Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow : Every now…
2024
Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow :
Every now and then we would speed through a village lined with waving Tibetan children. Their villages looked wonderful and so inviting that Dorje was not showing any signs of slowing down. Small clusters of single and double storey buildings with walk-in courtyards jostled together in the foothills to gain maximum exposure to the sun. The houses looked solid, built for the harsh environment. Walls are made up of stone to waist height and finished off with mud bricks to the roof. Tin cans lined the window ledges, with the bright orange of marigolds in full bloom livening up the black-and-white of the houses.
Branches of trees adorned with colourful prayer flags stood high into the wind from the top of the flat roofs. The auspicious blue, white, red, green and yellow colours of the fabrics stood out against the rich blue of the Tibetan sky. Each prayer flag carries a picture of Lungta, the jewelled dragon horse, who carries the owner’s prayers up to the divine every time the flag flaps in the wind.
The larger villages have healthy trees, usually willows or poplars which look quite out of place in the generally treeless landscape. Wood is a precious commodity in the highland areas of Tibet and is never wasted. The few shrubs which grow wild on the hillsides are harvested for use as brushwood and each courtyard wall is piled high with sticks gathered from the mountains to get a fire started. The lack of solid fuel in the shape of wood is not a problem for the Tibetans, who have an ingenious wood substitute : yak dung.
The phrase ‘courtyards jostling together’ implies :
- A.
being very far apart
- B.
being in different sizes and dimensions
- C.
being one on top of the other
- D.
being in close proximity
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept
In reading comprehension, a word or phrase used in a passage is interpreted using its standard dictionary sense combined with how it functions in that sentence, not in isolation. The verb “jostle” means to push, shove, or crowd against something else, typically because there isn’t enough room — it is a word about closeness and contact, not distance.
Application
The passage describes small clusters of single- and double-storey buildings with courtyards as “jostled together in the foothills to gain maximum exposure to the sun.” Combining the dictionary sense of “jostle” with this picture, the buildings are packed very near one another on the hillside, forming a tight cluster positioned to catch the sun.
Contrast
being very far apart contradicts the sentence, since it already says the buildings are jostled “together” — an idea of separation cannot sit inside a sentence that pairs “jostled” with “together”.
being in different sizes and dimensions confuses “jostle” (a description of how the buildings stand relative to each other) with the earlier detail about buildings being single- or double-storey (a description of individual building height).
being one on top of the other misreads “storey” (floors inside one building) as though it meant whole buildings stacked above one another, when the passage is describing separate buildings on the same hillside, not a vertical stack.
being in close proximity matches the sentence exactly: substituting it in — “clusters of buildings in close proximity in the foothills to gain maximum exposure to the sun” — keeps the meaning intact.
Result
So “courtyards jostling together” means the buildings are in close proximity.