Unit 1.7 Why We Travel Extract 02

 

Extract No. 02

age No. 67/68 

[Line, “But for the rest…………with tenderness”]

 

COURTESY: SCERT UPDATED QUESTION BANK

Read the extract and do all the activities that follow.

       But for the rest of us, the sovereign freedom of travelling comes from the fact that it whirls you around and turns you upside down, and stands everything you took for granted on its head. If a diploma can famously be a passport (to a journey through hard realism), a passport can be a diploma (for a crash course in cultural relativism). And the first lesson we learn on the road, whether we like it or not, is how provisional and provincial are the things we imagine to be universal.

       We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas, that we seldom have to face at home. And we travel to fill in the gaps left by tomorrow’s headlines. When you drive down the streets of Port-au-Prince, for example, where there is almost no paving your notions of the Internet and a “one world order” grow usefully revised. Travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places, and saving them from abstraction and ideology.

       And in the process, we also get saved from abstraction ourselves, and come to see how much we can bring to the places we visit, and how much we can become a kind of carrier pigeon - an anti-Federal Express, if you like - in transporting back and forth what every culture needs. I find that I always take Michael Jordan posters to Kyoto, and bring woven ikebana baskets back to California.

       But more significantly, we carry values and beliefs and news to the places we go, and in many parts of the world, we become walking video screens and living newspapers, the only channels that can take people out of the censored limits of their homelands. In closed or impoverished places, like Pagan or Lhasa or Havana, we are the eyes and ears of the people we meet, their only contact with the world outside and, very often, the closest, quite literally, they will ever come to Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton. Not the least of the challenges of travel, therefore, is learning how to import - and export - dreams with tenderness.

A1. True or false :                (02)

a) According to the writer ,we travel in part just to shake up our satisfaction that we seldom have to free at home.             (T)

b) We imagine that provisional and provincial things are universal.                                  (T)

c) The writer always bring woven ikebana baskets back to India.                                          (F)

d) We Carry values, beliefs and news to the place.                    (T)

A2.    Explain :                           (02)

  Explain the concept of cultural relativism.

(This is a Practice Activity for students.)

A3.    Interpret :                        (02)

     Interpret the statement, “We are eyes and ears of the people.”

This is a Practice Activity for students 

A4.    Personal Response :      (02)

         Do you agree with the views expressed by the writer .Justify your answer with suitable examples.

(This is a Practice Activity for students.)

A5.    Language study :            (02)

a)       Travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places.

          ( Rewrite the sentence using the "Infinitive form'' of the underlined word)   OR

          ( change the degree)

          Travel is the best way we have to rescue the humanity of places.

          P.D.   : No other way we have of rescuing is as good as travel.

          C.D.  : Travel is better way we have of rescuing.

b)       We can become a kind of carrier Pigeon.

          (Rewrite the sentence using a modal auxiliary which indicates,” possibility”)

We May/ Might become a kind of carrier Pigeon 

A6. Vocabulary :                       (02)

          Find out words from the extract which mean the following.

a)       Regional = provincial

b) Confusion/double mind situation = dilemmas

c)       Poverty stricken places = impoverished places

d)       A set of ideas which form a basis for political economic system = ideology

Activities prepared and compiled by

TUSHAR J BAGWE

K J SOMAIYA COLLEGE OF

 SCIENCE AND COMMERCE

 VIDYAVIHAR EAST MUMBAI 77

E Mail IDs:

tushar@somaiya.edu

tushar8bagwe@gmail.com

jaisinghtushar812@gmail.com

110970.bagwe@mahaeschool.co.in

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