Choose any two of the extracts given below and answer the questions

that follow in 50 - 60 words each:

(I) How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago.

(i) Who are ‘she’ and ‘he’? What did ‘she’ rememberabouttheir

first meeting?

(ii) What had happened during the last few weeks?

(II) As the first were made to blind others; these which came behind will work upon ourselves, and blind our eyes. If our loves faint, and westwardly decline;

To me thou, falsely thine;

And I to thee mine actions shall disguise.

(i) What does the poet mean by ‘the first’? How are ‘the first’

different from those which come behind?

(ii) What happens when the loves decline westwardly?

(III) Only once did he cup his hands, to take the water from mine. Such a little water, yet that water grew to a fathomless, boundless sea. In it flowed all the seven seas in one, and my caste was drowned, and my birth washed clean.

(i) Who is talking to whom? Which event is the speaker referring to?

(ii) What effect did it have on the speaker?

(I) (i) ‘She’ in this line is Eveline and ‘he’ is Frank. She remembered how he stood at the gate with his peaked cap pushed to the back of his head, his hair tumbling forward on his bronze face.

(ii) Over the last few weeks, they had begun to learn about one another and like each other. They soon got attracted to each other and fell in love.

(II) (i) The ‘first’ refers to the rays of the sun, which can be seen as reflecting the force of love that brought the two lovers together in the first place. The rays which came from behind are meant to allow others to look at the lovers’ example and learn, while the lovers themselves become more withdrawn from one another.

(ii) The westward decline of love shows the decay of the love relation and how the lovers are now withdrawn from each other, and possess secrets, and are no longer completely transparent to one another.

(III) (i) In the above-mentioned lines, Prakriti is speaking with her mother. She is referring to the time when the Buddhist monk Ananda accepted the water she had offered him.

(ii) The speaker fell in love with the beautiful monk who accepted water from the hands of a chandal girl. Due to this action of his, she fell in love with him and asked her mother to perform a spell on him to win his love.