रमाण, िबूत 23. Glue – जचपकाना, हटकना 66. Incensed – जचढ़ा हुआ
99. Domestication – पशुपालन 24. Appraise – मूल्यांकन करना, दाम 67. Ethics – नीनतशास्त्र
100. Fertility – उिवरता लगाना 68. Offensive – अपमानिनक
101. Rite – प्रथा, अनुष्ठान 25. Precious – अनमोल, नप्रय 69. Indulge – मन रखना, ललप्त होना
102. Tend – रुख होना, की ओर अवभमुख 26. Wander – भटकना, घूमना 70. Effeminate – स्त्रैण, नारी िैिा
होना 27. Sit cross-legged – पालथी मारकर 71. Pastimes – खेल, मनबहलाि
103. Involve – शावमल होना बैठना 72. Mind – बुरा मानना
104. Sacrifice – त्याग, बलल 28. Living-room – बैठक कक्ष 73. Raucously – ककवशपूणव, बेिुरा
105. Cannibalism – नरभक्षण, नरबलल 29. Acquire – प्राप्त करना 74. Tremble with furry – क्रोध िे
106. Moloch – देिता 30. Pour – डालना, उड़ेलना कााँपना
107. Corn – अनाि 31. Insert – लगाना 75. Absolutely – वबलकुल
108. Grow – उपिना 32. Fashion – बनाना 76. Then and there – उिी िमय
109. Feast – भोिन कराना 33. Wrap – लपेटना 77. Confiscate – चीन लेना, िब्त कर
110. Adopt – अपनाना 34. Towel – तौली लेना
111. Manufacture – ननमावण करना, 35. Examine – देखना, परीक्षण करना 78. Pale – मसिम, फीका
बनाना 36. Thoroughly – पूरी तरह िे 79. Direct – चलाना
112. Water – िींचना 37. Damp – गीला, तर 80. Stern voice – कठोर आिाि
113. Infant – नििात जशशु 38. Gaze – ननहारना 81. Agony – िंताप, व्यथा
114. Prehistoric – प्रागैनतहासिक 39. Adoringly – खुश होकर 82. Embarrassment – शर्मिंदगी
115. Prerequisite – अनत महत्वपूणव 40. String – डोरी 83. Mutter – बुदबुदाना, धीरे-धीरे
116. Convey – प्रकट करना, पहुाँचाना 41. Hang – टााँगना बोलना
117. Thence – इिके बाद 42. Harbour – बन्दरगाह, आश्रम 84. Apology – क्षमा
118. Evolution – विकाि, क्रमागत उन्ननत 43. Street – िड़क, गली 85. Meanwhile – इिी बीच
44. Recognise – पहचानना 86. Inconspicuous – अप्रत्यक्ष, सछपा
The Artist 45. Gnarled – गांठदार हुआ
1. Hole – छे द
46. Favour – पिन्द करना 87. Vindictive – प्रनतशोधी
2. Extract – बाहर ननकालना
47. Appeal – पिंद आना 88. Exhaust – उतार देना, खाली कर
3. Get rid of – छुटकारा पाना
48. Symmetrical – िुडौल, एक-िा देना
4. Unpleasant smell – बदबू
49. Youngster – छोकरा 89. Rhetoric – िाक्पटुता

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90. Stamp – पैर पटकना करने योग्य 59. Particularly – विशेि रूप िे
91. Heave a sigh of relief – 18. Observe – पूरा करना, मानना 60. Tragedy – दुःखद
92. Querulous – जशकायती, विलापी 19. Carry out – पालन करना, अंिाम 61. Obstetric care – दिाखाना, प्रिूनत

93. Whine – दबी आिाि का रोना देना गृह

20. Rite – रीनत, विवध 62. Dramatic – प्रभािशाली
94. Grab – पकड़ना, दबोचना
21. Reinforcement – मिबूती 63. Perverse – प्रनतकूल
95. Bawl – ज़ोर िे जचल्लाना
22. Participation – िहयोग, हहस्सेदारी 64. Survival – िीिन
96. Attention – ध्यान 23. Kinsfolk – िगे-िंबंधी 65. Truism – सििान्त
97. Fetch – लाना 24. Sensible – उजचत 66. Anthropology – मानिविज्ञान
98. Hammer – हथौड़ा 25. Magical – िादुई 67. Long – चाहना
99. Systematically – क्रमानुिार, एक- 26. Conviction – दृढ़ विश्वाि
एक करके 68. Intimate – घननष्ठ, अंतरंग
25. Conduct – नेतृत्व करना, ननिावह
100. Smash – टुकड़े-टुकड़े करना 69. Interpretation – बयान, मत
करना
101. Confiscated – िब्त 26. Remnants – अिशेि 70. Mores – रीनत-ररिाज़
102. Porter – द्वारपाल 27. Prophylaxis – रोगननरोध 71. Backward – बेिकूफी भरा, नपछड़ा
103. Sooty room – काललखभरा कमरा 28. Persistence – दृढ़ता हुआ
104. Hard-pressed – तंगहाल, दुष्कर 29. Rational – तकविंगत, वििेकी 72. Assume – मानना
105. Assume – ग्रहण करना, िमझना 30. Meticulously – ध्यानपूिवक 73. Spouse – पनत-पत्नी, िीिनिाथी
106. Astounded – हक्का-बक्का 31. Footnote – नोट बनाना 74. Perfunctory – बेमन का, बेपरिाह
107. Astute – चतुर, बुसिमान 32. Cling – लगा रहना, जचपके रहना 75. Exploitative – शोिक
108. Adamant – अटल 33. Prenatal – प्रििपूिव 76. Unjust – अन्यायी
109. Equivalent – िमतुल्य 34. Ritual observance – धार्मिंक क्रिया 77. Vindictive – प्रनतशोधी
110. Wages – िेतन, तनख्वाह 78. Feminist – स्त्रीिादी, नारी अवधकारिादी
35. Physical exploit – िाहसिक कायव,
111. Mention – जिक्र करना 79. Chauvinistic – अंधभक्ति करने
शारीररक शोिण
112. Engrossed – लीन, मग्न िाला, परंपरािादी
36. Recollection – स्मरण
113. Bitterness – कड़िाहट, द्वे ि, 80. Tendency – आदत, रुझान, प्रिृवत्त
37. Diehard – कट्टर
अप्रिन्नता 81. Withdraw – ननकालना, हट िाना
38. Superstition – अंधविश्वाि, बहम
39. Acquire – प्राप्त करना, उपलब्ध करना 82. Fora – मंच, िनिभा
A Child is Born
40. Equipment – िामग्री, िाि-िामान 83. Give up – छोड़ना
1. Traditional – परंपरागत, चलन के
41. Apparel – कपड़ा 84. Conference – ििेलन
