CLAT Practice Test - 8 - CLAT MCQ

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

In the second week of August 1998, just a few days after the incidents of bombing the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, a high-powered, brain-storming session was held near Washington D.C. to discuss various aspects of terrorism. The meeting was attended by ten of America’s leading experts in various fields such as germ and chemical warfare, public health, disease control and also by the doctors and the law-enforcing officers. Being asked to describe the horror of possible bio-attack, one of the experts narrated the following gloomy scenario.

A culprit in a crowded business centre or in a busy shopping mall of a town empties a test tube containing some fluid, which in turn creates an unseen cloud of germ of a dreaded disease like anthrax capable of inflicting a horrible death within 5 days on any one who inhales it. At first 500 or so victims feel that they have mild influenza which may recede after a day or two. Then the symptoms return again and their lungs start filling with fluid. They rush to local hospitals for treatment, but the panic-stricken people may find that the medicare services run quickly out of drugs due to excessive demand. But no one would be able to realise that a terrorist attack has occurred. One cannot deny the possibility that the germ involved would be of contagious variety capable of causing an epidemic. The meeting concluded that such attacks, apart from causing immediate human tragedy, would have dire long-term effects on the political and social fabric of a country by way of ending people’s trust on the competence of the government.

The experts also said that the bombs used in Kenya and Tanzania were of the old-fashioned variety and involved quantities of high explosives, but new terrorism will prove to be more deadly and probably more elusive than hijacking an aeroplane or a gelignite of previous decades. According to Bruce Hoffman, an American specialist on political violence, old terrorism generally had a specific manifesto - to overthrow a colonial power or the capitalist system and so on. These terrorists were not shy about planting a bomb or hijacking an aircraft and they set some limit to their brutality. Killing so many innocent people might turn their natural supporters off. Political terrorists want a lot of people watching but not a lot of people dead. “Old terrorism sought to change the world while the new sort is often practised by those who believe that the world has gone beyond redemption”, he added.

Hoffman says, “New terrorism has no long-term agenda but is ruthless sin its short-term intentions. It is often just a cacophonous cry of protest or an outburst of religious intolerance or a protest against the West in general and the US in particular. Its perpetrators may be religious fanatics or diehard opponents of a government and see no reason to show restraint. They are simply intent on inflicting the maximum amount of pain on the victim.”

Q.  According to the author of the passage, the root cause of terrorism is
(A) Religious fanaticism
(B) Socio-political changes in countries
(C) The enormous population growth

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

In the second week of August 1998, just a few days after the incidents of bombing the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, a high-powered, brain-storming session was held near Washington D.C. to discuss various aspects of terrorism. The meeting was attended by ten of America’s leading experts in various fields such as germ and chemical warfare, public health, disease control and also by the doctors and the law-enforcing officers. Being asked to describe the horror of possible bio-attack, one of the experts narrated the following gloomy scenario.

A culprit in a crowded business centre or in a busy shopping mall of a town empties a test tube containing some fluid, which in turn creates an unseen cloud of germ of a dreaded disease like anthrax capable of inflicting a horrible death within 5 days on any one who inhales it. At first 500 or so victims feel that they have mild influenza which may recede after a day or two. Then the symptoms return again and their lungs start filling with fluid. They rush to local hospitals for treatment, but the panic-stricken people may find that the medicare services run quickly out of drugs due to excessive demand. But no one would be able to realise that a terrorist attack has occurred. One cannot deny the possibility that the germ involved would be of contagious variety capable of causing an epidemic. The meeting concluded that such attacks, apart from causing immediate human tragedy, would have dire long-term effects on the political and social fabric of a country by way of ending people’s trust on the competence of the government.

The experts also said that the bombs used in Kenya and Tanzania were of the old-fashioned variety and involved quantities of high explosives, but new terrorism will prove to be more deadly and probably more elusive than hijacking an aeroplane or a gelignite of previous decades. According to Bruce Hoffman, an American specialist on political violence, old terrorism generally had a specific manifesto - to overthrow a colonial power or the capitalist system and so on. These terrorists were not shy about planting a bomb or hijacking an aircraft and they set some limit to their brutality. Killing so many innocent people might turn their natural supporters off. Political terrorists want a lot of people watching but not a lot of people dead. “Old terrorism sought to change the world while the new sort is often practised by those who believe that the world has gone beyond redemption”, he added.

