Chapter 12 + 13

Question 0

Aruna would … Cousin Ramu? … And anamika - …?

Answer 0

Pay no attention, she is too busy
Where was /he/?
Had marriage /devoured/ her?

Question 1

Uma stares into their faces

Answer 1

With open defiance

Question 2

She will read a poem or two, and find

Answer 2

The pleasure they deny her

Question 3

Her toes twiddle

Answer 3

With delight

Question 4

‘Come fly

Answer 4

With me darling - fly’

Question 5

Mama’s voice is …

Answer 5

Battering it, sharp as an axe

Question 6

Her silence

Answer 6

Roars at them

Question 7

‘/this/, this is

Answer 7

What I know. And you, you /don’t/’

Question 8

She no longer had fits: it was as if the

Answer 8

Plunge into the river had caused the fits and hysterics to be carried off by the currents

Question 9

Only at night the idea that

Answer 9

There was someone who /had/ won what she desired would come winging through the dark

Question 10

‘Job?’ Gulped Uma, having never

Answer 10

Aspired so high in her life

Question 11

Papa looked … And mama …

Answer 11

Incredulous

Outraged

Question 12

The frown was filled with everything he though of

Answer 12

Working women, of women who dared to presume to step into the work he occupied

Question 26

Uma’s head was … Her lips were…

Answer 26

Bobbing

Fluttering: yes, yespleaseyes.

Question 27

‘What will my

Answer 27

Madcap do next?’

Question 28

Anamika’s parents try (to do the funeral) but

Answer 28

They fail: their throats are dry, the words will not come.

Question 29

Drawn along as if

Answer 29

By an invisible rope

Question 30

A lapwing on the bank that is crying frantically, over and over

Answer 30

‘Did-you-do-it?’

Question 31

(Uma and mama) are

Answer 31

Together still, they have the comfort of each other.

Question 32

When she tilts it (the water) and pours it out, the murky water

Answer 32

Catches the blaze of the sun and flashes fire

Question 33

What did Dr Dutt do in

Answer 33

The luxury of her solitude? Uma wished passionately that she knew

Question 34

Uma clenched her teeth so as to

Answer 34

Not let out a wail of anger and protest that welled up in her mouth like blood when a tooth is drawn

Question 35

‘Never earned

Answer 35

Anything in her life, made me spend and spend!’

Question 36

When the electricity suddenly

Answer 36

Comes to life, blindingly, with a thump, and light up the message: Anamika is dead.

Question 37

The news has struck

Answer 37

Light lightning although what it reveals has no reality.

Question 38

Then she struck a match.

Answer 38

She set herself alight

Question 39

What anamika’s family said was that it was fate,

Answer 39

God had willed it and it was anamika’s destiny.

Question 40

What Uma said

Answer 40

Was nothing.

Question 41

He has retreated into a

Answer 41

Grey shroud of sorrow

Question 42

But she feels

Answer 42

Like ash - cold, colourless, motionless ash.

Question 43

Uma wishes he would

Answer 43

Stop arguing and pay. For once.

Question 44

‘Mama, sit down.’ Uma

Answer 44

Hisses at her miserably

Question 45

Without (the priest)

Answer 45

Would the dead find their way to the bliss of salvation?