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Jul 29, 2016

Dawn at Puri: Mahapatra

                   Dawn at Puri By Jayanta Mahapatra

Dawn at Puri is one of the most beautiful poems written by Jayanta Mahapatra laced with thought and idea, imagery and reflection. A modern poem by a modern Indian English poet, it is short, but reflective. Just a few lines of poesy mesmerize our imagery and thought which the readers can feel it. The poem is scenic and landscapic too. The Jagannath Puri temple complex with the sea beach is the purview of deliberation.

Crows, innumerable in number, keep cawing, crowing and flying around with the skull lying on the sands tell of different stories. A void all around and a kingdom hit by want, hunger and depravity. This is how he begins the poem set with the three-liners. This is but one scene.

While on the other the white-clothes wearing widows are lined up in rows and queues to enter the Great Temple, who have nothing left with them, all standing in utter submission, held by strong faith and belief.

Their eyes with the looks cast appear to be the ones caught in a net hanging by the dawn’s shining strands of faith. Faith and doubt, uncertainty of living and shaky presence of man seem to possess unawares. What is faith? Where is God? What it in one’s karma, what it in one’s dharma? How the suffering?

Again, the light dazzling light, radiating and glistening is so frail and flimsy that it takes to, falls upon the lepers lying defaced and assembled together clamouring for deliverance. Here one can reflect upon life’s meaning if one likes to search for. Here lies the pity of life. The element of pity purges and galvanizes us. What to ask for? What to get?

And in the meantime, a little far off, one can see the solitary pyre burning on the sands adjacent to the temple complex which also engages the ageing mother of his.

She also wants it that she be cremated here after her death keeps shifting and changing places as do keep desire, shadow, light and imagery.
  
Endless crow noises
A skull in the holy sands
tilts its empty country towards hunger.

White-clad widowed Women
past the centers of their lives
are waiting to enter the Great Temple

Their austere eyes
stare like those caught in a net
hanging by the dawn's shining strands of faith.

The fail early light catches
ruined, leprous shells leaning against one another,
a mass of crouched faces without names,

and suddenly breaks out of my hide
into the smoky blaze of a sullen solitary pyre
that fills my aging mother:

her last wish to be cremated here
twisting uncertainly like light
on the shifting sands

The title of the poem is just and appropriate as it is about the dawn breaking upon in the vicinity of Puri as if someone were photographing the Puri temple complex and the sea adjacent to. The idea is one of imagery, thought and reflection and the images like those of the photographer. Endless crow with the noises is the trailer of the starting, the picture of the poem. A holy skull spooky and reminiscent of tells a different story of man and the world, life and afterworld imagery. What is existent here? What is it that lives in here?  Human hunger, the hunger of the belly is the main thing.
The smoky blaze of the pyre too is a heart-rending scene. One day he was alive, one day he is burning on the funeral pyre, is the thing. The wish of the poet’s mother represents the wish of every Hindu as Jagannath Puri is the swargadwara through which one may enter the gateway to heaven. The cawing of the crows tells of hunger, want and scarcity.

The words which the poet has used in are very beautiful words and expressions. What is life? Where to go? He has taken them all while clutching it all with just one dawn. Endless crow noises, a holy skull in the sands, white-clad widowed women, dawn’s shining strands of faith, ruined, leprous shells leaning against one another, the smoky blaze of a sullen solitary pyre, twisting uncertainty light, etc. add to the beauty of the poem.
J
ayanta Mahapatra as a poet is first of all an imagist and then anything else we call him. There is word-play; there is photographic quality in him. A professor of physics, here he pictures a dawn break so nicely, engaging in thoughts and ideas so serious and profound.

Dawn at Puri clearly shows it how imagery has been used and applied in while dealing with the topic in hand. There is nothing as to derive for pleasure sake as he does not write with that in his mind. Those who do not know Mahapatra may not understand him at first go. They may take time to understand him as he is not a simple poet to be understood so easily. A poet of some Oriya background, he lapses into abstract thinking. Oriya places and things engage the poetic canvas of his and he longs for them in his creativity. Puri, Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Baleshwar and others figure in his poetry so often.

The words he has used in are very meaningful and his poems are really a break from tradition and convention. The linguistic beauty is so prominent in him in the form of word-play and imagery shifting as do man’s times and situations.

The starting lines of the small poem outwit us with the use of imagery and reflection, thought and idea, picture and penetration:

Endless crow noises
A skull in the holy sands
tilts its empty country towards hunger.

Crows cawing and flying and the skulls on the holy sands of Jagannath Puri lie in contrasting with each other, telling of a country hit by hunger, want, greed, thirst and the desire for fulfillment. Human thirst, human hunger, how to quench it, how to calm down, overcome it? The skull on the holy sands is a different view of life felt after the asthi-kalasha and the pinda-dana.

The smoky blaze of a sullen solitary pyre burning is indeed a very beautiful expression full of meaning and picture indescribable:

and suddenly breaks out of my hide
into the smoky blaze of a sullen solitary pyre
that fills my aging mother:

One who has not visited Puri will like to visit after reading the poem. Such is the charm of the poem, but the meaning lies in hidden from us. As the dawn-light is frail and shaky so is faith hankered after and professed by us. The world is full of contraries and contradictions. We are just walking shadows. Nothing exists here, lasts in. Nothing is permanent here. Where is God? In service or piety? One needs to reckon with. What are the widows left with? The poet leaves so many questions unanswered just for the readers to feel in. What should we done for them? What is our duty towards them? We have forgotten all that. Just as a photographer keeps taking the snaps so does he with his poetical camera under the shadow of the Great Temple of Jagannath Puri at dawn-break drawing parallels and comparing them with to reflect upon.



Jul 24, 2016

Hunger: Mahapatra

Hunger by Jayanta Mahapatra
Article by Bijay Kant Dubey

Hunger is one of the thoughtful poems ever written by Jayanta Mahapatara who is not merely an imagist, but a realist, a feminist, a modernist, a post-modernist and what not apart from being a nihilist, an existentialist and an iconoclast. Photography is his hidden love. Light and darkness the shades of his delving and he interprets in the form of creational sunrays falling and retreating so the images of life a study in silhouettes and shadows as seen through and opined. Poems come to him as photo-negatives to be washed for images . Nothing is what it seems to be and what seems to be is nothing.

