Question 2
MediumOriginal questionThe bus to the exam centre was supposed to leave at seven. Ravi reached the stop at five to seven, just in time to see it turning the corner at the far end of the road. The , it turned out, had decided that morning to leave early.
For a minute he simply stood there, doing the of . The centre was eleven kilometres away. The exam began at nine. His father had taken the scooter to the market before dawn.
It was Mrs Kulkarni, who ran the tailoring shop beside the stop, who solved it. She did not ask a single question. She walked to the back of her shop, wheeled out a heavy black bicycle with a basket on the front, and held it out to him. "It was my husband's," she said. "Nobody has ridden it for two years, so do not expect it to be fast."
It was not fast. The chain on every slope, and the seat had been set for a much taller man. But it moved, and Ravi reached the gate at twenty to nine, with sweat and like a fool.
That evening he brought the bicycle back, cleaned, with its chain oiled and its seat lowered. Mrs Kulkarni looked at it for a long moment. Then she said that she might start riding it herself.
"Doing the arithmetic of disaster" suggests that Ravi was
Show the answer and explanation
Correct answer: D
Explanation
The sentences that follow list what he was working through: eleven kilometres, an exam at nine, and no scooter.
Put together, those facts added up to a disaster: he could not reach the centre in time. The word "arithmetic" is used loosely, for adding up the facts.
Worth noting
No actual sum is involved. The phrase borrows the idea of adding up and applies it to his situation.
- Concept
- Understanding a word used figuratively
- Typical timeTypical
- 40 s
- Your timeYours
- —
Ten questions from Narrative passages, at your own pace.