Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
The power went at four, and by six the monsoon rain had settled into the slow, sullen kind that would not stop before morning. Unni carried his father’s radio to the table beside the emergency lamp.
It was a heavy set in a wooden case, its cloth front faded to the colour of weak coffee. Nobody had switched it on in the eleven months since the funeral.
“It was always temperamental,” his mother said from her low stool, scraping coconut. “Your Achan had to slap it and call it names before it would play.”
Unni unscrewed the back panel. Dust lay thick over a nest of wires. He propped his phone against a steel tumbler and played a repair video, pausing it every few seconds, until the battery fell to nine per cent and he had to choose. He switched the phone off.
After that he worked by the lamp and by guesswork. He found a loose wire and pressed it back with a screwdriver heated on the gas stove. The room smelt of burning. His mother did not ask him what time he meant to sleep.
Near ten he turned the knob. There was a hiss, a whistle, then, faint and far off, a woman’s voice reading the warning for fishermen: strong winds, rough sea, boats must not venture out. Unni sat back. He did not know what he had expected. Not this, a stranger reading wind speeds to boats that were not his.
His mother had stopped scraping. “He listened to this every night,” she said. “He never went near the sea in his life.”
Unni turned the volume up a little. Outside, the rain kept on. Neither of them reached across to turn the radio off.
Why does Unni switch his phone off?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → He has to save the little charge left in it while the power is out.
The power has been off since four, so the phone cannot be charged.
- The battery falls “to nine per cent” and Unni “had to choose”. He chooses to keep the last of the charge.
- So he switches the phone off and works without the video.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 2: The repair video does not match the old set he is working on. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage says nothing about the video being for a different set.
Option 3: His mother does not want the phone in use at the table. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The mother says nothing about the phone. She does not even ask when he will sleep.
Option 4: The video has already shown him where the fault lies. — Incorrect. Contradicted: After the phone goes off, he works “by guesswork”. So the video had not shown him the fault.