A poet whose subject is physics here describes in what it has been left untouched. Flesh trade and woman trafficking is the point of deliberation. How the situations of life, impoverished circumstances force one to be at the crossroads of life? The small fisher girl is the mute artist of the poem whereas there lie in some main protagonists. The father and the customer, their indirect exchanges add to the poem and make it gloomier. A woman’s life, who knows it, what it in her palm lines? Where was she born, where will she go away? The crisscrosses of her fate-lines, who to foretell and predict it?

Though the poem is of a confessional slant, we are not sure of who the unknown listener is in the poem with whom the fisherman is talking for an exchange of money for body business. A poem of human lust and hunger, carnal desire and affection, it bears out from his within with a view to possessing the body and satisfying the voluptuous greed. The weight of the flesh he could not resist it. The fisherman just by the way asked him if he liked to have her trailing the nets which a father should not have, but did he did as for making a livelihood with so much of struggles and suffering.

The writerly protagonist followed him across the sprawling sands and his mind was engrossed in the flesh’s desires and inclinations. When enquired about the ride or adventure, he actually wished to be with and it culminated finally.

In the third stanza of the poem, the poet grows philosophical taking liberties with the language and escapades. He analyzes differently turning the persona impractical, holding it not responsible for, personifying. He tells of the poor shanty of the fisher man by the sea side made from haystacks, palm leaves and so on.

In the last stanza, he relishes upon, enjoys the physical contact. A small girl was offered to and she gave in. The father went away to appear again. The sky seemed to be scrambling, fell upon with the deal struck down.

The poem Hunger reminds us so many things, the life of the poor fisher men facing the furies of the sea, risking the life going to strike down in the sea. Even when the winds keep sighing by, foams and waves keep surging, they go down to fling the net and draw. Hunger as a poem reminds us of the flesh trade. J.M.Synge’s Riders to the Sea too is very much like it though the context may be different.

Hunger as a poem mesmerizes human hunger with the hunger of flesh. Why do people go to flesh trade? The human belly is at the root of all evils. The lust for the body too has not left behind man since the temptation and Adam and Eve and the resultant fall from heaven.

What is most painful is this that the silent sufferer of the poem is the fisher girl, a teenager of just fifteen. She is not the speaker of the poem. The writer and the fisher man are themselves the spokesmen, speakers of the poem striking a deal.

Jayanta Mahapatra as a poet too is sexual, not at all free sexual lust and greed. In Calcutta too he fails not to see the whorehouse and its billboards with the posters of the beauties dressing behind the curtain of the theatre.

Hunger is a poem of bodily lust, sexual gratification and voluptuous desire; possessive love, give and take relationship, love and hate theme, attraction and repulsion story. Man-woman relationship is the theme of the poem. It is better if we see the terracotta plates of the temples showing erotic love through ancient art.

Hunger by Jayanta Mahapatra
It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.
The fisherman said: Will you have her, carelessly,
trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words
sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.
I saw his white bone thrash his eyes.

I followed him across the sprawling sands,
my mind thumping in the flesh's sling.
Hope lay perhaps in burning the house I lived in.
Silence gripped my sleeves; his body clawed at the froth
his old nets had only dragged up from the seas.

In the flickering dark his lean-to opened like a wound.
The wind was I, and the days and nights before.
Palm fronds scratched my skin. Inside the shack
an oil lamp splayed the hours bunched to those walls.
Over and over the sticky soot crossed the space of my mind.

I heard him say: My daughter, she's just turned fifteen...
Feel her. I'll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
The sky fell on me, and a father's exhausted wile.
Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.
She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,
the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside.

One cannot admonish the poet’s love for sexuality as he refers to here and there very often and the flesh is heavy upon him. Jayanta as a poet is very intriguing and loves to play with words. He dusts the blackboard in such a way that one can never catch him red-handed. The twitches of the body and intricacies of human relationships have never left him and he loves to portray them. Sexual tirades and escapades have not left Jayanta and Pritsh behind as they love make a detour of sexuality.


When we read the poem, the images of the Thai and Ukrainian girls engaged in flesh trade come to the purview. Where have we reached? How poverty and modernity have taken a toll upon? For livelihood what can a man not do? Secondly, this human life too is very complex to be understood, the intricacies of our relationships. There are the words referring to carnal desire strongly.

Jul 19, 2016

Night of the Scorpion: Nissim Ezekiel

Night of the Scorpion: Nissim Ezekiel
Article Written by Bijay Kant Dubey, a famous regional poet


A note for Bijay Kant Dubey:
India, a land of great poets, often ignores its mainstream poets and the regional poet, Bijay Kant Dubey is such a name. Though he continuously writes poetry on natural and supernatural subjects and objects like that of Milton but hardly a research scholar  aware of his name. 

Dear readers, Literarism is happy to have an association with a writer like that of Dubey. Kindly show your love and attraction to the Poet Dubey. You can reach this mystical poet with the address poetbkdubey@gmail.com




Night of the Scorpion: Nissim Ezekiel
Article Written by Bijay Kant Dubey, a famous regional poet

The poet remembers the night when his mother was bitten by a scorpion as for the steady rain of ten hours would have driven it to crawl beneath a knapsack of rice to do this daredevilry and cause of unnecessary woe and affliction. Parting the poison-flash of his diabolic tail in the dark room, it risked the rain again and fled from.

Thereafter the tragedy, incident, happening, the peasants started coming in flocks to see his mother struck down in affliction. Buzzing the names of gods a hundred times came they to see her wishing early recovery and relief from suffering.

With the candles and oil lamps burning dimly and flickering abnormally, casting shadows over the mud-baked walls, came they foreboding good words of benediction and bliss. They searched for the evil one, the devilish and demoniac creature, but found it not hiding in around, gone after the satanic inject of pain.

With the names of the gods on the tongue, they searched in vain for the monster, the evil one, we mean the scorpion which bit the mother of the poet. They said it that the scorpion be there where it lay resting. The movement of it might have the impact on the blood of the mother if the dragon moved it further. They wished let it be so, as had been ordained otherwise. Again, they added the sins of her previous be diminished as per Hindu view of life. It happened as it had been in her fate and it had to happen. None could check it. This is but fate, lot, luck or destiny. The writ of destiny, one cannot change it, it is one’s karma, dharma. Let it be balanced.

