Reading Comprehension Worksheet: Class X Passage 1 Lost and Found at the KumbhMela 1. Most people know the heart-sinking feeling of losing someone in a crowded place. Imagine the feeling of being lost at the largest gathering of humanity in the world, the KumbhMela. It’s a scene so dramatic, and so common, that it’s a theme in many Bollywood movies — families who attend the Kumbh are separated and then reunited decades later. 2. PranmatiPandey, a middle-aged woman from Bihar, knows the experience well. The mother of four was separated from her family on Sunday morning in the tide of an estimated 30 million people who gathered for the auspicious bathing day. Late on Sunday night she sat huddled with hundreds of other people, mostly women, who had also been separated from their friends and family. 3. “I just looked away from my family to give rice to the poor people on the road,” Mrs. Pandey said, too exhausted from the day to cry. “When I turned around they were gone.” She wandered around for a few hours before a benevolent stranger took her to the police. 4. To reconnect the huge numbers of missing, scores of police officers, government officials, and nongovernmental workers, like RajaramTiwari, are collaborating to ensure that the lost will be found. Mr. Tiwari started an organization, Bharat Seva Dal, to find missing people at the KumbhMela back in 1947. 5. “I came to the Kumbh when I was a teenager,” Mr. Tiwari said. “I saw how many people suffered when they lost their loved ones. So, I decided to start this organization. ” 6. During the first few Kumbhs he attended, Mr. Tiwari said he walked around with megaphones crafted with tin cans, announcing the names of the missing. Mr. Tiwari, who is in his eighties, said that over the last few decades the government has understood the importance of his service, and has eventually given him more resources. 7. There is a chaotic order to Mr. Tiwari and his comrades’ lost-and-found command stations, the largest of which is easily identified by a golf cart-sized

yellow balloon that floats several hundred feet above it. On non-bathing days when the crowds are more manageable, the system works relatively well. But as the masses gathered on Sunday, it teetered on total collapse. 8. Half naked and soaked pilgrims, who had been separated from their friends and family in the rush to take a dip at the Sangam, swarmed a platform set up by the police on the banks of the river in hopes of finding the missing. Terrified children stood on the platform and screamed for their parents. One little boy, who spotted his father among the masses, jumped off the stage and crowd-surfed into his arms. 9. This Kumbh, Mr. Sharma, 42, said the police are using WhatsApp, a smart phone application that sends messages and photos in real time to share information. They’ve also created a digitized photo system of the lost and found people that is available online. 10. The new technologies are supposed to make policing easier and cut back on the time that people are lost from days to hours, Mr. Sharma said. But in many ways, the old-school system of public announcements remains the most effective. “The crowds are such that they are still not that much into computers and things like that,” said Mr. Sharma, who expected 18,000 police officers to patrol this year’s festival. “They would just go back to the basics. That is the announcement system.” I.

Answer the following questions in brief:

1. How did Mrs. Pandey get lost in the KumbhMela? 2. What inspired RajaramTiwari to start an organization to find missing people? 3. Describe the reunion of a little boy with his father as described in paragraph 4. How has technology been incorporated to track people? 5. Why does the old announcement system work best to find lost people in Kumbh?

I. Find words in the passage which mean the same as following: 1. Tired (Paragraph 3)

2. Kind and caring (Paragraph 3) 3. Failure (Paragraph 7) 4. Religious travellers (Paragraph 8)

II. Identify an oxymoronic expression used in paragraph 7.

Passage 2 Children and Watching TV Television viewing is a major activity and influence on children and adolescents. Children in the United States watch an average of three to four hours of television a day. By the time of high school graduation, they will have spent more time watching television than they have in the classroom. While television can entertain, inform, and keep our children company, it may also influence them in undesirable ways. Time spent watching television takes away from important activities such as reading, school work, playing, exercise, family interaction, and social development. Children also learn information from television that may be inappropriate or incorrect. They often cannot tell the difference between the fantasies presented on television versus reality. They are influenced by the thousands of commercials seen each year, many of which are for alcohol, junk food, fast foods, and toys. Children who watch a lot of television are likely to: have lower grades in school, read fewer books, exercise less, be overweight. Parents can help by doing the following: don't allow children to watch long blocks of TV, but help them select individual programs. Choose shows that meet the developmental needs of the child. Children's shows on public TV are appropriate, but soap operas, adult sitcoms, and adult talk shows are not. Set certain periods when the television will be off. Study times are for learning, not for sitting in front of the TV doing homework. Meal times are a good time for family members to talk with each other, not for watching television. Let TV viewing be an active process for child and parent! 1. Match each word / phrase with its equivalent in the context of the text. 1. likely (Para 3)