अनुिार
42. Crib – पालना, बच्चे का वबछौना 85. Trip – दौरा, िैर
2. Stem – उत्पन्न होना
43. Napkin – तौललया, लंगोट 86. Tremendous – शानदार, लाििाब
3. Psychic – मानसिक
44. Considerable – महत्वपूणव 87. Treat – व्यिहार करना
4. Burden – बोझ
45. Vent – ननकाि द्वार 88. Regard – िमझना
5. Procedure – प्रनक्रया
46. Labour – प्रिि की पीड़ा 89. Outrageous – क्रूर
6. Potential – िंभावित
47. Appear – हदखाई देना, ननकलना 90. Sink – डूबना, गाँिाना
7. Catastrophe – दुगवनत
48. Breast feeding – दूध नपलाना 91. Lineage – िंशािली
8. Alive – िीवित
49. Discharge – छोड़ना 92. Usage – उपयोग, प्रचलन
9. Community – िमाि, िमुदाय
50. Virtually – दर अिल 93. Stress – ज़ोर देना
10. Index – िंकेत, िूची
51. Except – को छोड़कर 94. Weaken – कमिोर करना
11. Anxiety – जचिंता
52. Remarkable – विजशष्ट 95. Enforced – लागू
12. Ritual – ररिाज़, धावमिक कृत्य
53. Mortality – मृत्युदर 96. Abstinence – िंयम
13. Approach – पिनत, दृनष्टकोण
54. Avoid – बचना, रोकना 97. Strengthen – मिबूत करना
14. Hem – घेरना
55. Significance – महत्व, गौरि 98. Extended – बृहत्त, फैला हुआ
15. Taboo – नननिि
56. Vast – अिंख्य, व्यापक, बड़ा 99. Whim – मिी
16. Prohibition – मनाही, रोक
57. Majority – ियस्कता, बहुिंख्यक 100. Response – प्रनतनक्रया, ििाब
17. Manageable – आरामदेह, काबू में
58. Deny – इंकार करना, न मानना 102. Satisfy – पूरा करना

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103. Longing – चाहत 147. Resist – रोकना, विरोध करना 32. Sustain – िहना, भुगतना
104. Peer – िाथी, श्रेष्ठ िन 148. Intrusion – दखल 33. Doctrine – सििान्त
105. Dramatise – नाटक का रूप देना 149. Nevertheless – नफर भी 34. Contrive – कोजशश करना
106. Fancy – इच्छा होना, पिंद करना 150. Hut – झुग्गी 35. Gravely – गंभीरता िे
107. Feasting – दाित, भोि 151. Hovel – झोंपरी 36. Shackled – बेनड़यों िे बंधा, िकड़ा
108. Evil spirits – बुरी आत्माएाँ, भूत-प्रेत 152. Hegemony – प्रभाि हुआ
109. Nostalgic – गृहातुर 153. Humming – गूाँि 37. Overlord – अवधपनत
110. Tinged – रंग, झलक 154. Throbbing – धमक 38. Unmerciful – बेरहम
111. Contrast – अंतर 155. Crush – कुचलना 39. Circulation – प्रिार
112. Rear – पालना 156. Dignity – गौरि 40. Vested – ननहहत

113. Embrace – गोद 157. Explosion – विस्फोट 41. Lofty – उन्नत, उच्च
42. Hygienic – िाफ-िुथरा
114. Modernization – आधुननकीकरण How Free is the Press 43. Denounce – बदनाम करना,
115. Prestige – प्रभाि 1. Take for granted – मन लेना,
धमकाना
116. Enormous – बड़ा महत्व नहीं िानना
44. Smash – नष्ट करना
117. Miraculous – चमत्कारी 2. Restriction – पाबंद, रोक
45. Dissociate – अलग करना
118. Hypodermic – सीररिंज 3. Restore – पहले िैिा कर देना,
46. Bankruptcy – हदिाललया,
119. Aggressive – आक्रामक लौटाना
ित्यानाश
120. Procedure – कायविाही, नक्रया 4. In the meantime – इिी बीच
47. Revenue – आय, आमदनी
121. Withstand – िहन करना 5. Wholesome – ठीक, हहतकारी,
48. Perpetual – ननरंतर
122. Peasant – नकिान स्वास्थ्यिधवक
49. Precarious – अननलित, दुविधा में
123. Expensive drugs – महंगी दिाएाँ 6. Tyranny – अन्याय, अत्याचार
50. Justify – िही ठहराना
124. Sparkling – शानदार, उत्कृष्ट 7. Impose – लगाना, थोपना
51. Consequently – पररणामस्वरूप
125. Aid – िहायता 8. Censorship – ननयंत्रण
52. Subserve – िहायक होना, आगे
126. Establish – िानपत करना 9. Ordinary – िामान्य
बढ़ाना
127. Horrible – भयािह 10. Singularly – एकदम ही
53. Proportion – भाग
128. Enormous – बहुत बड़ा 11. Diplomacy – कूटनीनत, कौशल
54. Spite – द्वे ि
129. Groan – कराहना 12. Campaign – मुहहम, अवभयान
55. Ambition – महत्वाकांक्षा
130. Whirl – छटपटाना, चक्कर मारना 13. Subvert – नष्ट कर देना
56. Proprietor – माललक
131. Widespread – व्यापक, दूर-दूर तक 14. Incite – भड़काना, उत्तेजित करना
57. Magnate – पूंिीपनत
फैला हुआ 15. Discontent – अिंतुनष्ट
58. Unleash – खोलना
132. Sacrificial – बलल का 16. Rebellion – विद्रोह
59. Virulent – उग्र, िंक्रामक, वििैला
133. Out-pourings – बहाि 17. Expose – भेद खोलना
60. Bias – पक्षपात
134. Sophisticated – पररष्कृत, 18. Scandal – अफिाह
61. Savage – भीिण, तीव्र
प्रभािशाली 19. Foment – भड़काना
62. Persistent – लगातार
135. Cater – चलाना 20. Grievance – जशकायत, कष्ट
63. Condemnation – ननिंदा
136. Urban – शहरी 21. Harry – परेशान करना
64. Exceptionally – विशेिकर
138. Impersonal – औपचाररक, 22. Belabour – पीटना
65. Shrewd – चतुर
अिैयक्तिक 23. Coerce – दबाि डालना, बाध्य करना
66. Cynical – स्वाथी
139. Conveyor-belt – िाहक पट्टा 24. Conform – पालन करना, मानना
67. Resolute – अटल
140. Plethora – अवधकता 25. Assert – दािा करना, कहना
68. Subtle – िूक्ष्म, िंिेदी
141. Innovation – निीनता, नई पिनत 26. Disastrous – दुभावग्यपूणव, दुःखद
