Read the given passage and answer the four questions that follow.
The postmaster's office was located in the village of Ulapur. It was a quaint village, there was an indigo plantation nearby, and so the manager-an Englishman goaded by the need for communication-had arranged for the setting up of a post office.
The postmaster was a young man from Calcutta. Stationed here, away from the known limits of civilization, he often felt like a fish out of water. The plantation workers seemed to have their own community. Social miscegenation between two different classes of people seemed all but impossible.
In truth, the boy from the city wasn't good at mixing with people. Uprooted and exiled to a foreign land, his feelings oscillated between arrogance and shame. He rarely met any of the villagers. He wrote poems: poems of endless waiting, poems in which the marrow of life seemed to resonate with the faint tremble of young leaves, where the memory of existence was rejuvenated by the sight of rain clouds. He longed for the security of metal roads, of tall houses which blocked the sight of clouds in the open sky. The city was spreading its tentacles, calling him back.
The postmaster's salary was meager. Evenings would arrive with plumes of smoke rising from the cowshed. The evening would be as still as the cadence of lost poetry, the silence all around would shake the fault lines of the heart; and as all of this would take place, the postmaster would light his lamp.
Select the most appropriate synonym for "marrow" in the line "poems in which the marrow of life seemed to resonate."
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → core
- Marrow is literally the soft tissue inside bones. Figuratively it means the innermost and most important part of something. "The marrow of life" in the postmaster's poems is the very essence of life.
Example: The cold wind chilled us to the marrow. - Core means the central, most essential part. Both words point to the heart of something, so core is the synonym of marrow in this line.
Example: Honesty is at the core of good business.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: aura — Incorrect. An aura is a quality or feeling that seems to surround a person or place. It is around something, not at its centre.
Example: The old fort had an aura of mystery.
Option 3: atmosphere — Incorrect. Atmosphere means the general mood of a place. It does not mean the innermost part.
Example: The festival had a joyful atmosphere.
Option 4: surface — Incorrect. The surface is the outer or top layer of something. It is the opposite of the innermost part that marrow means.
Example: Only the surface of the lake had frozen.
Note: In the original NTA paper, Option 4 read "component". NTA accepted this option as a correct answer as well. To leave only one correct answer and avoid confusion for students, it has been changed here to "surface".
Advice for the exam: In the real exam, mark the answer that is grammatically or factually correct. If NTA’s provisional answer key marks a different option, challenge it during the answer-key challenge window and give the reason in one or two lines.