Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
The night before I left for the hostel, my father decided that my trunk had been packed wrongly. It had not. My mother and I had spent the whole afternoon on it, rolling the dupattas tight and tucking the pickle jar between two towels. But after dinner he knelt on the floor of the front room, lifted everything out and began again.
I sat on the divan and watched. He worked slowly, with the care he had once given to the railway ledgers he kept for thirty-one years, smoothing each fold with his palm. Now and then he held something up to the tube light, a sweater, a steel tumbler, my old geometry box, as if checking it for some fault only he could see. The geometry box he put back in twice.
My mother brought him tea and left it on the window sill. It went cold. Neither of them mentioned it.
Around eleven he started on the lock. It was a heavy brass one from the bazaar, and it worked perfectly. He oiled it anyway. He turned the key one way and then the other, listening, his head bent so low I could not see his face. I wanted to tell him to go to sleep, and that I would write every Sunday. I said neither, because I understood, with a strange tightening in my throat, that he was not really packing a trunk at all.
When he finally stood up, his knees cracked. He told me the woollens were at the bottom and that I must not open the trunk on the train. Then he went to bed without looking at me, and the light in his room stayed on till late.
Which of the following can be inferred about the narrator from the passage?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → She understands what lies behind her father’s fussing, though she too leaves her feelings unspoken.
The narrator reads her father’s feelings well, but she keeps her own feelings to herself.
- She understands that “he was not really packing a trunk at all”. She sees the sadness behind his fussing.
- She wanted to tell him to sleep and that she would write every Sunday. But “I said neither”. Like her father, she does not put her love into words.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 2: She is quietly annoyed that her father has undone the work of a whole afternoon. — Incorrect. Misread: She does say the trunk “had not” been packed wrongly. But she sits and watches him with understanding, not annoyance.
Option 3: She is eager to leave home and is counting the hours until her train. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage never shows her eager to go. On her last night at home she feels a tightening in her throat.
Option 4: She regrets that she has not written to her parents often enough in the past. — Incorrect. Wrong time: Writing every Sunday is a plan for the future. The passage says nothing about how often she wrote in the past.