Hoffman says, “New terrorism has no long-term agenda but is ruthless sin its short-term intentions. It is often just a cacophonous cry of protest or an outburst of religious intolerance or a protest against the West in general and the US in particular. Its perpetrators may be religious fanatics or diehard opponents of a government and see no reason to show restraint. They are simply intent on inflicting the maximum amount of pain on the victim.”

Q.  In what way would the new terrorism be different from that of the earlier years?
(A) More dangerous and less baffling
(B) More hazardous for victims
(C) Less complicated for terrorists

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

For many women, including myself, "wife" can feel like a loaded word. It carries a history. If you grew up in the 1960s and 1970s as I did, wives seemed to be a genus of white women who lived inside television sitcoms—cheery, coiffed, corseted. They stayed at home, fussed over the children, and had dinner ready on the stove. They sometimes got into the sherry or flirted with the vacuum-cleaner salesman, but the excitement seemed to end there. The irony, of course, was that I used to watch those shows in our living room on Euclid Avenue while my own stay-at-home mom fixed dinner without complaint and my own clean-cut dad recovered from a day at work. My parents' arrangement was as traditional as anything we saw on TV.
Personally, as a kid, I preferred The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which I absorbed with fascination. Mary had a job, a snappy wardrobe, and really great hair. She was independent and funny, and unlike those of the other ladies on TV, her problems were interesting. She had conversations that weren't about children or homemaking. She didn't let Lou Grant boss her around, and she wasn't fixated on finding a husband. She was youthful and at the same time grown-up. If you were a girl with a brain and a dawning sense that you wanted to grow into something more than a wife, Mary Tyler Moore was your goddess.
And here I was now, twenty-nine years old, sitting in the very same apartment where I'd watched all that TV and consumed all those meals dished up by the patient and selfless Marian Robinson. I had so much—an education, a healthy sense of self, a deep arsenal of ambition—and I was wise enough to credit my mother, in particular, with instilling it in me. She'd taught me how to read before I started kindergarten, helping me sound out words as I sat curled like a kitten in her lap, studying a library copy of Dick and Jane. She'd cooked for us with care, putting broccoli and Brussels sprouts on our plates and requiring that we eat them. The point was, she'd given diligently and she'd given everything.
My considerable blessings in life were now causing a kind of psychic whiplash. I'd been raised to be confident and see no limits, to believe I could go after and get absolutely anything I wanted. And I wanted everything. I wanted to live with the hat-tossing, independent-career-woman zest of Mary Tyler Moore, and at the same time I gravitated toward the stabilizing, self-sacrificing, seemingly bland normalcy of being a wife and mother.

Q. Why did the author suggest that 'wife' is a loaded word?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

For many women, including myself, "wife" can feel like a loaded word. It carries a history. If you grew up in the 1960s and 1970s as I did, wives seemed to be a genus of white women who lived inside television sitcoms—cheery, coiffed, corseted. They stayed at home, fussed over the children, and had dinner ready on the stove. They sometimes got into the sherry or flirted with the vacuum-cleaner salesman, but the excitement seemed to end there. The irony, of course, was that I used to watch those shows in our living room on Euclid Avenue while my own stay-at-home mom fixed dinner without complaint and my own clean-cut dad recovered from a day at work. My parents' arrangement was as traditional as anything we saw on TV.
Personally, as a kid, I preferred The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which I absorbed with fascination. Mary had a job, a snappy wardrobe, and really great hair. She was independent and funny, and unlike those of the other ladies on TV, her problems were interesting. She had conversations that weren't about children or homemaking. She didn't let Lou Grant boss her around, and she wasn't fixated on finding a husband. She was youthful and at the same time grown-up. If you were a girl with a brain and a dawning sense that you wanted to grow into something more than a wife, Mary Tyler Moore was your goddess.
And here I was now, twenty-nine years old, sitting in the very same apartment where I'd watched all that TV and consumed all those meals dished up by the patient and selfless Marian Robinson. I had so much—an education, a healthy sense of self, a deep arsenal of ambition—and I was wise enough to credit my mother, in particular, with instilling it in me. She'd taught me how to read before I started kindergarten, helping me sound out words as I sat curled like a kitten in her lap, studying a library copy of Dick and Jane. She'd cooked for us with care, putting broccoli and Brussels sprouts on our plates and requiring that we eat them. The point was, she'd given diligently and she'd given everything.
My considerable blessings in life were now causing a kind of psychic whiplash. I'd been raised to be confident and see no limits, to believe I could go after and get absolutely anything I wanted. And I wanted everything. I wanted to live with the hat-tossing, independent-career-woman zest of Mary Tyler Moore, and at the same time I gravitated toward the stabilizing, self-sacrificing, seemingly bland normalcy of being a wife and mother.

