Questions

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

One should consciously engage in activities that will nourish your soul. Just as we nourish the body, we need to nurture the soul to connect to the creative power of the universe and to manifest joy in our lives. Often, we forget to address the soul, lost as we are in a jungle of material and sensual pleasures. But the more you embrace what feeds your soul, the happier you become. So if you want to enjoy the abundance of life, engage in what enriches your soul. Nurturing the soul is all about finding calm amidst chaos. There are a number of practices that empower people towards this end including silent contemplation, various forms of meditation, yoga and tai chi However, the rigor and discipline involved in the pursuit of such practices often seems to discourage people. Add to this, the temptations of the material world that leave little time and motivation for anyone to pursue the spiritual path. Poet Walt Whitman declared: “Whatever satisfies the soul is truth”. The good news is that simple, everyday activities can also nutrify the soul — like spending time in the midst of nature, dancing in the rain or just putting thoughts on paper. Do whatever is calming and pleases you. Creative pursuits are particularly appealing as inside each one of us, there is an artist craving for release and awaiting an opportunity for expression. One of the ways to indulge the artist within is to get started with the practice of any one or more of the creative art forms such as music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction or essay writing.

When you engage in such soul nourishing activities, all thought and energy gets focused toward goal accomplishment. At this point, you will find that even unknown forces of the universe are conniving to assist you in your amateurish but sincere attempts. As you progress, you are motivated to do better. You touch and access a faculty, a part of you that you never knew existed. Your inner artist is unleashed, baring the beauty of your soul that has found a fond medium of expression. For instance, a sculptor’s soul is seen in his artwork; a musician’s in his compositions; an actor’s in his acting, a painter’s in his paintings and so on. It is immaterial whether your effort is an immaculate artwork or just a clumsy attempt by a layperson. The idea is to try, be inspired and to create giving free rein to the mind. As Michelangelo remarked: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free”!

According to the passage, what makes us really happy?

In the following question, the sentence given with blank to be filled in with an appropriate word. Select the correct alternative out of the four and indicate it by selecting the appropriate option.

Despite the bank's security staff ____________ a vigil over the treasury boxes, the cash was stolen.

In the following passage, some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and select the correct answer for the given blank out of the four alternatives.

We get sleepy and wake up, become hungry and thirsty at certain hours, ____________ force of habit. We form the habit of liking a certain chair, or nook, or corner, or path, or desk, and __________ seek this to the exclusion of all others. We ______________ use a particular pitch of voice and type of enunciation in speaking, and this becomes one of our characteristic marks; or we _________ the habit of using barbarisms or solecisms of language in __________, and these cling to us and become an inseparable part of us later in life.

language in __________, and these cling

In the following passage, some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and select the correct answer for the given blank out of the four alternatives.

The news has always ____________ predicated on informing the consumer. It speaks of — apart from the day’s most ____________ upheavals — the best and the worst that _____________ has managed to accomplish each day. This includes the medal-winners, the laureates, the record-breakers, the deal-makers _________the criminals, the villains, the corrupt. The news regales us ________ the highlights, a reel of the most provoking ones that made it into a window of a half-an-hour.

the worst that _____________ has managed to accomplish

In the following passage, some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and select the correct answer for the given blank out of the four alternatives.

The abuse of phrases and the misuse of words rife among us can be checked __________ diligent exercises in good English, such as this book provides. ___________exercises, in conjunction __________ others to be found in different volumes by the same author, will serve to correct careless diction and slovenly speech, and lead to the art of speaking and writing correctly; for, after all, ___________ in the use of words is more a matter of habit than of theory, and once it is acquired it becomes just as easy to speak or to write good English _____________ bad English.

after all, ___________ in the use of words

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.

Come what may

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.

barking up the wrong tree

Which Article specifies the Fundamental Duties of every citizen?