69. Disseminate – प्रिाररत करना,
142. Climactic – महत्वपूणव 27. Hesitation – िंकोच
फैलाना
143. Brutality – क्रूरता 28. Inconsistency – वभन्नता, अिंगनत
70. Assumption – किना
144. Praise – िराहना करना 29. Hamper – बढ़ा डालना
71. Wit – िमझ, ज्ञान
145. Level headed – िे लदा हुआ 30. Swift – तेि
72. Titillate – उत्तेजित करना, गुदगुदाना
146. Sceptical – अविश्वािी 31. Execution – प्रभाि

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73. Flatter – खुशामद करना, चापलूिी 111. Bland – बेस्वाद 153. Offence – अपराध
करना 112. Perversion – दोि, उलट-फेर 154. Readily – ननःिंकोच, िरलता िे
74. Accurate – िही 113. Playful – आनंहदत 155. Persuade – मनाना, राज़ी करना
75. Slipshod – लापरिाह 114. Attribute – आरोनपत करना, 156. Jury – न्यायपीठ
76. Tendentious – पक्षपाती विशेिता बतलाना 157. Veracity – िच्चाई
77. Illustrate – व्याख्या करना, 115. Victim – जशकार, पीनड़त 158. Impression – अिर
िमझाना 116. Vivid – प्रबल 159. Suppression – प्रनतबंध, दमन
78. Trivial – मामूली 117. Glitter – चमक 160. Flat – स्पष्ट, िामान्य
79. Distort – गलत बयानी करना, विकृत 118. Remark – हटप्पणी 161. Monopolise – एकावधकार करना
करना 119. Conclude – पूरा करना, िमाप्त 162. Manoeuvre – कािुशल, पैंतरा
80. Smear – बदनामी, कलंक करना 163. Provincial – व्यििा, प्रादेजशक
81. Affair – मामला, घटना 120. Magnify – िृसि करना, बढ़ा-चढ़ा 164. Quote – कथन
82. Gossip – चचाव, गपशप कर बताना 165. Honoris Causa – ििानाथव
83. Sensational – िनिनीखेि, 121. Cornish – एक भािा (Ancient 166. Reputation – प्रनतष्ठा, शोहरत
खलबली मचाने िाला Celtic Language) 167. Mislead – भटकाना
84. Emphasis – ज़ोर डालना 122. Alleged – कसथत 168. Entail – के बारे में होना, आिश्यक
85. Suppression – दबाि 123. Intruder – घुिपैहठया बना देना
86. Context – वििय 124. Conceal – सछपाना 169. Correspondence – अनुरूपता
87. Theological – आध्यात्मविद्या िंबंधी 125. Substitute – बदले में 170. Falsehood – झूठ
88. Complementary – अनतररि, 126. Snob – घमंडी 171. Syndicate – िंघ, िभा
पूरक 127. Alter – बदलना 172. Simultaneously – िाथ-िाथ
89. Pietism – पाखंड, भक्ति 128. Blunder – बड़ी गलती 173. Fuss – हाँगामा, गलतफहमी
90. Caesarism – तानाशाही 129. Adorn – ििाना 174. Venture – िाहसिक कायव
91. Incarnation – अितार 130. Tale – कहानी, िमाचार 175. Accuse – दोि लगाना
92. Undue – अनुजचत, अिंगत 131. Reversal – पररितवन 176. Lurk – घर लगाना
93. Contrast – फकव हदखाना, तुलना 132. Summons – बुलािा, नोहटि 177. Genteel – ििन
करना 133. Unshaded – बेदाग 178. Blackmail – भेद खोलेने की धमकी
94. Subsidiary – िहायक, अनतररि 134. Bench – अदालत, न्यायाधीश 179. Offend – उल्लंघन करना, नाराि
95. Allusion – उल्लेख, हिाला 135. Unfortunately – दुभावग्य िे करना
96. Pick – चुनना, लेना 136. Defect – खराबी, कमी, दोि 180. Threat – धमकी
97. Presume – मानना, िमझना 137. Curtain – परदा 181. Utter – कहना, िारी करना
98. Fornication – व्यवभचार, वबना शादी 138. Distress – परेशानी 182. Unfavourably – नकारात्मक ढंग िे
के वििाहेतर िंबंध 139. Random – वबना िोचे िमझे, 183. Sneer – हंिी उड़ाना
99. Appreciate – िराहना करना आकस्तस्मक 184. Libelous – ननन्दात्मक
100. Compliment – ििान, प्रशंिा 140. Gratuitous – अनािश्यक, ननराधार 185. Crop – छांटना, काटना
101. Comfort – िुख, राहत, आश्वािन 141. Gossipy – खोखला, बातूनी 186. Slight – कम, हल्का
102. Ecclesiastical – चचव िंबंधी 142. Gardening – बागबानी 187. Hinder – अड़चन डालना
103. Distorted – दूनित, तोड़ा-मरोड़ा 143. Detest – घृणा करना 188. Dissemination – प्रिार
104. Remonstrate – आपवत्त करना 144. Cushion – तनकया 189. Greet – अवभिादन करना
105. Disavow – नकारना, छोड़ना 145. Shortage – अभाि 190. Concerted – िंगहठत, आयोजित
106. Garbling – अपने मतलब का चुन 146. Constrain – वििश करना 191. Howl – चीख
लेना, वमथ्या अथव लेना 147. Handyman – िहायक, मददगार 192. Despair – ननराश होना, हतोत्साहहत
107. Accomplishment – हुनर 148. Monger – व्यापारी होना
108. Notwithstanding – तथानप, के 149. Precisely – ठीक-ठाक 193. Symptomatic – िूचक
बाििूद 150. Remedy – उपचार 194. Disquieting – अशांत, बेचैन
109. Commission – कायवभार, ननयुक्ति 151. Libel – मानहानन 195. Wrest – विकृत करना, उलट देना
110. Undoubtedly – ननःिन्देह ही 152. Misrepresent – झूठा बयान करना 196. Propagandist – प्रचारक

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197. Efficiently – ननपुणता िे 13. Limb – अंग 56. Seed – बीि डालना
198. Pervade – व्याप्त होना, फैला होना 14. Cunning – धूतव, चालबाि 57. Choke – दबाना, गला घोंटना
199. Penetrate – घुिना 15. Persuade – रािी करना, मनाना 58. Wheat – गेहूाँ
200. Creep – िरकना 16. Coop – नपिंिरा 59. Break in – घुिना
