St. Joseph’s College of Commerce (Autonomous)
End Semester Examination – march / April 2015
B.COM (T & T) – II Semester
C2 12 2GE: GENERAL ENGLISH
Duration: 3 hours Max Marks: 100
Section -A
- Answer the following in a word, phrase or a sentence. (5×2= 10)
- Where did the two old men decide to go on a pilgrimage?
- Who is a Magi in the poem ‘The Journey of the Magi’?
- What is the meaning of the word Enterprise?
- Describe the appearance of Sir Mohan Lal in the introduction to the story Karma?
- To which city of Rajasthan, does Alex Shoumatoff travel in search of Gypsy Music?
- Answer the following questions in about 250 words. (5×10 =50)
- Describe any two Christian symbolisms used in the poem The Journey of the Magi. Give reasons why the poem ends on the note “I should be glad of another death”.
- “Travel, most people believe, is best when shared- an attitude that makes the solitary traveler one of life’s losers.” In the article Not a Tourist, how does Tom Swick bring out the difference between a tourist and a travel writer? Discuss.
- Compare and contrast the characters of Efim and Sir Mohan Lal. Do you think they share any common traits? Discuss the significance of ‘Karma’ on their lives.
- Discuss the three phases of the religious expedition in the poem Enterprise. Bring out at least one similarity and a difference in the spiritual journey as portrayed in the poem The Journey of the Magi and Enterprise
- Describe the landscape, society and culture of Rajasthan as reflected in the article Tracing the Roots of Rajasthani Music by Alex Shoumatoff. What made the writer accept that “the language of music is universal”?
Section – B
Read the passage and answer the following questions.
ONE of Europe’s oldest pilgrimage centres should be a place of rejoicing at this time of year, especially for the travellers who have trudged hundreds of miles to reach Santiago de Compostela in time for the annual feast day of Saint James, whose earthly remains have been a focus of veneration for many centuries. Instead the Spanish town has been plunged into mourning by the horrific train crash which occurred on its outskirts on Wednesday, the eve of the saint’s day. Some of the people who have walked to the town will find themselves not celebrating but offering succour to victims and their families.
Only a few weeks ago, thousands of people, many of them tourists or Hindu pilgrims, are thought to have lost their lives in floods which afflicted the north Indian state of Uttarakhand and led to one of the largest-ever air rescue operations.
Across the world, at least 200m people go on pilgrimage every year, according to the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, a British-based organization which is currently holding a meeting in Norway to consolidate the work of the Green Pilgrimage Network. That is an association of pilgrim cities and sacred sites which want to make religious travel friendlier to the environment. At the current session, Santiago de Compostela is one of 15 locations (along with Iona and Canterbury in Britain and the Indian city of Varanasi, formerly Benares), which are in the process of signing up to the project. The founding members included India’s Amritsar, Italy’s Assisi and Jerusalem. Participants in the Norwegian meeting lit candles in memory of the people who died in Spain and Uttarakhand.
Has the advent of affordable high-speed transport made pilgrimage an even more hazardous business (for both the travelers themselves, and others) than ever? Perhaps certain dangers are growing more acute, such as the risk of epidemics spreading not only among pilgrims but in their home countries when they return. The annual Muslim pilgrimage or hajj to Mecca attracts up to 3m people. In recent years there have been outbreaks of meningitis among the pilgrims, and last year there was a surge of worry after a Saudi national died from the shadowy corona virus which can cause deadly pneumonia. That is not a new problem; in 1865 there was a cholera epidemic in Mecca which spread to other countries. But air travel obviously increases the danger of a global pandemic. Last year the Saudi authorities felt obliged to offer an assurance that all necessary preventive measures were being taken.
Still, the fact is that religious journeys have always been risky. As historian Andrew Holt writes in the Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, pious people on the move “were often poorly equipped to deal with the hazards of brigands, thieves, hunger, thirst, sickness and the various physical injuries that often resulted from their travels.”
And many people making journeys with a spiritual purpose have been well prepared for the possibility that they are making their last earthly journey. One of the classic accounts of religious travel was penned by the British writer Stephen Graham who went to the Holy Land with a boatload of Russian peasants in 1912, and joined the thousands of subjects of the Tsar who thronged Jerusalem every Easter. Their purpose in travelling, he noted, was to prepare for a blessed death. They would plunge into the river Jordan wearing the white shrouds in which they ultimately expected to be buried. “They hope to die in the Holy Land, preferably near the Dead Sea where the final judgment will take place…[and if] they return to their native villages in Russia, it will be to put their affairs in order and await death.”
It has been said that every parting between friends is a foretaste of death. Perhaps that is especially true when a traveler bids farewell to a native land in the hope of finding a resting-place for the soul.
Answer all the questions in about three paragraphs each. (3×10=30)
- In the above passage what is the writer’s perspective on the religious journey? Do you think the journey to the pilgrim centers is worth the cause? Discuss.
- What is the co relation between religion and the journey to the pilgrimage centre? Do you think religion will collapse if the visit to the pilgrimage center is not made an essentiality? Give a detailed answer to explain your view points.
- What are the different risks involved in a religious journey mentioned in the passage? Compare it with the risks detailed in the lessons of your text books. According to you what makes the notion popular that a person should visit a pilgrimage centre to die blessed? Give a reasoned answer.
Section – C
(10 Marks)
14.
“Love is not love
“Which alters when it alteration finds”
The notion of love has spanned through many centuries in the form of oral traditions to romantic literature to history and to the politics involved and to the laws that legislate it. Give your view points to bring out the multiple perspectives of love from the standpoint of different cultures, disciplines and attitude. Write your answer in about 100 words
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