Class Test-2
English Core
Class XII
Time: 90 Minutes M.M: 50
General Instructions:
1. All questions are compulsory.
2. Separate instructions are given with each question. Read them carefully and follow them faithfully
3. Do not exceed the prescribed word limit while answering the questions.
Q1. Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow: 10
As dusk falls the neon lights of the jewellery shops in Bowbazaar come alive but the lights have no effect on the face of Mahadeo Yadav who is seated on the footrest of his rickshaw that is parked by the road, feeling very sad. He is sitting on his feet, hugging his knees to keep himself warm in the biting cold, so weakened and lifeless as if he had been dead for days without anyone noticing.
Who would after all notice a rickshaw puller, to check whether he is breathing or not? Yet when the same rickshaw puller goes about his work pulling his rickshaw like a horse, he becomes the most noticed man in Calcutta. He makes a great subject for photographers, writers and film-makers. He is the symbol of poor Calcutta. Many a famous actor has pulled the rickshaw in films set in the city.
Calcutta is said to have about 6000 rickshaw pullers running on its roads, running mostly in its old neighbourhoods. They have something in common apart from their poverty. All of them come from the country side. All of them wear the lungi to work, perhaps for better movement. Almost all of them are elderly; I am yet to see a young man hand pulling a rickshaw. It can be a sad sight to watch a man almost as old as your father struggling his way through the roads dressed only in a vest and a lungi and often barefoot.
Mahadeo Yadav, the rickshaw puller is in his seventies and has been pulling the same rickshaw in and around Bowbazaar for fifty years. For him, fifty years, half a century is not an achievement, but merely the time that has passed ever since he came to Calcutta to earn a living.
He lives all alone in Calcutta, in a room in a nearby lane, paying a monthly rent of fifty rupees. He is out with his rickshaw between three in the afternoon and ten at night, sometimes earning sixty or seventy rupees a day and sometimes nothing. Every month without fail he sends 300 rupees to his wife back home, and once every year visits her. “I will pull the rickshaw as long as I can”, he says, “This is my only source of livelihood. These days I tire easily. Sometimes my feet hurt and sometimes my back. But do I have a choice?” He answers all my questions without looking at me even once, but continued to stare ahead blankly, his arms folded around his knees. I take a good look at his rickshaw: the two – the rickshaw and the rickshaw puller – make quite a pair.
1.1 Choose the correct alternatives from the options given below: 1X2 = 2
(a) A rickshaw puller is noticed only when he
(b) acts in a film.
(c) becomes a subject for photographers.
(d) sits all alone.
(e) is old and tired.
(b) Pick out the statement which is not true.
(a) Most rickshaw pullers are old.
(b) The rickshaw pullers earn very little.
(c) Many renowned actors are rickshaw pullers.
(d) They are neglected by people.
1.2 Answer the following questions: 1X6 = 6
(a) Why does Yadav “stare ahead blankly”?
(b) Why are rickshaw pullers known as the icons of poor Calcutta?
(c) Which instance tells you that Yadav loved his family?
(d) Where does Yadav stay?
(e) What comparison does the writer draw between the rickshaw and its puller?
(f) What do the rickshaw pullers have in common?
1.3 Pick out words from the passage that mean the following: 1X2 = 2
(a) Well-known (para 2)
(b) Income (para 5)
Q2. You want to sell your flat as you are going abroad. Draft an advertisement to be published in a national daily. 4
OR
 
;
Draft a formal invitation on behalf of your parents to be sent to your friends and relatives on the occasion of your brother’s marriage. 4
Q3.You are Jay/Jaya, living at 65-C, M.G. Road, New Delhi. You are very much concerned about the irregular supply of drinking water supplied through taps, which indirectly makes even low income people spend a substantial amount every month on buying drinking water. Write a letter to the municipal authorities about the problem and the financial burden arising out of this issue, seeking immediate corrective measures. 8
OR
You are Nikesh / Natasha, 12-A, Karol Bagh, New Delhi. Write a letter to the editor of The Times of India, New Delhi about the misuse and poor maintenance of public parks in your city. 8
Q4. Read the following extract and answer the questions that follow: 4 marks
And show the children to green fields, and make their world
Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues
Run naked into books, the white and white green leaves open
History is theirs whose language is the son.
(a) What does the poet wish for the children of the slums? 2
(b) Who create history? 2
OR
As a late winter’s moon and felt that old
Familiar ache, my childhood’s fear,
But all I said was, see you soon, Amma,
All I did was smile and smile and smile….
(a) Why has the mother been compared to the ‘late winter’s moon’? 2
(b) Why did the poet smile and smile? 2
Q.5. Answer any four of the following in about 30-40 words. 3×4=12 marks
(a) Describe the irony in Saheb’s name.
(b) What will the Maharaja do to find the required number of tigers to kill?
(c) What was the chief concern of Sadao’s father?
(c) What was the chief concern of Sadao’s father?
(d) What was the parting message of M.Hamel to his students and the village elders?
(e) Why does the poet put that thought away?
Q.6. Answer any one of the following in about 100 words. 6 marks
(a) Give a brief account of the life and activities of the people like Saheb-e-Alam settled in Seemapuri?
(b) How did Dr. Sadao rise above narrow prejudices of race and country to help a human being in need?
(b) How did Dr. Sadao rise above narrow prejudices of race and country to help a human being in need?
Q.7. Answer any one of the following in about 100 words. 6 marks
(a) Give an account of the strange man’s arrival in ‘Coach and Horses’.
(b) How did the stranger pass his initial days at Iping?
XXXXXX
Very helpful site. Thank you