201. Trifling – तुच्छ 17. Speckled – धब्बेदार, जचतकबरा 60. Gnaw – कुतरना
202. Smudge – धब्बा 18. Scrap – टुकड़ा, िूठन 61. Smash – नष्ट करना, तोड़ना
203. Blur – धुंधलापन 19. Cabbage – पत्ता गोभी 62. Chain – िंिीर
204. Cynicism – ननराशािाद 20. Maize – मक्का 63. Providence – ईश्वर
205. Misinterpret – गलत अथव लगाना 21. Glean – बटोरना, बीनना 64. Steadfastly – ननरंतर
206. Convict – अपराधी 22. Stubble – खूंटीदार खेत 65. Resemble – िदृश होना, िमान होना
207. Distortion – विकृनत 23. Creature – प्राणी, िीि 66. Quiver – फड़कना
208. Frivolous – गंभीरता िे विचार न 24. Thrive – फलना-फूलना, िीविका 67. Feather – पंख
करने िाला, ओछा चलाना 68. Borrow – उधर लेना, मांगना
209. Resent – नाराि होना, बुरा मानना 25. Treatment – आचरण, उपचार 69. Supper – रात का भोिन
210. Decent – उपयुि, अच्छा 26. Lay egg – अंडा देना 70. Diligent – पररश्रमी
211. Soberly – िादगी िे, गंभीर भाि िे 27. Complicated – िहटल 71. Thrift – कमखची, नकफायत
212. Contempt – अपमान, मानहानन 28. Commercialized – व्यििावयक 72. Tremor – कंपकंपी
213. Withhold – रोकना 29. Cheap – ििा 73. Peculiar – विजचत्र, अिीब
214. Smother – दबाना 30. Peck – चुगना 74. Disappointment – ननराशा
215. Absurdity – बेहूदगी 31. Nourishment – आहार 75. Amass – िमा करना
216. Pooled money – धनराजश 32. Bare – खाली 76. Finality – अंनतम स्थिनत
217. Combine – व्यापार-िंघ 33. Straw – पुआल 77. Blow – झटका, धक्का, आघात
218. Badger – पीछा पड़ना 34. Caller – मुलाकाती 78. Concession – छूट, अनुदान
219. Heckle – प्रश्नों िे तंग करना 35. Religiously – ननष्ठापूिवक, ईमानदारी 79. Momentarily – पल भर के ललए
220. Tenure – कायवकाल, अवधकार िे 80. Shade – छाया, परदा
221. Consent – िहमनत 36. Basin – वमट्टी की कटोरी 81. Prompting – उत्साह, बढ़ािा
222. Resort – उपाय 37. Shelf – तख़्ता 82. Pulpit – मंच
223. Mould – ढालना, बनाना 38. Cupboard – अलमारी 83. Proposition – िुझाि, प्रिाि
224. Sole – अकेला 39. Beyond – पहुाँच िे बाहर 84. Distracted – विचललत, तंग
225. Crisis – िंकट 40. Laying pullets – अं डा दे ने वाली 85. Vague – अननलित, अस्पष्ट
226. Deity – देिी, देिता मुर्गिंयााँ 86. Fertilizer – उिवरक
227. Invoke – स्मरण करना, आह्वाहन 41. Hawk – फेरी लगाना 87. Inviolate – अक्षत, पवित्र
करना 42. Segregate – अलग करना 88. Ultimate – अत्यंत
43. Nail – कील िे िड़ना 89. Incubator – अंडे िेने की मशीन
The Earth 90. Assurance – आश्वािन, हदलाशा
44. Vainly – व्यथव
1. Seem – मालूम पड़ना
45. Outgrow – विकसित होना 91. Strip – भूभाग, पट्टी
2. Possession – िंपवत्त, आवधपत्य
46. Cherish – पालना, िाँिोना 92. Patch – धब्बा
3. Plough – हल
93. Tilled – िोता हुआ
4. Cart – ठे लागाड़ी 47. Yield – मान लेना, हर मानना
94. Appearance – रूप-रंग
5. Bony – दुबला-पतला 48. Stubbornly – जज़द में आ कर
95. Flesh – मााँि, चरबी
6. Mare – घोड़ी 49. Sweat – पिीना
96. Lorry – माल ढोने िाली गाड़ी
7. Drag – खींचना 50. Preacher – उपदेशक 97. Fetch – लाना
8. Rough – ऊबड़-खाबड़ 51. Congregation – िभा, मंडली 98. Gauge – अनुमान लगाना, आाँकना
9. Plot – िमीन, खेत 52. Chapel – प्राथवनालय 99. Apparent – प्रत्यक्ष, परतीत,
10. Surrender – हार मानना 53. Countryside – देहात, ग्रामीण क्षेत्र दृश्यमान
11. Insane – बेिुध, पागल 54. Nourish – पालना 100. Stockings – मोज़ा
12. Imbecile – माती-मंद 55. Thistle – कााँटेदार पौधा 101. Breast – छाती (स्त्री का)

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102. Beneath – के नीचे 8. Classic – उत्कृष्ट 50. Exhausted – क्षीण, थका-मााँदा

103. Smock – कमीि, स्तस्त्रयों की ढीली 9. Reckon – माना िाना, िमझा िाना 51. Initiative – पहल, प्रिाि
कमीि 10. Persist – डटे रहना 52. Provide – मुहैया करना, देना
104. Undistinguished – िाधारण, 11. Tend – देखभाल करना 53. Undertake – उत्तरदावयत्व लेना, भार
अनाकिवक 12. Passionate – िोशीला उठाना
105. Vacate – खाली करना 13. Permeate – तर करना, िींचना 54. Spirit – आत्मा, िोश
106. Removal – अलगाि 14. Merely – केिल 55. Impression – अिर
107. Chronicle – िो लंबे िमय िे चला 15. Exquisitely – नज़ाकत िे 56. Reverence – श्रिा, आदर
आ रहा है 16. Enunciate – उच्चारण करना 57. Renunciation – त्याग
108. Sacrifice – बललदान, त्याग 17. Bluster – धमकी 58. Trustworthy – विश्वािी
109. Antagonism – मनमुटाि 18. Accusation – आरोप 59. Homage – भक्ति, श्रिांिलल
110. Invisibly – अप्रत्यक्ष रूप िे, िो 19. Unyielding – अटल, दृढ़ 60. Mud-walled house –
हदखाई न दे 20. Idealism – आदशविाद 61. Thatch – छप्पर, घाि-फूि
111. Actuality – हकीकत में 21. Inevitable – अननिायव, िो टल न 62. Curious – अद्भुत
112. Scour – मााँिना िके 63. Cage – डोली, खटोला
113. Saucepans – डेगची, बतवन 22. Tutelage – िंरक्षण, देख-रेख 64. Amazement – अचिा
