Direction: You have a passage with 10 questions. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
The postmaster first took up his duties in the village of Ulapur. Though the village was a small one, there was an indigo factory nearby and the proprietor, an Englishman, had managed to get a post office established. Our postmaster belonged to Calcutta. He felt like a fish out of water in this remote village. His office and livingroom were in a dark thatched shed, not far from a green, slimy pond, surrounded on all sides by a dense growth. The men employed in the indigo factory had no leisure, moreover they were hardly desirable companions for decent folk. Nor is a Calcutta boy an adept in the art of associating with others. Among strangers he appears either proud or ill at ease. At any rate the postmaster had but little company, nor had he much to do. At times he tried his hand at writing a verse or two. That the movement of the leaves and clouds of the sky were enough to fill life with joy — such were the sentiments to which he sought to give expression. But God knows that the poor fellow would have felt it as the gift of a new life, if some genie of the Arabian Nights had in one night swept away the trees, leaves and all, and replaced them with a macadamised road, hiding the clouds from view with rows of tall houses.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
a fish out of water : a person who feels uncomfortable because he/she is in unfamiliar surroundings.
slimy : covered with unpleasant thick liquid substance.
adept : skilful verse : poetry macadamised : to lay a path with broken stone, often with asphalt or coal tar.

Direction: You have passages with 5 questions in each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
Passage
One of the American Navy’s greatest losses during World War II was inflicted not by the Japanese, but by the weather. On the evening of 17 December, 1944, destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers of the Third Fleet Task Force 38 were replenishing stocks of food, fuel and ammunition during a sea rendezvous with support ships when a savage tornado struck the Philippine Sea. One of the commanders said later; ‘My ship was riding as though caught in some giant washing machine. We were rolling between heaving cliffs of water, caught in so strong a vice of wind and sea that our 50,000 horse-power engines were helpless.’ It was nine hours before he regained control of his ship, after the fleet had bobbed like helpless shuttlecocks, unable to prevent collisions in the sledge hammer waves.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
ammunition : a supply of bullets, etc. to be fired from guns.
rendezvous : a place where people have arranged to meet.
savage : violent tornado : a violent storm with very strong winds which move in a circle.
heaving : rising up and down with strong, regular movements.
bobbed : moved or made something move quickly up and down, especially in water. inflicted : suffered repleneshing : refilling cliffs of water : rocks of water collision : a severe crash between two vehicles/ people sledge hammer : large and heavy (waves) (waves)