It had been raining endlessly and the people had been all around the place with the mother lying at the centre whereas the discussions continuing with regard to the karmic effect, bhoga, papa-punya and pryaschita (repentance). Nissim as an alien insider was partaking all that just as a silent listener, not participating in that, just watching it all happening around. They had been talking and he had been hearing the talks. Proposition and disposition went on following one by one. He saw then agreeing, questioning and coming to a conclusion.

This body of flesh and blood needs to be purified, our evils to be purged out. Our karma and dharma need to be balanced. What we do we are accountable for, whether we accept it or not. Sin and virtue need to be balanced. A penance is a must for that; a repentance for it. Let her suffering decrease. Let the poison purify this body of flesh and desire.

There had been more and more men, more and more candles burning, more and more insects flying around. Sitting around the mother, they went on taking the names of gods, praying to in utter submission, wishing benediction for her.

The mother had been in pain twisting and twisting the body, groaning with miserably. His father a sceptic and rationalist he had his own to try to as poured a little paraffin oil on the bitten toe and lit it with a match and thereafter the flames feeding on and he saw it as being a spectator of all that events. Again to his curiosity, he saw the holy man performing the rites, the exorcist trying to tame the poison, the herbalist applying the herbal paste on the bitten toe. But after the expiry of the twenty hours, the sting lost its power and she returned to normalcy.

But when she came to her senses, she thanked God for choosing her, not her children and even sparing them.

Night of the Scorpion is not a poem, but a drama piece and it can be dramatized as such is the spectacle, an ordinary Indian scene turned into a poetic presentation so simply, so beautifully. Night of the Snake not, but Night of the Scorpion is the title. Had the former been, it would have been horrible and terrible, but Night of the Scorpion is lighter.

The scorpion, steady rain, diabolic tail, crawl beneath a sack of rice, dark room, giant shadows, mud-baked walls, sins of previous birth, misfortunes of next birth, sum of all evil, etc. add to the dramatic progression and presentation of the poem. The poem is a narrative no doubt, a dramatic spectacle, tamasha, a philosophical discourse on Indian karma and dharma, papa and punya contradicted with the rationalism and science background of his father.

I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison - flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room -
he risked the rain again.

The poet Nissim Ezekiel begins the poem in the style of Thomas Hood’s I Remember, I Remember to take it to the height and pedestal of the mystery, miracle and morality plays. Steady rain, mud-baked walls, sacks of rice, are the pictures of the Indian countryside.

The below-quoted lines smack of Indian philosophy and its essence with the kernels engrossed in karma and dharma:

May he sit still, they said
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
Again the lines stated here are full of the kernels of Indian philosophy:
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.

Such a thing it is in H.W. Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life and Robert Frost’s Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.

The below-quoted lines are really very spectacular :
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites
to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.

The last three lines are an embodiment of motherly compassion and expression foreboding good. None but a mother can say as such:

My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
and spared my children.


Night of the Scorpion by Nissim Ezekiel
I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison - flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room -
he risked the rain again.
The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.
With candles and with lanterns
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the mud-baked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made
his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.
May he sit still, they said
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh
of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through,
groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing,
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
He even poured a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites
to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.
My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
and spared my children.

Night of the Scorpion is one of the finest poems of Nissim Ezekiel dealing with Indian life and culture, thought and tradition as envisaged in the aftermath of a scorpion-bite. The text of the poem is that of the mother of Nissim has been bitten by a scorpion and she lying on floor, writhing in pain with the body twisting it miserably and the poet standing and staring dumbfounded, awe-struck. Do not ask, what did it happen then? The people started coming in groups flocking to see his mother. People had been busy otherwise, the poet’s father a rationalist applying the paraffin oil while the herbalists some herbal paste and the religionists trying to tame the poison through mantric effects or incantation, the priests and exorcists. But we are not sure what was he doing then? Was he planning to write a poem or just trying to capture and store the scene for future use to be retrieved and downloaded? Surely enough, be sure of it, he did not take the snaps with the wires plugged into the ears and the mobile handset connected with to post on Facebook, Twitter and Poem Hunter.Com. to relay it.

To criticize him, this is to say that he has done marvels with just the scorpion, but had he observed the charmers playing the wooden ‘been’ instrument and the cobras swaying to, what would he have? We just imagine, think it about. But what sort of scorpion it was, a blackly one or the wheatish? Perhaps he did not notice it, just imagined about as per the descriptions given.

Night of the Scorpion is an Indian poem by a non-Indian man, we mean by an Indian Maharashtrian Jew. So, rootlessness and alienation will definitely figure in while discussing the poem. Secondly, a convent boy he is describing it in his language the whole tamasha. The scorpion with the diabolic tail, hooked and crooked flashes upon the mind’s eyes and we fear within to imagine about. It is also true that sometimes it turns out fatal if the scorpion is old and big. Nissim describes the scene but relates not in the style of Karnrad’s Nagakanya and Iccha-nagin and Ramanujan’s Naga-panchami relating to. Had he been in the know of Bihula-Lakhinder’s story, he would have remembered that night. The poem is a little bit on the lines of Larwrence’s Snake and Mexico dreams.





Jul 14, 2016

Indian English Language: A Literary Perspective

Indian English Language: A Literary Perspective
By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Indian English is in reality whether you believe it or not neither Welsh English nor Irish English nor Cockney English nor Scottish English, neither King’s Standard nor Queen’s, neither of Oxford nor of Cambridge nor Harvard nor California nor New York nor Virginia. Neither Australian English nor the English spoken in New Zealand nor Caribbean English continuing from Rhodesia, called Zimbabwean now-a-days or is it South African variety. Indian English is Indian, purely Indian, Indian English, Hindustani English, a turbaned, dhoti-wearing with a tikka on the forehead and a clamp of hair hanging from the crown of the head man’s English. Indian English is Bengali English, Marathi English, Tamilian English, Indian English is Malyali English, Kannadiga English. We mean to say that there is nothing as that to show of Indian English, but to present how the speakers use and apply it for different purposes. Indian English is Bengali English, Bihari English, Oriya English, Haryanvi English, U.P.-ian English; Bhojpurian English, Gujarati English, Punjabi English, tribal English. There is nothing as Indian English, but it depends on how the people of multi-ethnic groups and races apply it, we mean the multi-lingual indigenous people suit it to their purposes. The people who speak Bengali, Hindi, Oriya, Assamese,  Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Malyalam, Kannada, Tamil, Urdu, all use it. The people who speak Sindhi, Kashmiri, Himachali, Santhali, Ho, Mundari, Karbi, Nagamese, Lepcha, Bhutia, Bhojpuri, Magadhi, Angika, Maithili, Nepali, Mizo, Manipuri, all those who use it. As the speakers are so the users of the language and their stress and accent keep varying from one to another. One who has read in his own way, pronouncing and learning it by rote will have to change the style to switch over to the possible standard tongue so that he may appear to be in his adopted speech.

