Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow. We were walking…
2024
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.
We were walking across the garden when my daughter spotted a cluster of familiar red flowers. She pulled me to one side and then, looking excitedly at me as though she had a secret to share, she pulled me down to her height and whispered in my ears. I shot up straight almost as soon as she had finished her sentence. With my mouth ajar, I was about to tell her that it was probably not a good idea to do so when I was transported to the time when I was around her age.
It had been a rather long day from school and I was dead tired. I was walking along the pathway that was lined with many ixora plants when my friend grabbed me by the arm. Before I could do anything, he gleefully plucked a single flower from the cluster and showed it to me. Unimpressed, I was not about to be swayed by a puny flower and was about to admonish him when he turned the flower upside down to show me a tiny almost invisible thread-like thing that protruded out from its stalk.
He pulled the faint yellowish thread and right at the end of it, a tiny drop of nectar appeared. At least, that was what I think it was, as it was really quite sweet. That day we raided the ixora plants. We really had a lot of fun. I could still taste the sweetness till today. My daughter’s urgent tug brought me back to reality. I turned to my daughter and decided that she too needed to know the joy of tasting sweet nectar from beautiful blooms.
From the given anecdote, one can assume that the 2 characters shared the relationship of:
- A.
best friends
- B.
mother and daughter
- C.
school-mates
- D.
grandmother and grand-child
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Concept: The relationship between two characters in a passage must be read off the exact words the narrator uses to address or describe the other person in that SAME scene - a label or role mentioned for a different character, in a different part of the story, cannot be transferred to the pair the question asks about.
Application: The frame of this anecdote is set in the present, in a garden, where the narrator is walking with a child who “spotted a cluster of familiar red flowers.” The narrator addresses this child directly as “my daughter” at the very start of the passage, and again at the close, after the flashback ends: “My daughter’s urgent tug brought me back to reality. I turned to my daughter.” Both references bracket the whole anecdote and belong to the same present-day pair.
Cross-check: Every other option borrows a label that belongs to a different character or a different time-frame in the story:
“Best friends” describes the boy in the flashback who plucked the ixora flower for the narrator during childhood - a separate character who never appears in the present-day garden scene.
“School-mates” also belongs to that same flashback: the only school reference is the narrator’s own tiring day at school as a child, which has nothing to do with the present-day pair in the garden.
“Grandmother and grand-child” is not supported either - the anecdote never uses a term for an older-generation relative (grandmother, grandfather, aunt, or uncle) at any point.
Result: The narrator addresses the same present-day companion as “my daughter” both at the opening and the closing of the anecdote. Of the four choices, only “mother and daughter” names such a bond, and it matches the accepted reading of this passage - so that is the relationship the two characters share.