Read the given extracts and answer the questions that follow.

'Instead, he agreed, almost without argument, to marry a girl she had picked out for him in her own village.'

(a) Rakesh lived up to his mother's expectation. How?

(b) What had she feared?

(c) Rakesh was a truly 'devoted' son. Why?

(a) Rakesh lived up to his mother’s expectation. She was quite fortunate that her famous doctor-son rubbed her feet during her last days. His mother died soon after, giving up the ghost with a sigh that sounded positively happy, for it was her own son who ministered to her in her last illness and who sat pressing her feet at the last moment, such a son as few women had borne.

(b) Rakesh’s mother gloated chiefly over the strange fact that he had not married in America, had not brought home a foreign wife as all her neighbours had warned her he would. She had always feared this. Instead he agreed, almost without argument, to marry a girl she had picked out for him in her own village, the daughter of a childhood friend, a plump and uneducated girl, it was true, but so old-fashioned, so placid, so complaisant that she slipped into the household and settled in like a charm, seemingly too lazy and too good-natured to even try and make Rakesh leave home and set up independently, as any other girl might have done.

(c) Rakesh was deeply aware of the sacrifices made by his parents to give him an education. Rakesh was a truly 'devoted' son. It was the achievement of a lifetime and it took up Rakesh’s whole life. At the time he set up his clinic his father had grown into an old man and retired from his post at the kerosene dealer’s depot at which he had worked for forty years, and his mother died soon after, giving up the ghost with a sigh that sounded positively happy, for it was her own son who ministered to her in her last illness and who sat pressing her feet at the last moment such a son as few women had borne.