Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
Biscuit slipped out of her collar near Gariahat market a little after dusk, when the first rockets of Kali Puja went up. She ran until the bangs were behind her, and then she ran some more.
When she stopped, it was under a parked lorry, flat on the warm tar, her ribs going in and out like a bellows. Buses ground past a few feet away. A boy selling balloons crouched and held out his hand. She watched the hand. She did not move, and after a while he went away.
The city she knew was a map of smells, and tonight half of it had been rubbed out. The air still tasted of gunpowder. She crawled out and lifted her nose anyway, turning it from side to side. Frying onions. Wet sacks outside a grain shop. Then, faint, the burnt-milk smell of the sweet shop on her own corner.
She kept to the edge of the road. At the big crossing she waited while two autos and a cycle-rickshaw went by. Then she bolted between a bus and a handcart and was on the far pavement before the traffic policeman could lift his whistle.
It was nearly ten when she turned into her lane. Mr Sen stood at the gate in his vest, a torch in one hand and her empty collar in the other. The beam wobbled on the wall. He did not call her name. He crouched, slowly, the way the balloon boy had, and waited.
She came the last few steps with her tail low and pushed her whole head against his chest.
The line “The city she knew was a map of smells, and tonight half of it had been rubbed out” suggests that
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → the smoke of the firecrackers had covered many of the smells she found her way by
The line compares the city to a map that Biscuit reads with her nose. On this night much of that map cannot be read.
- Biscuit knows her way by smells, not by signs. Later she finds home by following frying onions, wet sacks and the smell of the sweet shop.
- “Rubbed out” means wiped away. The next line gives the reason: “The air still tasted of gunpowder.” The smoke from the rockets has hidden many of the smells she uses.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: she had run so far that only half the city still looked familiar to her — Incorrect. Wrong reason: The map is made of smells, not sights. It is the gunpowder in the air that wipes half of it out.
Option 2: many of the streets she knew had been closed to traffic for the festival — Incorrect. Not mentioned: No street is closed. Autos, buses and a cycle-rickshaw are all on the road.
Option 4: she was too frightened to notice any of the smells around her — Incorrect. Contradicted: She lifts her nose “anyway” and picks out one smell after another.