114. Soda – िोडा, िफव 23. Conqueror – वििेता 65. Greetings – अवभिादन
115. Throughout – िम्पूणव 24. Embittered – कड़िाहट िे भरा 66. Piercing – तेि, पैना
116. Bean – सिक्का 25. Rebel – बगाित करना 67. Scrupulously – ननष्ठापूिवक
117. Confine – कैद करना 26. Immediately – तुरंत 68. Squat – पालथी मारकर बैठना
118. Indoors – घर के अंदर 27. Compel – दबाि डालना, वििश 69. Earnestly – उत्सुकता िे
119. Stair – िीढ़ी करना 70. Luncheon – दोपहर का खाना
120. Preoccupied – 28. Complication – उलझन, िहटल 71. Apparently – वबलकुल, प्रत्यक्ष रूप
121. Plump – गुद्देदार, चबीिाला स्थिनत िे
122. Bewilderment – 29. Savagery – बहशीपन, हैिाननयत, 72. Fare – भोिन
123. Lodging – आिाि बेरहमी 73. Spinach – पालक
124. Immobile – स्थिर 30. Aggression – आक्रमण 74. Lentil – मिूर की दाल
125. Stupefied – स्तब्ध 31. Perceive – अनुभि करना, िमझना 75. Condiments – चटनी
126. Resignation – त्याग, िहन 32. Prophecy – भविष्यिाणी 76. Brass – पीतल
127. Grief – दुःख, कष्ट, िंताप 33. Invincible – अिेय, अनडग 77. Ewer – बतवन, तिला
128. Alight – नीचे उतरना 34. Shrink – सिकुड़ना, वबदकना 78. Cleanse – िाफ करना
129. Empty-handed – खाली हाथ 35. Triumph – िीत 79. Preliminary – प्रारंवभक
130. Pavement – फूटपाथ 36. Revolution – क्रांनत 80. Lowly task – गंदा काम, ननम्न काम
131. Downcast – मायूि, ननराश, नीचे 37. Indictment – अवभयोग, कलंक 81. Piled – ढेर
की ओर 38. Colonialism – उपननिेशिाद 82. Stimulate – उकिाना, बढ़ाना
132. Altogether – िम्पूणव, पूणव रूप िे 39. Frothing – झाग 83. Appetite – भूख
40. Superstructure – िहटल रचना, 84. Pottery – वमट्टी के बतवन
India Through Traveller’s Eye भिन 85. Inhospitality – अनतसथ नतरस्कार
1. Hue – रंग 41. Empire – िाम्राज्य 86. Fanatism – कट्टरता
2. Remind – याद हदलाना 42. Frothing – झाग 87. Acceptance – स्वीकृनत
3. Barbarian – िंगली, अिभ्य, खूंखार 43. Innately – िहि रूप िे 88. Motive – नीयत, प्रयोिन
व्यक्ति 44. Profound – गंभीर, ननपुण 89. Fairly – काफी हद तक,
4. Invader – आक्रमणकारी 45. Blaze – चमक 90. Well-to-do – अच्छा घराना,
5. Penetrate – घुिना 46. Corrupt – भ्रष्ट दौलतमंद
6. Auburn-haired – िुनहरे-भूरे बालों 47. Hasten – िल्दी करना 91. Gracefully –जशष्टाचारपूिवक
िाला/िाली 48. Famished – भूख िे बेिार 92. Kneel – घुटने के बल बैठना
7. Feature – मुखाकृनत, रूप 49. Enervated – कमिोर, शक्तिहीन 93. Bow – झुकना

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94. Universally – ििवत्र, हर िगह 30. Temper – वमिाि 72. Beseech – हाथ िोड़ना, प्राथवना
95. Achievement – उपलब्ब्ध 31. Wrought up – उत्तेजित करना
32. Tremble – कांपना 73. Argue – बहि करना
96. Absolute – पूणव
33. Eyelid – पलक 74. Principle – सििान्त
97. Goal – लक्ष्य, उद्देश्य
34. Twitch – फड़कना 75. Odd – बकिाि
98. Missionary – धमव-प्रचारक 35. Instant – तुरंत 76. Privilege – िौभाग्य
99. Utterly – पूणव रूप िे, ििवथा 36. Drop off – िोना, नींद आना 77. Thresh – बुरी तरह िे पीटना
100. Refusal – इंकार 37. Stab – कोंचना, भोंकना 78. Gypsy – बंिारा, ख़ानाबदोश
101. Over and over again – बार-बार 38. Lunatic – विजक्षप्त, बािला 79. Impertinent – गुिाख़, मुंहिोर
102. Measure – मापना 39. Doze – ऊाँघना, झपकी लेना 80. Landgrabber – िमीन हड़पने िाला
103. Puzzlement – पहेली, उलझन 40. Merchandise – व्यापार करना 81. Seize – कब्जा करना
41. Apron – पहनािा, िो कपड़ों के ऊपर 82. Carafe – िुराही, बोतल
A Marriage Proposal
पहना िाता है 83. Clutch – पकड़ना
1. Land owner – िमींदार
42. Shell – छीलना 84. Lung – फेफड़ा
2. Terribly – बहुत ज्यादा
43. Pea – मटर 85. Excruciating – अनत कष्टदायक
3. Hypochondriac – रोगभ्रमी
44. Hay – िूखी घाि 86. Vein – नि
4. Country house – ग्रामीण आिाि
45. Greedy – लोभी, लालची 87. Temple – कनपटी
5. Tails – एक प्रकार का कोट
46. Meadow – चरागाह 88. For goodness’ sake – भगिान के
6. Glove – दिाना
47. Mow – घाि काटना खानतर
7. Shake hands – हाथ वमलाना
48. Regret – पछताना, अफिोि होना 89. Precisely – ननलित रूप िे, ठीक-
8. Neglect – भुलाना
49. Scared – भयभीत ठीक
9. Dress up – कपड़ा पहनकर तैयार
50. Rot – िड़ना 90. Disputed – वििाहदत
होना
51. Ball – नृत्य िभा 91. Accustomed to – आहद होना
10. Esteemed – नप्रय, ििाननीय
52. Incidentally – िैिे, िंयोग िे 92. Robber baron – िागीरदार डकैत
11. Favour – कृपा करना, िहायता
53. Doll up – कपड़ा पहनकर तैयार होना 93. Litigate – मुकदमा करना
करना
54. Brief – िंक्षेप 94. Quibbler – बहानेबाि
12. Count on – भरोिा करना
55. Aware – अिगत, िानकार 95. Pettifogger – बेईमान आदमी
13. Beat about the bush – घूमानफरा
56. Estate – भूवम, ररयाित 96. Law-abiding – कानून को मानने
कर बात कहना
57. Inherit – िाररि होना िाला
14. Yearn – चाहना