India is so diverse and different, so exotic and wild, so impregnable and multifarious that one will not be able to understand it if one knows it not the history of the sub-continental features of Indian geography, art, philosophy, culture, society, living, manner, ethics, morality, spirituality, food habit, expression and so on. A society divided along caste, creed, sect and religion lines, complexion, ethnicity, race and lineage , culture, tradition and society, it is really difficult to understand the nomenclature and protocol prevailing. The cartography and mapping of the area too is so diverse and discriminating, separated from each and other that one cannot come to conclude what India is. India is a bundle of contradictions, so contrary and cutting across. The strata of society too lie in differing from. Language and regionalism created confusion from step to step and we could not do away with. Many men, many minds, the case with India and it still holds true.  Now in order to keep pace with the modern age and its times, we have started talking about   globalism and the global village, but the troubles lie in crossing over the contours of local cultures and traditions.

If the people speak Bengali in West Bengal, Angika, Magadhi, Maithili and Bhojpuri are in Bihar and Jharkhand in addition to tribal languages Pahari, Santali, Ho, Mundari and others. Hindi though is the main language spoken in Bihar and Jharkhand which but owes origins to some of these Aryan dialects. It has been seen on many occasions that an Angkia speaker has failed to converse in Hindi though he or she may understand it. Sometimes not very often we come across people, one speaking in Angkia dialect while the other answering in Bhojpuri. Similarly the two fellows somehow continue to share the thoughts in two dialects. The Biharis and the U.P.-ians touring West Bengal can face such a problem; the ones from M.P. and Chhatishgarh too may feel it while coming to Kolkata. Here just broken Hindi can bail one out and that too these days as for the filmy Hindi. Though one may do through Hindi or its allied dialects  in Bihar, U.P., M.P., Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, but how to do in Bengal, Assam, Orissa? Suppose you this too can be done in a struggling way somehow. But the tribal dialects are unintelligible. One cannot even a word of it. The Dravidian ones we the speakers of the Indo-Aryan stock can never. Malyalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, we can never, never understand, we mean those who speak Hindi. Nepali is understandable just like Bihari Hindi dialects. But Lepcha, Bhutia, we do not know. The businessmen, temple-pundits, tourists, travellers, cart men and military men, they have the prospects of being polyglots. In the past they used to be as for various transactions.  At that time classical Sanskrit used to be the lingua franca of India. Pali too worked as an international language of communication in the ancient times. Prakrit too had been so popular from which many Indo-Aryan languages have descended today. But those languages are dead today. The Hindi of Delhi is Urdu-ized, Persiania-nized, Arabia-ized apart from Punjabic and Haryanvi. Actually, it is Hindustani, Khari Boli, we may call it. Though for the films and commercialization, Bombay has swung to Hindi, but Hindi is actually not the native tongue of the local people. It is but Marathi of the chivalrous Marhattas calling not for truce easily if disturbed. Rajasthani is spoken in Rajasthan and Gujarati is in Gujarat. The Sindhi-speaking people too live in India who are actually from Sindh.

The experiences will be different if one tours and travels to the North-east, far off Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim, Nagaland, Tripura, Mizoram, Arunachal. The southern part of Bihar itself had been so full of forest lands and hills clustered around that it was impossible to go from one side to another. The Gangetic plains too were so crisscrossed by the Ganges and its tributaries that it was difficult to go from one side of the bank to another. But the Naga sadhus used to come traversing the far and wild. Similarly to go to Assam was mythical and legendary. Those who used to move perhaps rarely returned to. Ancient India actually was of sadhus and sadhaks and what they did continued with us. But superstition and fanaticism wreaked havoc as we failed to take to reason and logic. We could not reason it in the right perspective. Everything that we did we assigned it to God. Nothing thought we as to be humanly, everything but His Will or divinely. This is where we erred. The intruders, looters, plunderers, raiders and invaders would have wreaked havoc had the English not united the nation, peace-loving and shelter-giving to all. The medieval barbaric hordes would have finished it off what it was in India, its Indianism and Indianness, Indian art and culture, thought and tradition, religion and philosophy, spirituality and metaphysics, ethics and etiquette, morality and didacticism, what it was in its doctrine of maya and vasudheva kutumbakam. But the idea of British nationalism clicked and it saved us narrowly.

Indian English is the official English, the official language used in for administrative correspondences and the art of writing, delicacy and manner, etiquette and style. Indian English is the language of the officer’s English, we mean the sahib’s English, memsaheb and sahib going together with for a walk and the local Hindustani men seeing, in contrast with burquawallis and medieval purdahwallis. The saheb, bibi and gulam, chatting  whereas the local people unable to share with them, not up to their standard. The gulam can speak in English, but the locals cannot. The English took time to understand India and the Indians too took time to understand them.

India is not what we see it today, India was not what we saw it then. India has changed quite a lot. Absolved from the purdah pratha, the Sati system, the child marriage, it is reaching a milestone in terms of human welfare and development. Witch-hunting and social boycotts so inhuman and discriminating  used to make the hairs stand on. There had been so many superstitions and disbeliefs doing the rounds in our society hinging on the concept of dark medievalism. The experiments with the tantrical trends we could not take them in a right perspective. The other thing is this that we took the heart-matter so much in confidence rather than intellect too.  The heart not, but the brain is at the root such a scientific development, medical discovery and invention and of the making of life-saving drugs. But we the emotional Indians, exotic and indigenous, racial and multi-linguistic relied on the heart-matter, taking it to be the centre of all.

