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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