Which are our novels that give us the sense of birth of a country? I find most such novels have women at the centre. Sometimes she is a 'fallen' woman (as in Umrao Jan), sometimes she is a slave (not just hidden behind purdah, but locked up in castles as well), or subservient in love. The oppressed woman frequently appears as a heroine in what appears to be a national allegory, to borrow Fredrick Jameso's term. When the novel and the country were born together, in India, the focus became the woman's freedom. The crucial texts are not those like Pariksha Guru which depict contemporary social reality directly, but those texts where truth and delusion coalesce, facts and desires get interwoven sometimes in dreams - and most of these happen to be love stories. These are imaginative creations, not imitations of some other model. Such novels have remained neglected by and large, because our approach has remained technical. We did not talk about the form of the content or the content of the form.
The identification of such neglected novels and tracing their trajectory can be a process of intellectual liberation for us. In this year 2000, seen by many as the beginning of a new millennium, we must start looking at the history of the novel in India in our own terms.
In the given passage, find the word closest in meaning to 'amalgamate.'
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → coalesce
- Amalgamate means to combine two or more things into one.
Example: The two small banks amalgamated to form a larger one. - Coalesce means to come together and form one mass or whole, the same sense as amalgamate. The passage uses it for texts "where truth and delusion coalesce", that is, merge into one.
Example: Small groups of protesters coalesced into a large crowd.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: diffuse — Incorrect. To diffuse is to spread something out over a wide area, the opposite of bringing things together.
Example: The lampshade diffuses the light evenly.
Option 2: interwoven — Incorrect. Interwoven means twisted or woven together, so that the strands stay separate but are closely linked. It is a past participle describing a state, while amalgamate and coalesce are verbs of merging into one. Coalesce is the closer word.
Example: In the novel, the two stories are closely interwoven.
Option 4: disintegrate — Incorrect. To disintegrate is to break into small parts, the opposite of amalgamate.
Example: The old paper disintegrated when I touched it.
| Synonyms of amalgamate: coalesce, merge, combine, unite Antonyms of amalgamate: separate, divide, disintegrate, split |