Had the English not fought battles and defeated the nawabs and rajahs, could they have? Had they not linked the far flung terrains and territories with roads, bridges and dams, how would have been the things? It is a matter of conjecture and reckoning. Had they not the post-office, the telegraph, the tram, the rail, how would it have been the India of today? The Indian politicians and leaders may talk big, but the reality far from.

To talk of Indian English is not to talk of it merely, but to trace the commercial routes of the trading companies and their water ways, the launching of the ships as or maritime activities and commercial transaction. How did they come upon following which routes? If we start the discussion in such a way then the names of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras will naturally come up for discussion. From Calcutta to Delhi they switched over the capital later on, linking with the whole of the world, exploring and discovering the ways and means of evolution.

They wrote the books first, studied the different aspects of Indian culture, art, philosophy, sculpture, painting, architecture, history, geography, political science, science, sociology, gemology, astrology, astronomy, poetry, literature, criticism, vernacular, local custom and dialect to be endowed as for administration.

Indian English is written English, not spoken English, grammatical English; a link language, a library-consulting one. Indian English is not an Indian variety of English, but a language learnt laboriously. It is not at all a natural expression, but a laboured one as the learners practice hard to speak in English.

When the television had not been, the mobile hand phone not, it was really difficult to be proficient in. Leave it now. Today global English has taken over and we talk about the features and aspects of different things in the glow of globlization, privatization and commercialization. English is not the lingua franca of the world merely, but global English too. French could have been, but it did not, German could have been, but it did not.

Indian English is but colonial English which but saved it India from onslaught and invasion, gave the idea of nationalism. Had they been not, we would not have. Had they not, medievalism would have finished it off whatever good it was in us. The invaders rather than reforming and correcting started demolishing, creating not, breaking in the name of religion and belief, how could it be if the majority of yours others and you yourself in a minority? Actually, the Indians had been peace-loving and unresisting so that they could sail through.

Indian English is institutional English, of colleges and schools, facilitating the British system of education not only, but offering the best of European thought and tradition. Indian English is of police stations, courts and administration.

Indian English is Indian English, dealing with Indian usage and idiom, the theme of Indianness, how much time did it take in becoming Indian, just like an English woman in sari, the process of Indianization it went through the test and ordeal of it and the Indianism it is aligned with while grappling with the word-stock of it, deriving from Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Sino-Tibetese and Austro-Asiatic linguistic stocks.

In the world today, when the age has advanced so much and the times seem to be ahead of, call it modern, post-modern or contemporary, how to view it in the aftermath of globalization when feel we proud to talk of the global village in the glow light of glasnost and perestroika. With the mobile phone set into the hands, the world has really shrunken it and we seem to be clutching into our fist or almost as a village location taken through the GPS picture. We have started priding over our English, impeccable English, grammatical not, spoken English.

Indian English if seen from the rural point of view is a thing of ‘go as you like’, pronounce as you can. The teachers who teach them too are not conversant with the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the language. If the teachers themselves know it not then what to say of, how to clutch it along for proficiency?

In the past it was a problem to converse with the people. Hindi too had not been what it is today. Hindi in the past had been a bundle of dialects.

Indian English after having refused to accept it a variety we are accepting it now-a-days. Even in the past it had an existence of own in the form of Anglo-Sanskrit versions. At that time Sanskrit studies, Asiatic researches, Oriental studies used to do rounds. A few of the Anglo-Indians who settled here got mixed with as could not resist to have the identity of own as for various reasons, heat and dust, Indian summer scorching it all, the wide spectrum, the varying climate and geographical conditions of the nation, just like a sub-continent in its spread and dimension, landscapic and panoramic, so exotic and indigenous. Somewhere the ranges of the hills clustered and encircling, somewhere deserts, somewhere arid and barren, somewhere greenery stupendous, somewhere the highlands uphill, somewhere the lands low-lying, flood-prone areas. Somewhere the climate colder, somewhere hotter for so long, is the thing. The dialects and vernaculars so different and varied that one speaker cannot converse with another directly for an exchange of thoughts and ideas.

English in the beginning had been of the presidencies, capitals with the headquarters of administration where there were courts, police stations and colleges. The Englishmen made a tryst with Indian history, society and sociology to cope with a nation so divided and impregnable, dotted with hills, uplands, highlands, seas, rivers, forest ranges, mountainous and hilly ranges, lakes, deserts, plateaus, exotic flora and fauna, not alike, but full of dissimilarities, contraries and contradictions. A land of so many people, so many minds, faiths, beliefs and ideologies, it had never been the same.

Actually we should have begun the topic linguistically, but we are here studying it literally. The beauty of it lies in the technical description of it. Phonetically we should have distinguished it, why the variation exists? It is not for the language, but for the pronunciation faulty and natural, native and regional. English as a language is stress-based whereas many of our languages syllable-based. Our sound-system is different from. We speak loudly, but they transmute it, presenting nasally, tonally as they know the art of speaking, the manner and style of presentation, receiving and answering, interrupting and interfering not. There is something as inborn tendencies which but we cannot deny it. Let me finish is the thing, but we the Indians interrupt and intercept, letting not finish.

But what is more interesting is this that many of the little-read, copy-cat Indians, fashionable and modish, stylish and contemporary, visiting and touring will fail the English in emulating them which but Gandhi and Nehru tried to do it earlier. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in the pants, boots and suit experimented he with English style and form, but failed in duplicating them. Nehru too experimented with after going to Cambridge and Harrow, but could not be. The convent-school boys and girls can give us the idea of ditto English speakers. Some just give the pose and some are impeccably up to mark.

Let us think about the first White women who would have stepped on the soil full of purdah and burqua, medievalism and superstitious thoughts and ideas, into the exotic lands of the indigenous people, the ismic ones differentiating on the lines of caste, creed, class and sect. Actually, it was not so. The cultures had been so different, local and regional with the diverse languages not, dialects and vernaculars separating them and creating misunderstanding.

Indian English, the history of it we cannot know it unless and until we know the opening of schools in India, of the hospitals, courts, offices and other institutions. We cannot if know we not about the introduction the post-office, the telegraph, the railway, the tram, the motor bus and so on. Indian English if we have to know it we should have first-hand knowledge of the routes, motorable and water ways.

