Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
My college friend Ishita posts a thrift haul every second Sunday. She lays the pieces out on her bed: a corduroy jacket for two hundred rupees, three shirts from a pile at Sarojini Nagar, jeans from a brand not sold in India. The video ends with the total in fat yellow letters, and the comments ask how she does it. I used to watch with envy. Now a small question nags at me.
Thrifting is meant to be the answer to fast fashion. Buy what already exists, the argument goes, and you stop feeding the factories that turn out a new collection every few weeks. As far as it goes, I agree. The trouble is the word ‘haul’, which is about quantity. Ishita goes to the market nominally for a jacket she needs, but what she really needs is a video for Sunday. Half of what she buys is worn once, for the camera, then folded onto a shelf she calls, without any irony, her archive.
A shirt rescued from a pile, she would say, beats a new one ordered from an app. She is right. No fresh cotton was grown for it, no fresh dye poured into a river. But when the low total is the whole point of the video, viewers learn that clothes are too cheap to think about. Fast fashion has been teaching that for years.
My grandmother owned perhaps fifteen saris and could tell you who had worn each one before her. By her arithmetic, a jacket worn forty times is cheap even at two thousand rupees, and one worn once is dear at two hundred. I have not said this to Ishita. Her next video goes up on Sunday, and I will probably watch it.
The primary purpose of the passage is to:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → question whether thrift hauls truly break away from the habits of fast fashion, while granting them some merit
The writer agrees that thrifting has some good in it. But the writer doubts that haul videos are really different from fast fashion.
- The writer says, “As far as it goes, I agree.” On the rescued shirt, the writer adds, “She is right.” This is granting merit, which means accepting that something has some good points.
- But a ‘haul’ is about quantity. Half of what Ishita buys is worn once for the camera.
- When the low total is the point, viewers learn that clothes are too cheap to think about. Fast fashion teaches the same thing. So the writer questions whether hauls really break away from it.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: explain how buying second-hand clothes reduces the harm that new clothes do to rivers and fields — Incorrect. Too narrow: The writer does say no fresh cotton or dye is used. But this is one point the writer grants before raising a doubt.
Option 2: describe the writer’s friend’s thrift videos and the reasons why they are so popular online — Incorrect. Wrong focus: Ishita’s videos are the starting point. The writer uses them to raise a question and gives no reasons for their popularity.
Option 3: argue that young people should give up shopping and wear the clothes their families pass down — Incorrect. Overstated: The grandmother’s saris show how she judged cost. The writer never asks anyone to stop shopping.