58. Late – स्वगीय, मृत 97. Haul – घिीटना
15. Constant desire – हार्दिंक इच्छा,
59. Utmost – अत्यंत 98. Embezzlement – गबन, धोखाधड़ी
अटल इच्छा
60. Furthermore – इिके अनतररि, 99. Architect – जशिकार
16. Guidance – मागवदशवन
िाथ ही िाथ 100. Hunchback – कूबड़ा
17. Fervent – तीव्र, उत्साही
61. Recall – याद करना 101. Gambler – िुआरी
18. Blockhead – मूखव
62. Interrupt – टोकना, बात काटना 102. Scandalmongering – चुगली करने
19. Dumbstruck – भौंचक्का
63. Wedge – खूंटा गाड़ना, घुिा होना िाला
20. Sheer – अिली
64. Reasonable – वििेकी, तकविंगत 103. Schemer – िड्यंत्रकारी
21. Devil – शरारती
65. Fire bricks – ईंट पाथना 104. Vermin – दररिंदा, बदमाश, कीड़े-
22. Resist – काबू पाना, रोकना
66. Emancipation – मुक्ति मकोड़े
23. Shake – कााँपना
67. Statute – अवधननयम, कानून- 105. Brute – नीच
24. Waver – विचललत होना
व्यििा 106. Drag – घिीटना
25. Ideal – आदशव, उपयुि
68. Annoying – कष्टप्रद 107. Sue – केि करना
26. Housekeeper – घरबारी, गृहि
69. Tease – गुस्सा हदलाना 108. Stagger – लड़खड़ाना
27. Buzz – कोलाहल, चहलपहल
70. Own – माललक होना 109. Damn – वधक्कार
28. Palpitation – थरथराहट, घबराहट,
71. Practically – व्यािहाररक रूप िे, 110. Crook – धोखेबाि
कंपकंपी
िािि में 111. Chiseler – चालबाि
29. Awful – भयंकर
112. Scarecrow – काक-भगौड़ा, पुतला

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113. Monster – राक्षि 154. Rubbish – बकिाि Sweetest Love I Do Not Goe
114. Boot – लात मारना 155. Exasperate – क्रोध हदलाना 1. Sweetest Love – नप्रयतमा, प्यारी
115. Clown – भांड, गाँिार 156. Inferior – नीच, घहटया 2. Wearinesse – थकान, ऊब
116. Freak – िनकी 157. Idiotic – बेतुका, मूखव 3. Fitter – उपयुि, बेहतर
117. Colossal – बहुत बड़ा 158. Mutt – दोगला कुत्ता 4. Dye(die) – मरना
118. Pipsqueak – नीच आदमी 159. Sincerely – ईमानदारी िे 5. ‘tis best = it is best
119. Upstart – घमंडी 160. Work up – उत्तेजित करना 6. To use my selfe in jest = to get
120. Collapse – नगरना 161. Muzzle – थूथन used to the idea of death
121. Wail – ऊाँची आिाि में रोना 162. Count – कुलीन िन through mock imitations
122. Hysterical – उन्मत्त 163. Lag behind – नपछड़ना 7. In jest = By the way of a joke,
not seriously
123. Grab – पकड़ना, दबोचना 164. Assistant – िहायक
8. Fain’d deaths – कािननक मृत्यु
124. Shoot – गोली मारना 165. Crop – चाबुक िे मारना
9. Yesternight – कल रात
125. Yell – चीखना 166. Fly off the handle – क्रोवधत होना,
10. Hence – यहााँ िे
126. Goddamn – धत् तेरी क्रोध में आना
11. Yet – इि िमय, अभी
167. Whip – कोड़ा मारना
127. Grown-up – ििान 12. Desire – इच्छा
168. Envious – ईष्यावलु
128. Culprit – दोिी 13. Sense – िमझ
169. Spite – ईष्याव, डाह
129. Numb – सुन्न हो जाना, स्तब्धब्ध हो 14. Then fear not mee = do not be
170. Mimic – नकल उतारना
afraid that I would be late in
जाना 171. Wobble – लड़खड़ाना returning
130. Jabbing – प्रहार, धक्का, चुभन 172. Meddle with – हिक्षेप करना 15. Wing – पंख
131. Hunt – जशकार करना 173. Intrigue – िाजिश 16. Spur – ििह, छोटा रािा
132. Grouse – तीतर 174. Backstab – पीठ में छुरा घोंपना 17. Feeble – कमिोर एिं बेबि
133. Harvest – फिल काटना 175. Upstart – घमंडी 18. Good fortune – अच्छा िमय/पल
134. Hound – जशकारी कुत्ता 176. Fogy – पुराने खयालात का 19. Adde – बढ़ाना
135. Twist – मरोड़ आना, ऐंठना 177. Hypocrite – कपटी 20. Recall – िापि लाना
136. Overpay – ज्यादा दाम देना 178. Partridge – तीतर 21. Bad chance – दुःख की घड़ी
137. Vastly – बेहद 179. Henpecked – िोरू का गुलाम 22. Joyne – िुड़ना
138. Superior – बेहतर 180. Faint – बेहोश, मूसछित, जशसथल 23. To strength – िाहिपूिवक, डटकर
139. Assure – विश्वाि हदलाना, आश्वािन 181. Weakling – कमिोर हदल का 24. Art – कौशल
देना आदमी, बुज़हदल 25. Length – लंबा होना या लंबा करना
140. Measure – मापना 182. Windbag – बातूनी 26. O’r = over
141. Retrieve – पता लगाना, पुनः प्राप्त 183. Sick – बीमार 27. O’r us to advance = to overtake
करना, ढूाँढकर लाना 184. Saddle – काठी, िीट us and afflict us
185. Breathe – िांि लेना 28. Sigh’st – विलाप करना
142. Cand – कुछ भी, चंद
186. Tug – झटका देना, खींचना 29. Winde – हिा
143. Pedigreed – बनढ़या नस्ल का
187. Sleeve – कपड़े की बााँह 30. Kind – हहतकर, कृपालु
144. Piebald – जचतकबरा
188. Moan – रोना, कराहना 31. Unkindly – क्रनष्ठुरतापूववक
145. Figure out – पता लगाना, हल
189. Glance – देखना, निर डालना 32. Decay – क्षीण होना
करना
190. Stir – हलचल 33. Divining heart - heart that tries
146. Breed – नस्ल
147. Demon – दुष्ट आत्मा, राक्षि 191. Revive – होश में लाना, िगाना to guess or know beforehand the
coming events
148. Contradiction – प्रनतिाद 192. Enchante – प्रिन्न