Q. Why does the author state that she liked watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

For many women, including myself, "wife" can feel like a loaded word. It carries a history. If you grew up in the 1960s and 1970s as I did, wives seemed to be a genus of white women who lived inside television sitcoms—cheery, coiffed, corseted. They stayed at home, fussed over the children, and had dinner ready on the stove. They sometimes got into the sherry or flirted with the vacuum-cleaner salesman, but the excitement seemed to end there. The irony, of course, was that I used to watch those shows in our living room on Euclid Avenue while my own stay-at-home mom fixed dinner without complaint and my own clean-cut dad recovered from a day at work. My parents' arrangement was as traditional as anything we saw on TV.
Personally, as a kid, I preferred The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which I absorbed with fascination. Mary had a job, a snappy wardrobe, and really great hair. She was independent and funny, and unlike those of the other ladies on TV, her problems were interesting. She had conversations that weren't about children or homemaking. She didn't let Lou Grant boss her around, and she wasn't fixated on finding a husband. She was youthful and at the same time grown-up. If you were a girl with a brain and a dawning sense that you wanted to grow into something more than a wife, Mary Tyler Moore was your goddess.
And here I was now, twenty-nine years old, sitting in the very same apartment where I'd watched all that TV and consumed all those meals dished up by the patient and selfless Marian Robinson. I had so much—an education, a healthy sense of self, a deep arsenal of ambition—and I was wise enough to credit my mother, in particular, with instilling it in me. She'd taught me how to read before I started kindergarten, helping me sound out words as I sat curled like a kitten in her lap, studying a library copy of Dick and Jane. She'd cooked for us with care, putting broccoli and Brussels sprouts on our plates and requiring that we eat them. The point was, she'd given diligently and she'd given everything.
My considerable blessings in life were now causing a kind of psychic whiplash. I'd been raised to be confident and see no limits, to believe I could go after and get absolutely anything I wanted. And I wanted everything. I wanted to live with the hat-tossing, independent-career-woman zest of Mary Tyler Moore, and at the same time I gravitated toward the stabilizing, self-sacrificing, seemingly bland normalcy of being a wife and mother.

Q. What does the word 'dawning' as used in the passage mean?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

For many women, including myself, "wife" can feel like a loaded word. It carries a history. If you grew up in the 1960s and 1970s as I did, wives seemed to be a genus of white women who lived inside television sitcoms—cheery, coiffed, corseted. They stayed at home, fussed over the children, and had dinner ready on the stove. They sometimes got into the sherry or flirted with the vacuum-cleaner salesman, but the excitement seemed to end there. The irony, of course, was that I used to watch those shows in our living room on Euclid Avenue while my own stay-at-home mom fixed dinner without complaint and my own clean-cut dad recovered from a day at work. My parents' arrangement was as traditional as anything we saw on TV.
Personally, as a kid, I preferred The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which I absorbed with fascination. Mary had a job, a snappy wardrobe, and really great hair. She was independent and funny, and unlike those of the other ladies on TV, her problems were interesting. She had conversations that weren't about children or homemaking. She didn't let Lou Grant boss her around, and she wasn't fixated on finding a husband. She was youthful and at the same time grown-up. If you were a girl with a brain and a dawning sense that you wanted to grow into something more than a wife, Mary Tyler Moore was your goddess.
And here I was now, twenty-nine years old, sitting in the very same apartment where I'd watched all that TV and consumed all those meals dished up by the patient and selfless Marian Robinson. I had so much—an education, a healthy sense of self, a deep arsenal of ambition—and I was wise enough to credit my mother, in particular, with instilling it in me. She'd taught me how to read before I started kindergarten, helping me sound out words as I sat curled like a kitten in her lap, studying a library copy of Dick and Jane. She'd cooked for us with care, putting broccoli and Brussels sprouts on our plates and requiring that we eat them. The point was, she'd given diligently and she'd given everything.
My considerable blessings in life were now causing a kind of psychic whiplash. I'd been raised to be confident and see no limits, to believe I could go after and get absolutely anything I wanted. And I wanted everything. I wanted to live with the hat-tossing, independent-career-woman zest of Mary Tyler Moore, and at the same time I gravitated toward the stabilizing, self-sacrificing, seemingly bland normalcy of being a wife and mother.

