Read the following poem. Answer the question that follow:
At the Museum
But in 2500 B.C. Harappa,
who cast in bronze a servant girl?
No one keeps records
of soldiers and slaves,
The sculptor knew this,
polishing the ache
off her fingers stiff
from washing the walls
and scrubbing the floors,
from stirring the meat
and the crushed asafoetida
in the bitter gourd.
But I'm grateful she smiled
at the sculptor,
as she smiles at me
in bronze,
a child who had to play women
to her lord
when the warm June rains
came to Harappa.
What is the poem 'At the Museum' about?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → The powerful experience of encountering another person through art
The speaker stands before a bronze figure of a servant girl from Harappa. History kept no record of such people, yet the sculptor saw her worn, aching fingers and gave her a lasting form. Because he did, the girl still "smiles at me in bronze": across 4,500 years the speaker meets a real person through a work of art. That meeting, and what it reveals about the forgotten lives of ordinary people, is the subject of the poem.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: About a sculptor who fell in love with a dancer. — Incorrect. Contradicted: the figure is a servant girl who washed walls and scrubbed floors; no love story appears in the poem.
Option 3: About record keeping at a government office — Incorrect. Misread: the line "No one keeps records of soldiers and slaves" comments on history, which leaves out the common people; it has nothing to do with an office.
Option 4: Its about a child who preferred household work to playing — Incorrect. Contradicted: the girl was a child who had to do hard household work; she did not choose it, and her labour is only one part of the poem.