Questions

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

The instructor's rules were simple. Breathe through your mouth, not your nose; else the mask will fog up. Easier said than done; I got it wrong many a time. But once you fought habit and got the hang of it, the panoramic underwater world revealed itself to you with high-definition clarity.

Led by him, I slowly peered through the mask into what till then was crystal-clear water, shimmering in the sunlight. I saw pebbles, sand and my fluid shadow. I was in Nemo's universe. Sea cucumbers, sea anemone, clown fish, star fish, sea horses, parrot fish, butterfly fish and a bevy of colourful salt water fish swam past. A shoal of canary-yellow fish did a merry dance and another with vibrant blue fish followed it. They were oblivious to the snorkelers who struggled to take in the sight of a world so beautiful, so colourful, and resist opening their mouth wide in amazement; the tube would fall off!

The writer saw all of the following except:

India lies in the hemisphere

This refers to the ordering of elements in a sentence

Select the antonym of

abominable

Select the antonym of

antique

Select the antonym of

pompous

Improve the bracketed part of the sentence.

The passengers (were waited) for the flight at the emigration lobby, for long.

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

Eight north Indian Ocean countries, namely, Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand, were asked to contribute names so that a combined list could be compiled. Each country gave eight names and a combined list of 64 names was prepared. This list is currently in use, and all cyclones arising in the north Indian Ocean are named from this list, with one name from each country being used in turn. Almost 38 or 39 names from the list have been used up, but since many cyclones dissipate long before they hit land, their names rarely figure in the papers or other media. The names that people do know about, and remember are, naturally, those that were most destructive ones, or very recent. Aila, in 2009 is remembered with a shudder for the enormous destruction it caused in West Bengal and Bangladesh; Phaillin, also for the damage it caused when it hit the Odisha coast in 2013. Two harmless cyclones, which also might remain in people’s memory, are the more recent ones of 2014 — Hudhud, which threatened the east coast of India and Nilofar, which was expected to, but did not, devastate the western coast. The names in the cyclone list are usually words one associates with storms; words which mean water or wind or lightning in various national languages. Sometimes they are names of other things — birds or flowers or precious stones. The name ‘Aila’, contributed by the Maldives means ‘fire’, the name ‘Phaillin’ from Thailand means sapphire, the name ‘Hudhud’ from Oman is the name of a bird, probably the hoopoe, and the name ‘Nilofar’, given by Pakistan, is the Urdu name of the lotus or water lily. The eight names suggested by India, and which are in the list of 64, are Agni, Akaash, Bijli, Jal, Leher, Megh, Sagar and Vayu, meaning in that order, fire, sky, lightning, water, wave, cloud, sea and wind. Five of these names (that is, up to Leher) have been used so far.

Which of the following names is a type of a precious stone?