Q. As mentioned in the passage, how does the author feel about her mother?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

For many women, including myself, "wife" can feel like a loaded word. It carries a history. If you grew up in the 1960s and 1970s as I did, wives seemed to be a genus of white women who lived inside television sitcoms—cheery, coiffed, corseted. They stayed at home, fussed over the children, and had dinner ready on the stove. They sometimes got into the sherry or flirted with the vacuum-cleaner salesman, but the excitement seemed to end there. The irony, of course, was that I used to watch those shows in our living room on Euclid Avenue while my own stay-at-home mom fixed dinner without complaint and my own clean-cut dad recovered from a day at work. My parents' arrangement was as traditional as anything we saw on TV.
Personally, as a kid, I preferred The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which I absorbed with fascination. Mary had a job, a snappy wardrobe, and really great hair. She was independent and funny, and unlike those of the other ladies on TV, her problems were interesting. She had conversations that weren't about children or homemaking. She didn't let Lou Grant boss her around, and she wasn't fixated on finding a husband. She was youthful and at the same time grown-up. If you were a girl with a brain and a dawning sense that you wanted to grow into something more than a wife, Mary Tyler Moore was your goddess.
And here I was now, twenty-nine years old, sitting in the very same apartment where I'd watched all that TV and consumed all those meals dished up by the patient and selfless Marian Robinson. I had so much—an education, a healthy sense of self, a deep arsenal of ambition—and I was wise enough to credit my mother, in particular, with instilling it in me. She'd taught me how to read before I started kindergarten, helping me sound out words as I sat curled like a kitten in her lap, studying a library copy of Dick and Jane. She'd cooked for us with care, putting broccoli and Brussels sprouts on our plates and requiring that we eat them. The point was, she'd given diligently and she'd given everything.
My considerable blessings in life were now causing a kind of psychic whiplash. I'd been raised to be confident and see no limits, to believe I could go after and get absolutely anything I wanted. And I wanted everything. I wanted to live with the hat-tossing, independent-career-woman zest of Mary Tyler Moore, and at the same time I gravitated toward the stabilizing, self-sacrificing, seemingly bland normalcy of being a wife and mother.

Q. Why does the author think that her blessings are causing "a psychic whiplash"?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

It is a strange that, according to his position in life, an extravagant man is admired or despised. A successful businessman does nothing to increase his popularity by being careful with his money. He is expected to display his success, to have smart car, an expensive life, and to be lavish with his hospitality. If he is not so, he is considered mean and his reputation in business may even suffer in consequence. The paradox remains that if he had not been careful with his money in the first place, he would never have achieved his present wealth. Among the two income groups, a different set of values exists.

The young clerk who makes his wife a present of a new dress when the hadn’t paid his house rent condemned as extravagant. Carefulness with money to the point of meanness is applauded as a virtue. Nothing in his life is considered more worthy than paying his bills. The ideal wife for such a man separates her housekeeping money into joyless little piles-so much for rent, for food, for the children’s shoes; she is able to face the milkman with equanimity and never knows the guilt of buying something she can’t able to face the milkman with equanimity and never knows the guilt of buying something she can’t really afford. As for myself, I fall into neither of these categories. If I have money to spare I can be extravagant, but when, as is usually the cause, I am hard up, then I am then meanest man imaginable.

Q. The phrase lavish with his hospitality signifies

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

It is a strange that, according to his position in life, an extravagant man is admired or despised. A successful businessman does nothing to increase his popularity by being careful with his money. He is expected to display his success, to have smart car, an expensive life, and to be lavish with his hospitality. If he is not so, he is considered mean and his reputation in business may even suffer in consequence. The paradox remains that if he had not been careful with his money in the first place, he would never have achieved his present wealth. Among the two income groups, a different set of values exists.

The young clerk who makes his wife a present of a new dress when the hadn’t paid his house rent condemned as extravagant. Carefulness with money to the point of meanness is applauded as a virtue. Nothing in his life is considered more worthy than paying his bills. The ideal wife for such a man separates her housekeeping money into joyless little piles-so much for rent, for food, for the children’s shoes; she is able to face the milkman with equanimity and never knows the guilt of buying something she can’t able to face the milkman with equanimity and never knows the guilt of buying something she can’t really afford. As for myself, I fall into neither of these categories. If I have money to spare I can be extravagant, but when, as is usually the cause, I am hard up, then I am then meanest man imaginable.