34. Forethinke – पूिावनुमान करना,
149. Nag – टट्टू, खच्चर 193. Dammit – लानत है
पहले िे िोच रखना
194. Launch – छोड़ना, फेंकना
150. Insist – हठ करना 35. Ill – अशुभ
195. Marital – िैिाहहक
151. Obviously – स्पष्ट रूप िे 36. Destiny – ननयनत
196. Bliss – आनंद, िुख
152. Retarded – मनत-मंद 37. Take part – पक्ष लेना
197. Champagne – शैम्पेन
153. Scream – जचल्लाना 38. Feares fulfil = fears may come
198. Outshout – ख़ूब ज़ोर िे जचल्लाना
true
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39. Part – िुदा करना, अलग करना 22. Waterfall – झरना 41. Bloom – खखलाना, खूबिूरत बनाना
23. Bless – राहत देना 42. Stubble plain – खूंटीदार खेत
Song of Myself 24. Traveller – यात्री 43. Wailful – शोकपूणव
1. Celebrate – िश्न मनाना
25. Last distress – मौत 44. Choir – गीत
2. Assume – मानना, िमझना
45. Gnat – नपस्सू
3. Atom – कण To Autumn 46. Mourn – विलाप करना
4. Belong to – िे िंबंध रखना 1. Season – मौिम
47. Shallow – सछछला पानी, कम गहरा
5. As good – almost same 2. Mist – कुहािा
48. Bleat – वमवमयाना
6. Loaf – घूमना 3. Mellow – नरम एिं मीठा, पक्का हुआ
49. Bourn – नकनारा, छोर
7. Lean – िहारा लेना, झुककर बैठना 4. Fruitfulness – भरपूर
50. Hedge-cricket – हटड्डा
8. At ease – आराम िे 5. Conspire – योिना बनाना
51. Treble – उच्च स्वर
9. Observe – ध्यान िे देखना 6. Load – लादना
52. Whistle – चहचहाना, सिटी बिाना
10. Cease – अंत होना, रुकना 7. Bless – िमृिशाली बनाना
53. Garden croft – बगीचे का बाड़ा
11. Creeds – धमव मत 8. Vine – अंगूर की लत्ता
54. Gather – एकवत्रत होना
12. Schools – िामाजिक िोच 9. Thatch – छ्प्प्पर
13. In abeyance = In a temporary 10. Eaves – ओरी, छिा 55. Twitter – चहचहाना
state of being stopped 11. Moss’d – काई लगा
14. Retire = Go to bed An Epitaph
12. Ripeness – वमठाि
15. Sufficed = पयावप्त 1. Epitaph – स्मारक, िमावध-लेख
13. Core – बीच का भाग
16. Harbour – विश्वाि करना, मन में 14. Swell – बड़ा करना 2. Lie – लेटना
रखना 15. Plump – गुद्देदार बनाना 3. Light of step and heart – खुले
17. Hazard – िोखखम 16. Shell – सछलका विचारों िाला, स्वच्छंद
18. Check – अंकुश 17. Kernel – बीि 4. Ever – हमेशा
18. Set – लगाना
Now The Leaves Are Falling 5. Vanish – गायब हो िाना, नष्ट हो
19. Bud – कलल
Fast िाना
20. O’re-brimm’d – अत्यवधक भरा
1. Nurse – पररचाररका 6. Pass – गुिर िाना
हुआ
2. Last – बचना 7. However – नकतना भी, यद्यनप
21. Clammy – जचपकदार
3. Grave – कब्र
22. Cell – कोजशका 8. Rare – दुलवभ, अिाधारण
4. Pram – बच्चों की गाड़ी
23. Amid – के बीच 9. Crumble – मरना
5. Roll on – लुढ़कना
24. Store – भंडार
6. Whispering neighbour – यमदूत The Soldier
25. Seek – खोिना
7. Pluck – अलग करना 1. Corner – कोना
26. Abroad – बाहर
8. Real delight = life
27. Granary floor – भंडार घर 2. Forever – हमेशा के ललए
9. Freeze – अकड़ िाना
28. Half-reap’d – आधा काटा हुआ 3. Rich = having high quality
10. Lonely – शांत, तन्हा 4. Dust – वमट्टी
29. Furrow – क्यारी
11. Separate knees – अलग-अलग 5. Conceal – सछपाना
30. Drowse – औंघना
घुटने
31. Fume – िुगंध 6. Bear – िन्म देना
12. Follow – पीछे -पीछे चलना
32. Spare – बचाना, छोड़ना 7. Shape – आकार देना
13. Raise stiffly – बेरुखी िे ऊपर उठना 8. Make aware – िमझदार बनाना
33. Swath – खेत मागव
14. Reprove – वधक्कारना 9. Way – मागव
34. Gleaners – फिल चुनने िाले
15. Starve – भूखे रहना
35. Steady – स्थिर 10. Roam – घूमना-नफरना
16. Trolls – नपशाच, शैतान
36. Laden – लदा हुआ 11. Breathe – िांि लेना
17. Scolding – आक्रोश 12. Wash – धुलना
37. Brook – नहर
18. Nightingale – बुलबुल 13. Evil – बुराई
38. Patient – िब्र
19. Dumb – मौन
39. Oozing – ररिाि 14. Shed away – छुटकारा पाना, मुक्ति
20. Angel – देिदूत
40. Barred – खाली वमलना
21. Ahead – आगे

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15. Pulse – मनोभाि 28. Alibi – बहाना 7. Dark – गहरा

16. Eternal – अनंत 29. Spare – बचाना 8. Pitcher – घड़ा, मटकी
17. Sight – दृश्य, निारा 9. Fissure – दरार
18. Happy – िुखद
Fire-Hymn 10. Gloom – उदािी, वििाद
1. Burning ghat – श्मशान घाट
19. Laughter – ठहाका 11. Trail – लटकाना
2. Erupt –ऊपर ननकलना, भभक उठना
20. Gentleness – िभ्यता, जशष्टता 12. Slack – पतला
3. Phosphorescence – स्फुरदीनप्त
21. Peace – शांनत 13. Edge – नकनारा, छोर
4. Wander – घूमना
22. Heaven – स्वगव 14. Rest – रखना, हटकाना
5. Ghost – भूत-प्रेत
15. Throat – गला
Macavity: The Mystery Cat 6. Frighten – डराना
16. Bottom – ननचला भाग, तल
1. Defy – चुनौती देना, उपेक्षा करना 7. Passer-by – राहगीर
17. Drip – चूना, टपकना
2. Bafflement – उलझन, िरददव 8. Moonlight – चााँदनी
18. Tap – नल
3. Scotland yard - headquarters 9. Scuttle – भागना, दौड़ना
19. Sip – पीना, घूाँट लेना
