Practicing Success

Target Exam

CUET

Subject

English

Chapter

Comprehension - (Narrative / Factual)

Question:

Read the given passage and answer the six questions that follow.

When I was in my late teens and still undecided about which language I should write in, he told me that the language one is born into, one's mother tongue, can be the only possible medium of creative expression.

For most of his life, my father, Sripat Rai, had been a Hindi editor and critic. Off and on, he translated writings into English from Hindi. He was fond of saying that a failed writer becomes a critic. The weight of his literary expectation came, eventually, to rest on me. He seemed happy that I was showing an inclination for writing. "She will go far," he told my mother after reading the first story that I sent him from Melbourne.

My father's pronouncement on the mother tongue stayed with me when I later started writing fiction in Hindi. Another thing that I barely acknowledged even to myself was that I felt something like shame whenever I thought of writing in English. It seemed wrong for a granddaughter of Premchand even to be thinking so. Our family had a certain linguistic pride. I knew that Premchand was famous, but I had not at that time realised the extent of his popularity.

The fact that I was the granddaughter of Premchand, followed me everywhere. Everyone had a story to tell about their personal engagement with his fiction - the shopkeeper, the long time cook in my father's Delhi house, a tea vendor, etc. The list was long, for there was practically no one who had not read something by him that had moved them. However, it was this very ubiquity, the reverence and love that he inspired in people, that made of him something too large for me to comprehend in the early years of my life. It led also to the strange feeling that, without having read him and just by being related to him, I had somehow inhaled his writing. The reading happened much later.

The author grew up with the expectation that she would take up __________.

Fill in the blank with the correct option to complete the sentence.

Options:

editorship of a magazine.

translation of literary pieces.

creative writing.

the job of a critic.

Correct Answer:

creative writing.

Explanation:

The correct answer is Option (3) - creative writing.

The passage highlights her father's belief in the mother tongue as the key to creative writing and his encouragement for the author's writing.  This suggests an expectation for her to pursue creative writing herself.

In the passage, the author mentions that her father, who was a Hindi editor and critic, had a strong literary expectation that eventually came to rest on her. He expressed happiness when he saw her inclination towards writing, stating, "She will go far," after reading one of her stories. This indicates that her father expected her to pursue a career in creative writing, suggesting that creative writing was the path he envisioned for her.