Q. The word paradox means.

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

It is a strange that, according to his position in life, an extravagant man is admired or despised. A successful businessman does nothing to increase his popularity by being careful with his money. He is expected to display his success, to have smart car, an expensive life, and to be lavish with his hospitality. If he is not so, he is considered mean and his reputation in business may even suffer in consequence. The paradox remains that if he had not been careful with his money in the first place, he would never have achieved his present wealth. Among the two income groups, a different set of values exists.

The young clerk who makes his wife a present of a new dress when the hadn’t paid his house rent condemned as extravagant. Carefulness with money to the point of meanness is applauded as a virtue. Nothing in his life is considered more worthy than paying his bills. The ideal wife for such a man separates her housekeeping money into joyless little piles-so much for rent, for food, for the children’s shoes; she is able to face the milkman with equanimity and never knows the guilt of buying something she can’t able to face the milkman with equanimity and never knows the guilt of buying something she can’t really afford. As for myself, I fall into neither of these categories. If I have money to spare I can be extravagant, but when, as is usually the cause, I am hard up, then I am then meanest man imaginable.

Q. Which of the following is opposite in meaning to the word applauded in the passage?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

It is a strange that, according to his position in life, an extravagant man is admired or despised. A successful businessman does nothing to increase his popularity by being careful with his money. He is expected to display his success, to have smart car, an expensive life, and to be lavish with his hospitality. If he is not so, he is considered mean and his reputation in business may even suffer in consequence. The paradox remains that if he had not been careful with his money in the first place, he would never have achieved his present wealth. Among the two income groups, a different set of values exists.

The young clerk who makes his wife a present of a new dress when the hadn’t paid his house rent condemned as extravagant. Carefulness with money to the point of meanness is applauded as a virtue. Nothing in his life is considered more worthy than paying his bills. The ideal wife for such a man separates her housekeeping money into joyless little piles-so much for rent, for food, for the children’s shoes; she is able to face the milkman with equanimity and never knows the guilt of buying something she can’t able to face the milkman with equanimity and never knows the guilt of buying something she can’t really afford. As for myself, I fall into neither of these categories. If I have money to spare I can be extravagant, but when, as is usually the cause, I am hard up, then I am then meanest man imaginable

Q. The statement she is able to face the milkman with equanimity implies that:

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

Let us consider for a moment the discovery of the cause of malaria. This discovery, due to the Englishman, Ross consists in having found out that the plasmodium of malariae is inoculated in man by a special kind of mosquito. Let us inquire what was the state of science prior to this discovery. In 1880 Laveran had described an animal micro-organism, which preyed upon the red corpuscles of the blood, producing an attack of fever with the cycle of its existence. Subsequent studies confirmed and elucidated this fact, and the plasmodium malaria became a matter of common knowledge. It was known that animal micro-organisms, unlike vegetable micro-organisms, after a cycle of life in which reproduction takes place by scission; that is, by subdivision of a single body into several other bodies equal to the first, give place to sexual forms, masculine and feminine, which are separate, and incapable of scission, but are designed for fusion into one another, after which the organism recommences its cycle of scissions until it again reaches the sexual forms.

Laveran had found that in the blood of sufferers who recover spontaneously from malarial fever there are a great number of corpuscles which have no longer the rounded forms of the plasmodia, but are crescent-shaped and rayed. He took these to be transformations of the plasmodia, "modified in form" and "incapable of producing disease," and pronounced them to be "degenerate" organisms, almost as if they had been deformed and exhausted by the "excess of work" they had previously performed. After the discovery of the transmission of malaria in 1900, Laveran's "degenerative forms" were recognized as the sexual individuals of the reproductive cycle: individuals which were incapable of conjugation in the blood of man, and could only produce new organisms in the body of the mosquito. We may well wonder: Why did not Laveran simply recognize those sexual forms, and why did he not seek for the period of conjugation in the plasmodia, which were animal micro-organisms?

