English

ENGLISH 2001
Time:  Three hours                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Maximum marks: 150

Note:  All questions are compulsory

1.    Write an essay on any ONE of the following topics.  Use the guidelines indicated AND supply an appropriate introduction AND conclusion to your essay.
(i)    'You can choose your friends, you have to live with your neighbours. 'Analyse this statement with reference to recent political developments in
(a)    Indian's relationship to neighbouring countries AND
(b)    Domestic events within neighbouring counties
(ii)    'A woman's place is in the House, and in the Senate too.  'Examine the role of women legislators in India and abroad with reference to
(a)    the need for women to enter politics AND
(b)    the difficulties faced by such women 
(iii)    'The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.'  Use this statement to analyse any two events each in
(a)    India history AND
(b)    World history
(iv)    Construct a short around the themse of the following lines which is the loneliness and the absence of love.
'To A FAT LADY SEEN FROM THE TRAIN'
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat pale woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering-sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,

2.    The following poem explores the conflict between faith and doubt in the minds of people who have various needs and interests.  There are ten arguments used which have been numbered for your convenience.  Re-write these arguments in you own words in continuous prose, retaining the original order.
'"There is no God,"  the wicked say'
(i)    'There is no God, ' the wicked say,
'And truly it's blessing, 
(ii)    For what he might have done with us
It's better only guessing.' 
(iii)    'There is no God,' a youngster thinks,
'Or really, if there may be,
He surely didn't mean a man
Always to be a baby'. 
(iv)    'There is no God, or if there is,'
The tradesman thinks, 'it's funny
If he should take it ill in me
To make a little money.' 
(v)    'Whether there be,' the rich man says,
'It matters very little,
For I and mine, thank somebody,
Are not in want in victual.'
(vi)    Some others, also, to themselves
Who scarce so much as doubt it,
Think there is none, when they are well,
And do not think about it.
(vii)    But country folks who live beneath
The shadow of the steeple;
The parson and the parson's wife
And mostly married people; 
(viii)    Youths green and happy in first love,
So thankful for illusion; 
(ix)    And men caught out in what the world
Calls guilt, in first confusion; 
(x)    And almost every one when age,
Disease, or sorrows strike him,
Inclines to think there is a God,
Or something very like Him.
(Note:  Victual means food, a steeple is the tall pointed tower above a church, and a parson is a priest).

3.    The following poem contains ten statements which have been numbered for your convenience.  All these statements have been constructed by the speaker to support his argument that true love lasts forever.  Explain each statement retaining the direction of the original argument.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
(i)    Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. 
(ii)    Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
(iii)    Or bends with the remover to remove:
(iv)    O, not it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken:
(v)    It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
(vi)    Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
With his bending sickle's compass come'
(vii)    Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
(viii)    But bears it out even to the edge of doom
(ix)    If this be error, and against me proved
(x)    I never wrote, and no man ever loved.
(Note, : In this context, a bark is a ship)