We protested. But she ignored our protests. She lay peacefully in bed praying and telling her beads.

Even before we could suspect, her lips stopped moving and the rosary fell from her lifeless fingers. A

peaceful pallor spread on her face and we knew that she was dead.

We lifted her off the bed and, as is customary, laid her on the ground and covered her with a red

shroud. After a few hours of mourning, we left her alone to make arrangements for her funeral. In

the evening we went to her room with a crude stretcher to take her to be cremated. The sun was

setting and had lit her room and verandah with a blaze of golden light. We stopped half-way in the

courtyard. All over the verandah and in her room right up to where she lay dead and stiff wrapped in

the red shroud, thousands of sparrows sat scattered on the floor. There was no chirruping. We felt

sorry for the birds and my mother fetched some bread for them. She broke it into little crumbs, the

way my grandmother used to, and threw it to them. The sparrows took no notice of the bread.

When we carried my grandmother's corpse off, they flew away quietly. Next morning the sweeper

swept the bread crumbs into the dustbin.

I Answer briefly

Answer the following questions

1. What was the reaction of the grandmother at the protest of the members of the family?

2. What was the appearance of the grandmother's face before she was dying?

3. What was the dead body of the grandmother covered with?

4. How did the sparrows react when narrator's mother threw crumbs of bread to them?

II. Vocabulary:

Answer any two of the following questions

1. Write the verb form of 'mourning'.

2. Find the word from the passage which means 'rough'.

3. Find the word from the passage which is the antonym of 'uncovered'.

4. Give the noun form of 'peacefully'.​