Another biological acquisition was the assurance that the circulatory system of the blood is a closed system of vessels, and that the enclosing epithelium is not permeable by non-incisive solid bodies such as vegetable microbes, and still less by rounded protozoa, which are much larger than microbes and soft in substance. This well-known and clearly demonstrated fact ought to have suggested a problem to the minds of students: How do the protozoa of malaria enter the circulatory current of the blood? But ever since the days of Hippocrates, Pliny, Celsius and Galen it had been held that this fever was caused by the "poisonous atmosphere" of marsh lands, the bad air of the morning and the evening, so much so that even a few years before the discovery of the real cause of malaria, eucalyptus trees were planted in the belief that they would filter and disinfect the air.

Until Ross discovered that birds are inoculated with malaria by a particular kind of mosquito.

Q. What is the contextual meaning of the word "Elucidated" as used in the paragraph?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

Let us consider for a moment the discovery of the cause of malaria. This discovery, due to the Englishman, Ross consists in having found out that the plasmodium of malariae is inoculated in man by a special kind of mosquito. Let us inquire what was the state of science prior to this discovery. In 1880 Laveran had described an animal micro-organism, which preyed upon the red corpuscles of the blood, producing an attack of fever with the cycle of its existence. Subsequent studies confirmed and elucidated this fact, and the plasmodium malaria became a matter of common knowledge. It was known that animal micro-organisms, unlike vegetable micro-organisms, after a cycle of life in which reproduction takes place by scission; that is, by subdivision of a single body into several other bodies equal to the first, give place to sexual forms, masculine and feminine, which are separate, and incapable of scission, but are designed for fusion into one another, after which the organism recommences its cycle of scissions until it again reaches the sexual forms.

Laveran had found that in the blood of sufferers who recover spontaneously from malarial fever there are a great number of corpuscles which have no longer the rounded forms of the plasmodia, but are crescent-shaped and rayed. He took these to be transformations of the plasmodia, "modified in form" and "incapable of producing disease," and pronounced them to be "degenerate" organisms, almost as if they had been deformed and exhausted by the "excess of work" they had previously performed. After the discovery of the transmission of malaria in 1900, Laveran's "degenerative forms" were recognized as the sexual individuals of the reproductive cycle: individuals which were incapable of conjugation in the blood of man, and could only produce new organisms in the body of the mosquito. We may well wonder: Why did not Laveran simply recognize those sexual forms, and why did he not seek for the period of conjugation in the plasmodia, which were animal micro-organisms?

Another biological acquisition was the assurance that the circulatory system of the blood is a closed system of vessels, and that the enclosing epithelium is not permeable by non-incisive solid bodies such as vegetable microbes, and still less by rounded protozoa, which are much larger than microbes and soft in substance. This well-known and clearly demonstrated fact ought to have suggested a problem to the minds of students: How do the protozoa of malaria enter the circulatory current of the blood? But ever since the days of Hippocrates, Pliny, Celsius and Galen it had been held that this fever was caused by the "poisonous atmosphere" of marsh lands, the bad air of the morning and the evening, so much so that even a few years before the discovery of the real cause of malaria, eucalyptus trees were planted in the belief that they would filter and disinfect the air.

Until Ross discovered that birds are inoculated with malaria by a particular kind of mosquito.

Q. Why did Laveran call the sexual form of the plasmodium malariae a ‘degenerative’ form?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

It was the biggest decision of her life, the one for which she is most remembered, but Freda Bedi didn't tell her children that she was being ordained as a Buddhist nun. There was no family council, no private conversation, not even, it seems, a letter to announce her intention.
"There was this terrible feeling of betrayal," Kabir Bedi recalls. It was 1966 and the height of the Delhi summer. Kabir was 20, a student at one of India's most prestigious university colleges, St Stephen's, and still recovering from a broken back. He understood that Buddhism loomed increasingly large in his mother's life, but hadn't been prepared for her ordination as a nun.
He was angry and said so. Why? he demanded of his mother; why now? He still remembers her response. "It is something I felt I had to do and I knew if I started discussing it with everybody, God knows what might have happened." Kabir was seven when his mother found Buddhism while on a United Nations mission to Burma (now Myanmar). He had accompanied her back there when she studied meditation, and had himself enrolled briefly as a novitiate. He had worn the robes and shaved off his hair—in much the same manner as his mother had now done. He had spent time with his mother at the camps in Assam set up for the Tibetans who fled across the mountains to escape Chinese rule—that's where she first became immersed in Tibetan belief and culture. He had taught at the Young Lamas' Home School she established. It had felt like a shared journey. Now Freda, Sister Palmo as she became known, had decided to press on alone. "I raised all the silly arguments I could think of: Your daughter's still in college, she's not married, how's she going to manage? All silly things. But basically, I was angry because I felt betrayed. There was a terrible sense of loss. It's like, you've lost your mother."
A few days after the ceremony, still at Rumtek, Freda received what was clearly an anguished letter from Kabir. Manorma Dewan was part of the extended family—her husband's flat was the venue of Kabir's meeting with his newly-robed mother—and remembers the central message of that letter: "You have become very selfish." Manorma agreed with that view. Freda replied immediately by telegram, and followed that up with a three-page handwritten missive to her 'darling son'. Kabir still has that letter. "I have been in a maze of pain, feeling your and Guli's," she wrote. "You all knew one day this step would be taken; we even joked about my losing my hair! Somehow, now had to be the time."