Hindi, we talk about Hindi as the official language, Hindi replacing English is the thing to be felt, the voice of protest and internal displeasure as English of colonial masters representing foreign rule and administration. Officially, that is good as for, Angrezi hatao. Remove English not, the English and the elite people from politics so that the uneducated and loafers may be murkhamantris. Theoretically, we dispensed with it, but practically we hinged upon. As for fashion designers, beauticians, travelers, tourists, we could not discern it. The disco jockeys are using it in the mode of Hinglish, Benglish and so many ‘ishes’. As for the airhostesses we are unable to dismiss it, as for foreign policy and diplomacy, international relations we cannot do away with. If we say Angrezi hatao now, we may be beaten as people will definitely come out in its favour. Without English, heroes and heroines will turn into zeroes.

Actually, Angerzi hatao movement had been the gimmick of the non-English knowing Indian dehati politicians, the blunt bluff masters, the rural ruffians, goons and loafers turning into leaders, the deshi politicians. But when they come to power by sheer luck, they forget not to send their sons and daughters to convent schools for their education.

Now in the computer age, the age of science and technology, graphics and animation, the moblie phone and so-called globalization, glasnost and perestroika, commercialization and privatization, dislocation and displacement, what to do, how to dispense with English? If English is not then how shall we talk to, converse with?  In this world of managerial expertise and technical virtuosity, of media barons and biz gurus, land sharks and diplomatic hawks, we are helpless without.

Indian English had been a link language linking with the south with the north during the British period, especially from the linkage point of view. At that time it was a problem to know them. Barring the wandering fakirs and sadhus, none could know them. But credit goes to Adi Shankaracharya for four dhams assimilating and assembling the things, unifying us into a whole. But when Hindi was declared the official language, there had been stiff opposition from the non-Hindi speaking states and it too had some substance to base on which but we cannot negate it. Whatever be that, even now English works as a link in between the two distant south and north regions. The linguistic barrier had been one of the lacunae frustrating us forever and English solved it clearing the misunderstanding. India cannot be India if know we not the things of the nation through English translation.

As for the colonial contact, the English took to rule and administration, development and welfare, but they chose not to dwell in here, the heat and dust beat them miserably and it too was a weakness of theirs that they could not take India as for own rather than using it for them as a colony. The other thing too is this that apart from being the White man’s burden, they had a tougher time in dealing with the thugs and dacoits.

Even now when a foreigner telephones from overseas, we mean when an American or Englishman, it becomes difficult for even the PhDs. and professors of English in India to catch them. One may be knowledgeable or conversant with the language, but it is difficult to converse with the native speaker and to be proficient in.  Perhaps the call centre boys and girls, the tourists, guides and interpreters living in their company and association can enlighten upon this topic more rather than the academics who have never visited foreign countries and taught in overseas universities.

Let us see the words doing the rounds in English dictionary, word-stock or lexicography. To mention them right or wrong, let us just go on counting. First, the Sanskrit words or terms, om, atman, parmatman, maya, jiva, bhoga, karma, bhakti, gnana, ahimsa, satya, moksha, nirvana, mantra, yoga, papa, punya,  etc. may be taken into consideration. The common words, such as rajah, rani, zamindari, tamasha, sepoy, chowki, chowkidar, machan, madari, durbar, ganja, hookah, nautch, shehnoi,  pahalwan, goon, yogi, kakira, tantrica, ayurveda, etc. have found a way into the realms of its word-stock. Goon, gherao, thug, dacoit, loot, chor, badmash, etc. too are the words of their kind. The wallahs, paanwallahs, beediwallahs, bandarwallahs, have always eluded the Europeans. The paanwallahs with Benarasi paan, the mouth-fresher for digestion and sweetness and the typical cheap beediwallahs smoking cheaply have also figured in. The tamasha shown by the jugglers, acrobats, rope-dancers, we mean the street show engaged them definitely. The spectacle of the snake-charmers playing the wooden been instrument and the deadly cobras swaying have always found appreciations in the West. The bandarwallah’s shows a European carried it to be shown overseas as the remembrances of India seen and recollected. The red-mouthed small monkeys stupendous to view them; the white-haired hanumans but blackly-mouthed hanging by the trees with the kids into their laps, gnashing the teeth and ready to slap if teased can steal the shows from. The fortune-tellers going with the green and pink-necked parrots, picking the cards and the clients reading them to know the future as per zodiac lucky draw, is a conventional picture of our belief in fatalism, which sometimes leads us to inaction. We could have tried, but should not have believed, taking into confidence.

The history of Indian English language if somebody has to know he should first try his best to know the history of the opening of presidencies, high courts, offices, police stations, schools, colleges, bridges, roads, dams, hospitals, complexes and wards. Without knowing these or in the absence of it, one should not reason what they did and what they did not for the eradication of poverty, uneducation, illiteracy, social evil, superstition and so on. Even the histories of ours had not been written and they took the pains to write and collect materials. Our historiography had been as such that we could not take into consideration. The medievalist kings and feudal lords had been barbaric and bloody, fundamental and conservative as law and justice could not be expected from them. To loot and break had been their job rather than to rule and administer. Religious bigotry held its sway over so unreasonably.

Indian English language has not a feeder dialect of its own. Even the Anglo-Indians use it not as one to be spoken in homes or one to be called whose tongue is English. Indian English language as a language is written English, grammatical English. Many practise to be proficient, conversant with. Some take lessons in conversational English. Indian English language actually is a language of the classrooms; one of the convent schools; of cities and towns.

In the past the policemen used to carry with broken English, the lawyers used to be proficient in learning and writing drafts, the teachers and professors of English mugging and hesitant to be good speakers. The English Hons. students used to learn by rote to look like English men and women , but were dehati, rural ones trying to show off. Many of the teachers who are university professors were unable to speak in English in the classrooms when they joined, whatever may think today. Some of them are writers and are linguists of repute now.

