SSC CGL Tier-2 29th January 2022 English

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

Comprehension:
A piano teacher described an interesting encounter she had had with a young lady who came to inquire about music lessons. The young lady asked her, “How long will this course take? My father tells me that it is in fashion now to be able to play musical instruments and that I should learn one quickly. I want something that will be quick, fast and easy like, like….” When
the amused teacher explained that it would take a lifetime of meticulous practice to learn music, her face fell and, needless to say, she never came back.

The single most important factor that distinguishes those of us who succeed in any venture and those of us who don’t is this ‘instant coffee’ attitude. Most of us want results quickly. We
want to reach the top immediately and get worked up when things go wrong. Perseverance and patience are forgotten words. We get upset, frustrated, and angry when a skill or activity requires us to put in a lot of effort and time. We get dejected and want to give it up. But such thinking serves no good. For, it doesn’t solve the problem. Life is tough for those with an ‘instant coffee’ attitude.

Success, real success and happiness come to those who have a ‘bread-making’ attitudethose who are willing to knead the dough, wait for hours for it to rise, only to punch it down and knead some more, wait for another couple of hours for it to rise again, and then bake it before it is ready to be eaten. Nothing is instantaneous. For every endeavour - whether in the area of career, academics, music, sports, relationships, physical fitness or even in spirituality - it is a long, arduous journey.

Only if we are willing to put in the time, painstaking effort and have faith, can we get results. If we don’t accept this difficult-but-true fact of life, our lives will be far from being happy and fulfilling. For we may not make that extra effort which can change the course of life dramatically, for the good.

The major problems with these ‘instant coffee’ solutions are that they are invariably shortlived. If we stubbornly refuse to give up this search for quick solutions, all we do is end up on
the wrong track.

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

Comprehension:
You go up a dark, rickety stairwell of a building on a crowded street in Calcutta. You enter a small room. The centre of the room is empty but the corners are stacked with bedrolls, utensils and water bottles. Musical instruments, drums, cymbals and gongs are piled in a corner. Today, the room is filled with the laughter of men and women in colourful attire. Among the happy chorus of congratulations and laughter, the bride Chumki Pal and the groom Sandeep can be seen smiling. They are both blind, as are most of the people surrounding them. Pal is wearing a bright turquoise blue sari. “I know it’s blue because people have told me but I can’t imagine how it looks. But believe me, when I dream, I dream only in colours,” she says. Their romance blossomed when they met as members of Blind Opera, the only one of its kind in the country as well as in Asia.

The 36 spirited members of Blind Opera demonstrate that physical disability is not an obstacle. They enact plays by Rabindranath Tagore, considered challenging even by veteran theatre groups. Blind Opera was launched in 1996 by four theatre aficionados, who took it as a challenge to get together the talents of these visually impaired people. The challenge to present the cast on stage is immense since space management is a problem. To solve this, the directors use ropes to separate the stage and the wings. When the actors step on the rope they know that it is the entrance to the stage. The members cannot see, but they can smell, hear and touch - three elements inherent to any theatre. At Blind Opera, they “believe that the blind can see. That is, they see in their own way, if not in our way, with the help of these abilities.”

For the visually impaired, theatre is the medium for expression of their creative urges. They respond instinctively; they cannot copy anyone else because they cannot see. Their body language tells the story and hence it is very spontaneous. The members have earned kudos from Calcutta audiences. For the members of the troupe, discovering the language of the body is in a way also a journey of the persona. Coming from diverse backgrounds but bound together by the same disability, they have found an outlet for their creativity through the plays. They do not feel isolated anymore because they can relate to their fellow performers. There is also a greater purpose behind it: to use theatre to build a community and mainstream the huge number of disabled living in isolation. Together they can be a force to demand better facilities in public life. Blind children should enter the mainstream from the beginning. The big dream of the group is to establish a drama school following the ideal of Tagore’s
Shantiniketan, offering a platform for creative expression to all those who are economically and socially forced to stay in the periphery. Like Chumki Pal, they all dream in colour.