A. marks

2. grades (Para 3)

B. don´t let

2. Fill in the table with the good and bad sides of watching TV.

Good sides

Bad sides

3. Give complete answers to these questions. A. What may be the bad effects of watching too much TV on school work? B. How can it affect your health? C. Which programmes are appropriate for children and which are not? D. Should parents control what their children see on TV? Why/ Why not?

Passage 3

Read the poem given below: I step into ChandniChowk I step into ChandniChowk, a street once Strewn with jasmine flowers For the Empress and the royal women Who bought perfumes from Isfahan, Fabrics from Dacca, essence from Kabul, Glass bangles from Agra. Beggars now live here in tombs Of unknown nobles and forgotten saints While hawkers sell combs and mirrors Outside a Sikh temple. Across the street, A theatre is showing a Bombay spectacular. I think of Zafar, poet and Emperor, Being led through this street By British soldiers, his feet in chains. To watch his sons hanged. In exile he wrote: “Unfortunate Zafar Spent half his life in hope, The other half waiting. He begs for two yards of Delhi for burial.” Now complete the following paragraph on the basis of your reading of the poem by filling one word in each blank: The poet nostalgically remembers the (a) _____________ days of ChandniChowk, a place once frequented bythe (b) _____________ and (c) _____________. These women procured exotic things from faraway places including (d) _____________ from Isfahan and fabric from (e) _____________. The poet contrasts this image with the present day ChandniChowk which has become a place strewn with (f) _____________ and (g) _____________ selling little knick-knacks. The poet also reminiscences the last Mughal Emperor, (h) ___________, who was captured and led through the same streets by British soldiers. When he was in (i) ____________, he yearned for two yards of land in the same streets for his (j) _________.

Passage 4 Blog: Online Diaries Blogs, online versions of personal diaries, have been a craze for some time now. Some of us, before the internet age, used to maintain a small diary to jot down random

thoughts, reflections, sayings, poems and other such stuff. Their online versions, however, are much more than that. The biggest difference between a blog and a personal diary is that while the latter was a very private affair, accessible not even to family members, a blog is a public account. In fact, the whole world connected to the internet gets to read it’s content if they come cross it. What a blogger should keep in mind while blogging is that by displaying our thoughts, emotions, opinions and personal life in full public glory, we are revealing a part of our private life. We are giving outsiders, strangers, friends, colleagues, and relatives a full view of what’s happening inside us, something we would hesitate to do in real life. Once blogging begins, it’s difficult to control, and we end up sharing our personal thoughts and emotions that we would otherwise have kept to ourselves. The blog entices us and we fall to the bait. Blogs don’t preserve our anonymity. They let us publish our pictures, professional and personal details, physical address and locations etc. The biggest precaution to be observed therefore is to think twice before publishing anything and ask oneself if one would like to make such matters public. The blog readers try to judge us, understand us, get information about us and take pleasure peeping into our lives without our realising it. (i)Blogs are (a) diaries (b) online diaries (c) personal diaries (d) official diaries (ii)Earlier the personal diaries were not available even to family members but blogs can be read by (a) family and friends (b) friends only (c) anyone who connects to the internet (d) relatives (iii)Which of the following statements is not true? (a) Blogging does not affect our privacy. (b) Blogging displays our private life in public. (c) Blogging cannot be controlled easily. (d) Blogging allows outsiders to peep into our personal lives. (iv)The writer in the above passage (a) favours blogging

(b) criticizes the practice. (c) does not want the reader to become victim of blogging (d) favours blogging but with some precautions. (v)Which word in the passage means a description from one point of view? (a) version (b) block (c) affair (d) account