Many take to English just to have a mileage over and English is a matter of prestige whether the Indian villagers know it or not, but they respect the English-knowing very much. Even the professors with Ph.Ds. in English will fumble to talk with the foreigners. English is English, has the charm of its own. The respect for English has not grown all of a sudden. English has definitely served us which but we can feel within. Science and technology, European thought and tradition, delicacy and good manners, lessons in nationalism, fraternity, liberty and equality, feeling of missionary zeal and service, ideas in discipline and punctuality, things related to law and justice, human rights and  justice, we have got them from. The word modernity and its borrowing from will itself speak of, when did we become modern and for whom? The whiff and taste of Englishness we have not got from literature, but from what they wore, their attire and etiquette. Let us think of the women wearing the English dress for the first time in India and the opposition they would received; the people who would have gone to foreign for studies crossing over the saat samudras, facing social boycotts and shaving of heads when they would returned from overseas journey, but the ismic Indians forgot not to be treated by the European doctors. The cholera wards of yesterday will tell the story how the Indian villages reeled under it. Typhoid, malaria, plague, small pox and others used to claim many precious lives.

Indian English is but the English of the Indian masses of the sub-continent who use and apply it for different purposes, as for conversation, law, education, learning, administration, social exchange, communication, tour, travel, business, bargain, economy, polity, science, technology, modernity or any treatise to be done upon. A loud version with the faltering pitch and abnormal stress and accent, it is spoken haltingly, full of hitch and hiccup. Better known as written English, it is used for letter-writing. It is for medical purposes, engineering skills. Only fatalism and belief in God cannot cure our ailment. It is a fact that one cannot do with Hindi in all the states of India so only English appears to be indispensable for us to carry it along for communication. Only English is capable of clearing forth the linguistic hurdles and barriers. Indian English is a translator’s version. Indian English is but the official language of India whether one says it or not which is but a hidden matter. We shall not be able to exchange our thoughts and ideas if we know it not English. Talk you not about the Indians, but the foreigner curators will enlighten more on Nataraja Shiva, the golden statue of Radha and Krishna seated on a lotus and the trinity concept, Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara.



Jul 8, 2016

UGC- Dec 2007, P-2

Solved UGC NET question Dec 2007

1. The author of The Provok'd Husband was :
(A) Etherege
(B) Colley Cibber
(C)Wycherley
(D)Vanbrugh
Answer: D

2. Who among the boys in Golding's Lord of the Flies is associated with Christ ?
(A) Piggy
(B) Ralph
(C) Jack
(D) Simon
Answer: D

3. The complete title of Laurance Stern's novel Tristram Shandy is:
(A)The Strange and Surprising Adventures of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
(B)A True Account of The Life of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
(C)The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
(D)The Strange and Surprising Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Answer: C

4. Feminine ending refers to :
(A) a stressed final syllable in a line of verse
(B) the ending of a poem in a stressed syllable
(C) the ending of a poem in an unstressed syllable
(D) an unstressed final syllable in a line of verse
Answer: C

5. The essay 'The Death of the Author' is written by :
(A) Michel Foucault
(B) Jacques Derrida
(C) Roland Barthes
(D) Alvin Kernan
Answer: C

6. Salman Rushdie's Shame is set in :
(A) East Pakistan
(B) India and Pakistan
(C) Pakistan
(D) None of the above
Answer: C

7. Choose the correct chronological sequence in :
(A) Lucy Hutchinson's Memoirs of the life of Colonel Hutchinson - Milton's Paradise Lost - Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress - Dryden's The Hind and the Panther
(B) Hutchinson's Memoirs - Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress - Dryden's Hind and the Panther- Milton's Paradise Lost
(C) Milton's Paradise Lost - Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress - Dryden's Hind and the Panther- Hutchinson's Memoirs
(D) Dryden's Hind and the Panther - Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress Hutchinson's Memoirs- Milton's Paradise Lost
Answer: C

8. The Little Minister is a novel by:
(A) John Galsworthy
(B)H.G. Wells
(C) James M. Barrie
(D)Rudyard Kipling6
Answer: C

9. Which Augustan writer's epitaph reads: “one who strove with all his might to champion liberty” ?
(A) Alexander Pope
(B) Jonathan Swift
(C) Henry Fielding
(D) Daniel Defoe
Answer: B

10. In which of the following novels incidents relating to the declaration of  Emergency in India in 1975 figure? 
(A) Farrukh Dhondy's Bombay Duck
(B) Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy
(C) Upamanyu Chatterjee's English August: An Indian Story
(D) Rohinton Mistry's Such Long Journey
Answer: D

11. Identify the matching pair :
(A) Edward II : Zenocrate
(C) The Spanish Tragedy : Horatio
(C) The Jew of Malta : Barabas
(D)Tamburlaine : Gaveston
Answer: C

12. The future ruin of Troy and the murder of Agamemnon are referred to by W.B. Yeats in :
(A) The Second Coming
(B) Circus Animals Desertion
(C) When You Are Old
(D) Leda and Swan
Answer: D

13. Inscape refers to :
(A) The indwelling presence of God in nature
(B) The universal character of a natural thing
(C) The individuating character of a natural thing
(D) The moment of release from the material world
Answer: C

14. In which of these plays does Edward Albee use the 'success' myth ?
(A) A Zoo Story
(B) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
(C) American Dream
(D) The Death of Bessie Smith
Answer: C

15. “The voice of poetry comes from a region above us, a plane of our being above and beyond our personal intelligence”. Who among the following is the author of the above lines?
(A) Rabindranath Tagore
(B) A.K. Coomaraswamy
(C) Sri Aurobindo
(D) Sisir Kumar Ghose
Answer: C

16. The number of poems in Sidney's sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella is :
(A) 99
(B) 47
(C) 112
(D) 108
Answer: D

17. J.M. Coetzee's Foe is a postmodern retelling of :
(A) Ivanhoe 
(B) Evelina 
(C) Robinson Crusoe
(D) The Moonstone
Answer: C

18. Johnson's edition of Shakespeare appeared in :
(A) 1752
(B) 1765
(C)1791
(D) 1760
Answer: B

19.The main character in Gogol's Dead Souls is :
(A) Oblomov
(B) Bazarov
(C) Alyosha
(D) Chichikov
Answer: D

20. After Shakespeare made his debut as a London playwright, he was described as an'upstart crow' by :
(A) Robert Greene
(B) Thomas Lodge
(C) Christopher Marlowe
(D) John Lyly
Answer: A