of London police 10. Bone – हड्डी
20. Straight – िीधा
4. Flying Squad - a small group of 11. Once – एकबार
21. Gum – मिूढ़ा
police officers that is trained to 12. Stroll – टहलना
act quickly, especially when 22. Lift – ऊपर उठाना
13. Bank – तट, नकनारा
there is a serious crime 23. Cattle – मिेशी
5. Levitation – छ्प्लांग 14. Ember – अंगारा, ज्वाला
24. Vaguely – अस्पष्ट रूप िे
6. Stare – एकटक देखना 15. Ash – राख
25. Flicker – बाहर ननकालना,
7. Coat – बाल 16. Swallow – ननगलना
लझलवमलाना
8. Uncombed – वबखरा हुआ 17. Half-cooked – आधा-पक्का
26. Forked – कााँटेदार
9. Sway – घुमाना 18. Limb – अंग
27. Muse – रुकना
10. Wide awake – चौकन्ना 19. Bore – दोनों
28. Moment – पल, क्षण
11. Fiend – राक्षि 20. Witness – देखना, िाक्षी होना
29. Stoop – झुकना
12. Feline – वबल्ली प्रिानत 21. Debauchery – व्यवभचार, भ्रष्टाचार
30. Bowel – अंदरूनी भाग
13. Monster of depravity – िबिे 22. Stub – टुकड़ा
31. Innocent – मािूम, वििहीन
बड़ा दुराचारी 23. At times – कभी-कभी
32. Venomous – वििैला, िहरीला
14. Outwardly – देखने में 24. Zoroastrian – पारिी धमव का
33. Stick – लाठी
15. Respectable – शरीफ़, भोला-भाला 25. Clench – मुट्ठी बााँधना, िकड़ना
34. Break – प्रहार करना
16. Rifle – लूटना 26. Knot – गांठ
35. Finish off – खत्म कर देना
17. Stifle – गला घोंटना 27. Pain – ददव, पीड़ा
36. Confess – स्वीकार करना
18. Peke – Pekinese dog 28. Swear – किं खाना
37. Glad – प्रिन्न
19. Treaty’s gone ashtray - 29. Sin – पाप, अपराध
38. Quiet – शांत
Agreement violated 30. Forgetfulness – भूल
39. Depart – प्रिान करना
20. Admiralty - the branch of law 31. Consign – िौंपना
40. Peaceful – शांनतमय
that deals with ships and 32. Flame – लौ, ज्वाला
shipping 41. Pacified – िंतुष्ट
33. Hymn – िुनतगान, भिन
21. Scrap of paper – कागि के टुकड़े 42. Cowardice – कायरता, बुज़हदली
34. Rebellious – बागी
22. Investigate – पता लगाना, छानबीन 43. Dare – िाहि करना
करना, िांच करना Snake 44. Perversity – हठ, दुराग्रह
23. Disclose – बताना, उघारना, भेद 45. Long – चाहना
1. Trough – नाद, टंकी
खोलना 46. Humility – विनम्रता
2. Heat – गमी
24. Secret Service – खुखफ़या विभाग 47. Honoured – ििाननत
3. Deep – िायी, जििकी िड़ नीचे
25. A licking of thumbs – अंगूठा 48. Afraid – डरा हुआ
तक हो
चूिना 49. Seek – खोिना
4. Strange – अिाधारण, अिीब
26. Deceitfulness – चालबािी, 50. Hospitability – ित्कार,
5. Scented – खुश्बूदार
धूतवतता मेहमानदारी
6. Shade – छाया
27. Suavity – जशष्टता (हदखािे का) 51. Secret – भूवमगत, गुप्त

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52. Dreamily – स्वनिल ढंग िे 95. Accurse – शाप देना, दोिी ठहराना
53. Forked night – वबिली िाली रात 96. Exile – ननिाविन
54. Lick – चाटना 97. Uncrowned – बेताि
55. Around – चारों ओर 98. Underworld – पाताल लोक
56. Unseeing – अदृश्य 99. Due to – हकदार होना
57. Turn – मुड़ना 100. Crown – मुकुट पहनाना
58. Thrice – नतबारा 101. Lord – रािा, ईश्वर
59. Adream – स्वि देखते हुए 102. Expiate – प्रायलित करना, क्षनतपूनति करना
60. Proceed – आगे बढ़ाना 103. Pettiness – तुच्छता, नीचता
61. Curving – घुमाि, मुड़ा हुआ
My Grandmother’s House
62. Climb – चढ़ना
1. Far away – बहुत दूर
63. Dreadful – डरािना
2. Withdraw into silence – खामोशी छा िाना
64. Hole – छे द
3. Move – घूमना
65. Ease – ढीला करना, पतला करना
4. Among – के बीच
66. Farther – आगे, दूर
5. Young – छोटा
67. Horror – दर, भय
6. Turn cold – ठं डा हो िाना, िम िाना
68. Protest – विरोध, अस्वीकार
7. Peer – झांकना
69. Withdraw – खींचना
8. Through – िे होकर, के माध्यम िे
70. Horrid – डरािना
9. Blind eyes of windows – बंद खखड़की
71. Deliberately – िानबूझकर
10. Frozen – ठं डा एिं स्थिर, िमा हुआ
72. Overcome – उबरना, काबू पाना
11. Wild – बेहद, प्रचंड
73. Pick up – उठाना
12. Despair – ननराशा
74. Clumsy – बेडौल
13. Armful – मुट्ठीभर
75. Log – लकड़ी, कुंदा
14. Darkness – अंधकार
76. With a clatter – झटके िे
15. Lie – रखना, लेटाना
77. Suddenly – अचानक
16. Bedroom – शयनकक्ष
78. Behind – पीछे
17. Brooding – विचारमग्न
79. Convulse – हहलना, ऐंठना
18. Darling – नप्रय
80. Undignified – अशोभनीय
19. Proud – गौरिमय
81. Haste – गनत, िेग
20. Lose – खोना
82. Writhe – छटपटाना
21. Beg – विनती करना, नगड़नगड़ाना
83. Lightning – वबिली
22. Stranger – अिनबी
84. Lip – खींच लेना, ननगल लेना
23. At least – कम िे कम, नकिी भी तरह
85. Intense – तेि
86. Stare – टकटकी लगाकर देखना
87. Fascination – मोह
88. Immediately – तुरंत
89. Regret – पछताना
90. Paltry – तुच्छ, नीच
91. Vulgar – अभद्र, अश्लील
92. Mean – घहटया
93. Act – काम
94. Despise – उपेक्षा करना, घृणा करना
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