Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
By ten o’clock the terrace floor was too hot for bare feet, so Aarav stood on an old cotton sari while Dadi sat cross-legged in the one strip of shade. Between them, on a steel tray, lay the raw mangoes she had cut at dawn, each piece still holding a sliver of hard white stone.
“Write it down properly this year,” his mother had said. So Aarav had his phone out and a fresh note open.
“How much salt, Dadi?”
“Enough.”
“Enough is not a quantity.”
She laughed and pushed the bowl towards him. “Then taste and find out.”
The note did not get much longer. The fenugreek was roasted until the smell told her to stop, and the chilli went in until the colour looked right. Dadi’s measures lived in her fingertips. Aarav was moved to crow duty with a broom and spent twenty minutes losing an argument with one crow on the water tank.
The oil came last. Dadi had carried the heavy jar up two flights of stairs herself and waved away his help. Now she held it out to him. He tipped it too fast, and oil splashed onto the tray. She did not take the jar back. She only rested two fingers on his wrist, and the stream thinned to a slow gold thread.
They tied muslin over the jar and set it in the corner that got the most sun. It would cure there for a week. Aarav looked at the three lines on his screen and put the phone in his pocket. Then he pressed a finger into the spice left on the tray and tasted it, frowning, the way she did.
The word ‘cure’, as used in the passage, means:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → to be slowly preserved and made ready to eat
To cure food means to keep it in salt, oil, smoke or heat so that it slowly becomes ready and lasts long.
- The mangoes are mixed with salt, spices and oil. The jar is set in “the corner that got the most sun”.
- “It would cure there for a week” means the pickle will sit in the sun for a week until it is ready. Example: In the hills, people cure fish by salting it and drying it in the sun.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: to make a sick person well again — Incorrect. Wrong meaning: This is another meaning of cure, the same as heal. It is about illness, not food. Example: The ointment helped to heal the cut on his knee.
Option 3: to go bad and become unfit to eat — Incorrect. Wrong meaning: This is the meaning of spoil. The jar is left in the sun so that the pickle gets ready, not so that it goes bad. Example: Milk left out of the fridge will spoil by evening.
Option 4: to lose colour in strong sunlight — Incorrect. Wrong meaning: This is the meaning of fade. The passage does not speak of the pickle’s colour in the sun. Example: The red curtains began to fade after one summer.