CUET English: Verbal AbilityLiterary Devices. Free, no login required.

Read the following passage and answer the question that follows :

Learning the Queen's English is like scrubbing off the bright red varnish from your toe nails, the morning after a dance. It takes a long time and there is always a little bit left at the end, a stain of red along the growing edges to remind you of the good time you had. So, you can see that learning came slowly to me. On the other hand, I had plenty of time. I learned your language in an immigration detention centre, in Essex, in the southeastern part of the United Kingdom. Two years, they locked me in there. Time was all I had.

But why did I go to all the trouble ? It is because of what some of the older girls explained to me: to survive, you must look good or talk even better. The plain ones and the silent ones, it seems their paperwork in never in order. You say, they get repatriated. We say, sent home early.

The Other Hand is the story of a young woman who flees conflict in her home village in the oil-rich region of southern Nigeria. She makes her way to the UK as an illegal immigrant and is detained for a long period of time at an immigrant detention centre near London. When she finally gets out, she seeks out the only two people she knows in England, whom she met on a Nigerian beach during a life-changing event a few years before. Will she be able to find them, and if so will they help her ? And if not, will she survive in her newly adopted country as an immigrant ?

Winter is cold, with gusts of tumbling snow,

When rain falls down and nothing ever grows.

For children, it's the snow that they desire

And cups of cocoa in front of the fire.

When winter's gone, the grass grows green again.

Roses and tulips sprout with bright green stems.

The bees are buzzing, the birds are singing.

Sheep are grazing and cow bells are ringing.

And then the sun starts to shine too brightly.

It's so hot that fans are put on nightly,

And so then it's off to the beach or pools

Where people swim about just to keep cool.

All the leaves on the trees turn golden-brown,

And when on the ground make a crackly sound.

In autumn a lot of money you make

From clearing backyards of leaves with a rake.

Each season has its own goods and its bads,

But since they are all different I am glad!

In stark contrast to where I grew up-in warm, lush green Trivandrum, Kerala, filled with rich sights, sounds and people-life at the Poles is quiet. The harshness of winter brings along with it an eerie desolation and near-total silence. Survival in this frigid, dark and windy terrain is only for the fittest. A misstep can mean anything from an icy injury to a bitter, benumbed death.

But while it is tenuous, life here is also humbling-physically, mentally, and even spiritually. The experience has allowed me to witness the wonderous dualities of nature: raw, brutal and unforgiving but nurturing and awe-inspiring at the same time.

As the days shorten, almost all life starts to depart seeking warmer lands. But those who stay are surrounded by glacial beauty and an otherworldly stillness that stands unmatched. In peak winter months, the sun seems to live only in memory. Its absence however, is only an illusion: shimmering displays of blue, red, yellow, green, and orange auroras shifting and snaking like billowing curtains across the pitch black sky remind me that the light shall one day return.

Even the emptiness of the land is deceptive. Look closely and out waddles a flock of penguins from behind an ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula.

Read the following poem given below and answer the question.

LOVE AND A QUESTION

A STRANGER came to the door at eve,

And he spoke the bridegroom fair.

He bore a green-white stick in his hand,

And, for all burden, care.

He asked with the eyes more than the lips

For a shelter for the night,

And he turned and looked at the road afar

Without a window light.

The bridegroom came forth into the porch

With "Let us look at the sky,

And question what of the night to be,

Stranger, you and I."

The woodbine leaves littered the yard,

The woodbine berries were blue,

Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;

"Stranger, I wish I knew."

Within, the bride in the dusk alone

Bent over the open fire,

Her face rose-red with the glowing coal

And the thought of the heart's desire.

The bridegroom looked at the weary road,

Yet saw but her within,

And wished her heart in a case of gold

And pinned with a silver pin.

The bridegroom thought it little to give

a dole of bread, a purse,

A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,

Or for the rich a curse,

But whether or not a man was asked

To mar the love of two

By harboring woe in the bridal house,

The bridegroom wished he knew.

"I cannot go to school today,"

Said little Peggy Ann McKay.

"I have the measles and the mumps,

A gash, a rash and purple bumps.

My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,

I'm going blind in my right eye.

My tonsils are as big as rocks,

I've counted sixteen chicken pox

And there's one more-that's seventeen,

And don't you think my face looks green?

My leg is cut-my eyes are blue-

It might be instamatic flu.

I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,

I'm sure that my left leg is broke-

My hip hurts when I move my chin,

My belly button's caving in,

My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,

My 'pendix pains each time it rains.

My nose is cold, my toes are numb.

I have a sliver in my thumb.

My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,

I hardly whisper when I speak.

My tongue is filling up my mouth,

I think my hair is falling out.

My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,

My temperature is one-eight.

My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,

There is a hole inside my ear.

I have a hangnail, and my heart is-what?

What's that? What's that you say?

You say today is... Saturday?

G'bye, I'm going out to play!"

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed-and gazed-but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought :

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.