CAT 2025 Slot 2 Question Paper

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

This book takes the position that setting in literature is more than just backdrop, that important insight into literary texts can be made by paying close attention to how authors craft place, as well as to how place functions in a narrative. The authors included in this reference work engage deeply with either real or imagined geographies. They care about how human decisions have shaped landscapes and how landscapes have shaped human practices and values. Some of the best writing is highly vivid, employing the language of the senses because this is the primary means through which humans know physical space.

Literature can offer valuable perspectives on physical and cultural geography. Unlike scientific reports, a literary narrative can provide the emotional component missing from the scientific record. In human experience, geographical places have a spiritual or emotional component in addition to and as part of a physical layout and topography. This emotional component, although subjective, is no less “real” than a surveyor’s map. Human consciousness of place is experienced in a multimodal manner. Histories of places live on in many forms, one of which is the human memory or imagination.

Both real and imaginary landscapes provide insight into the human experience of place. The pursuit of such a topic speaks to the valuable knowledge produced from bridging disciplines and combining material from both the arts and the sciences to better understand the human condition. The perspectives that most concern cultural geographers are often those regarding movement and migration, ultivation of natural resources, and organization of space. The latter two reflect concerns of the built environment, a topic shared with the field of architectural study. Many of these concerns are also reflected in work sociologists do. Scholars from literary studies can contribute an aesthetic dimension to what might otherwise be a purely ideological approach.

Literature can bring together material that spans different branches of science. For example, a literary description of place may involve not only the environment and geography but the noises and quality of light, or how people from different races or classes can experience the same place in different ways linked to those racial or class disparities. Literary texts can also account for the way in which absence—of other people, animals, and so on—affects a human observer or inhabitant. Both literary and scientific approaches to place are necessary, working in unison, to achieve a complete record of an environment. It is important to note that the interdisciplinary nature of this work teaches us that landscapes are not static, that they are not unchanged by human culture. At least part of their identity derives from the people who inhabit them and from the way space can alter and inspire human perspective. The intersection of scientific and literary expression that happens in
the study of literary geography is of prime importance due to the complexity of the personal and political ways that humans experience place.

For the following questions answer them individually

Ananya Raga, Bhaskar Tala, Charu Veena, and Devendra Sur are four musicians. Each of them started and completed their training as students under each of three Gurus — Pandit Meghnath, Ustad Samiran, and Acharya Raghunath between 2013 and 2024, including both the years. Each Guru trains any student for consecutive years only, for a span of 2, 3, or 4 years, with each Guru having a different span. During some of these years, a student may not have trained under these Gurus; however, they never trained under multiple Gurus in the same year. In none of these years, any of these Gurus trained more than two of these students at the same time. When two students train under the same Guru at the same time, they are referred to as Gurubhai, irrespective of their gender.
The following additional facts are known.
1. Ustad Samiran never trained more than one of these students in the same year.
2. Acharya Raghunath did not train any of these students during 2015-2018, as well as during 2021-24.
3. Ananya and Devendra were never Gurubhai; neither were Bhaskar and Charu. All other pairs of musicians were Gurubhai for exactly 2 years.
4. In 2013, Ananya and Bhaskar started their trainings under Pandit Meghnath and under Ustad Samiran, respectively.

The following charts depict details of research papers written by four authors, Arman, Brajen, Chintan, and Devon. The papers were of four types, single-author, two-author, three-author, and four-author, that is, written by one, two, three, or all four of these authors, respectively. No other authors were involved in writing these papers.

The following additional facts are known.
1. Each of the authors wrote at least one of each of the four types of papers.
2. The four authors wrote different numbers of single-author papers.
3. Both Chintan and Devon wrote more three-author papers than Brajen.
4. The number of single-author and two-author papers written by Brajen were the same.