21. What was the first play of Mrs. Dalloway called ?
(A) Clarissa
(B) Hours
(C)The Big Ben
(D)The Party
Answer: B

22. Which of the following Caribbean novels makes inter textual references to Jane Eyre ?
(A) No Telephone to Heaven
(B) Wide Sargasso Sea
(C) Crick Crack Monkey
(D) Between Two Worlds
Answer: B

23. The term 'metaphysical poets', was first used by :
(A) Ben Jonson
(B) Dr. Johnson
(C) Helen Gardner
(D) Dryden
Answer: D

24. “Only connect” is the epigraph to a novel by :
(A) George Orwell
(B) Joseph Conrad
(C) D.H. Lawrence
(D) E.M. Forster
Answer: D

25. The expression “Thy hand, great Anarch” occurs in a satire by :
(A) Dryden
(B) Pope
(C) Johnson
(D)Swift
Answer: B

26.In which of the following novels by Graham Greene does the little girl Brigitta appear ?
(A) The Heart of the Matter
(B) The Power and the Glory
(C) Brighton Rock
(D) The Quiet American
Answer: B

27.The author of 'A Satire Against Reason and Mankind' is :
(A)Rochester
(B)Dryden
(C)Gray
(D) Swift
Answer: A

28.'Anagnorisis' is a term used by Aristotle for describing :
(A) the moment of discovery by the protagonist
(B) the reversal of fortune for the protagonist
(C) the happy resolution of the plot
(D) the convergence of the main plot and the sub plot
Answer: A

29. In which play by Shakespeare do we find widowed queens questioning the assumptions of male politics ?
(A) Henry V
(B) Richard III
(C)Anthony and Cleopatra
(D) Hamlet
Answer: B

30.Which of the following feminist critics used the expression 'Gynocriticism'for the first time ?
(A) Kate Millet
(B) Simone de Beauvoir
(C)Elaine Showalter
(D) Mary Ellmann
Answer: C

31. John Keats's poem 'Ode to a Nightingale' was composed in :
(A)1818
(B)1819
(C)1820
(D) 1821
Answer: B

32. The Female Quixote was written by :
(A)Henry Fielding
(B)Tobias Smollett
(C) Charlotte Lennox
(D) Aphra Behn
Answer: C

33. Which contemporary British poet has translated Beowulf ?
(A) Thom Gunn
(B) Alan Lewis
(C)Edward Thomas
(D) Seamus Heaney
Answer: D

 34. 'The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers' is :
(A) a poem by William Blake an essay by Charles Lamb
(B) an elegy by William Wordsworth
(C)an essay by Charles Lamb
(D) an essay by William Hazlitt
Answer: C

35. The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner is a novel by :
(A) Kingsley Amis
(B) Alan Sillitoe
(C) John Braine
(D) John Osborne
Answer: B

36. In 'Black Venus' Angela Carter takes elements from the poetry of a famous French poet and places them in a very different paradigm. Who is the French poet ?
(A)Baudelaire
(B)Mallarme
(C)Verlaine
(D)Apollinaire
Answer: A

37. Strophe, antistrophe and epode form a three-part structure in :
(A) a classic ode
(B) a Greek chorus
(C)a medieval ballad
(D) a Petrarchan sonnet
Answer: A

38. The words “where are the songs of spring ? Ay, where are they ?” occur in :
(A) Ode to the West Wind
(B) The Seasons
(C) Ode to Autumn
(D) Resolution and Independence
Answer: C

39. “Music that gentler on the spirit lies than tired eyelids upon tired eyes” the above lines occur in Tennyson's :
(A) Tears, Idle Tears
(B) In Memoriam
(C) Maud
(D) The Lotus Eaters 
Answer: D

40. Which of the following pairs is correctly matched ?
(A) Robert Southey : Lady of the Lake
(B) T.S. Eliot : Lake Isle of Innisfree
(C) A.C. Swinburne : The Lady of Shallott
(D)Thomas De Quincey : Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets
Answer: D

41. Which famous English novel opens with a young woman who is 'handsome, clever and rich' ?
(A) Middlemarch
(B) Wuthering Heights
(C) Moll Flanders
(D) Emma
Answer: D

42. It appears that in Paradise Lost Book I “Milton belongs to the Devil's party without  knowing it”. Who among the following made this statement ?
(A) Frank Kermode
(B) William Empson
(C) C.S. Lewis
(D) William Blake
Answer: D

43. Live Like Pigs is :
(A) a humorous poem by Pope
(B) an allegorical narrative by Orwell
(C) a play by Arden
(D) a satirical sketch by Swift
Answer: C

44.  'A woman drew her long black hair out tight And fiddled whisper music on those strings'.  From which section of Eliot's The Waste Land are the above lines taken ?
(A) A Game of Chess
(B) What the Thunder Said
(C) Burial of the Dead
(D) Fire Sermon
Answer: B

45.  Which is the correct sequence of Achebe's African Trilogy ?
(A) Things Fall Apart - Arrow of God - No Longer At Ease
(B) No Longer At Ease - Arrow of God - Things Fall Apart
(C) Things Fall Apart - No Longer At Ease - Arrow of God
(D) Arrow of God - Things Fall Apart - No Longer At Ease
Answer: C

46.  Which are the figures of speech used in the following lines by  Blake
“Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry ?”
(A) simile and personification
(B) irony and synecdoche
(C) apostrophe and synecdoche
(D) metonymy and apostrophe
Answer: C

47. In which of the following American novels does 'the Valley of Ashes' occur ?
(A) Huck Finn
(B) The Red Badge of Courage
(C) Invisible Man
(D) The Great Gatsby
Answer: D

48. To whom is Chaucer referring when he says 'He knew the tavern well in every town' ?
(A) Pardoner
(B) Monk
(C) Squire
(D) Friar
Answer: D

49. “Poetry is a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty”. Who, among the following, made the above statement ?
(A) Dr. Johnson
(B) Sidney
(C) Matthew Arnold
(D) Wordsworth
Answer: C

50. “She is inspired but diabolically inspired”. Who is this lady ?
(A) Candida
(B) Major Barbara
(C) Saint Joan
(D) Ann
Answer: C


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