Q. According to the author, how did Freda Bedi's family feel about her becoming a nun?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

It was the biggest decision of her life, the one for which she is most remembered, but Freda Bedi didn't tell her children that she was being ordained as a Buddhist nun. There was no family council, no private conversation, not even, it seems, a letter to announce her intention.
"There was this terrible feeling of betrayal," Kabir Bedi recalls. It was 1966 and the height of the Delhi summer. Kabir was 20, a student at one of India's most prestigious university colleges, St Stephen's, and still recovering from a broken back. He understood that Buddhism loomed increasingly large in his mother's life, but hadn't been prepared for her ordination as a nun.
He was angry and said so. Why? he demanded of his mother; why now? He still remembers her response. "It is something I felt I had to do and I knew if I started discussing it with everybody, God knows what might have happened." Kabir was seven when his mother found Buddhism while on a United Nations mission to Burma (now Myanmar). He had accompanied her back there when she studied meditation, and had himself enrolled briefly as a novitiate. He had worn the robes and shaved off his hair—in much the same manner as his mother had now done. He had spent time with his mother at the camps in Assam set up for the Tibetans who fled across the mountains to escape Chinese rule—that's where she first became immersed in Tibetan belief and culture. He had taught at the Young Lamas' Home School she established. It had felt like a shared journey. Now Freda, Sister Palmo as she became known, had decided to press on alone. "I raised all the silly arguments I could think of: Your daughter's still in college, she's not married, how's she going to manage? All silly things. But basically, I was angry because I felt betrayed. There was a terrible sense of loss. It's like, you've lost your mother."
A few days after the ceremony, still at Rumtek, Freda received what was clearly an anguished letter from Kabir. Manorma Dewan was part of the extended family—her husband's flat was the venue of Kabir's meeting with his newly-robed mother—and remembers the central message of that letter: "You have become very selfish." Manorma agreed with that view. Freda replied immediately by telegram, and followed that up with a three-page handwritten missive to her 'darling son'. Kabir still has that letter. "I have been in a maze of pain, feeling your and Guli's," she wrote. "You all knew one day this step would be taken; we even joked about my losing my hair! Somehow, now had to be the time."

Q. Why did Freda feel it important to make the decision without consulting her family?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

It was the biggest decision of her life, the one for which she is most remembered, but Freda Bedi didn't tell her children that she was being ordained as a Buddhist nun. There was no family council, no private conversation, not even, it seems, a letter to announce her intention.
"There was this terrible feeling of betrayal," Kabir Bedi recalls. It was 1966 and the height of the Delhi summer. Kabir was 20, a student at one of India's most prestigious university colleges, St Stephen's, and still recovering from a broken back. He understood that Buddhism loomed increasingly large in his mother's life, but hadn't been prepared for her ordination as a nun.
He was angry and said so. Why? he demanded of his mother; why now? He still remembers her response. "It is something I felt I had to do and I knew if I started discussing it with everybody, God knows what might have happened." Kabir was seven when his mother found Buddhism while on a United Nations mission to Burma (now Myanmar). He had accompanied her back there when she studied meditation, and had himself enrolled briefly as a novitiate. He had worn the robes and shaved off his hair—in much the same manner as his mother had now done. He had spent time with his mother at the camps in Assam set up for the Tibetans who fled across the mountains to escape Chinese rule—that's where she first became immersed in Tibetan belief and culture. He had taught at the Young Lamas' Home School she established. It had felt like a shared journey. Now Freda, Sister Palmo as she became known, had decided to press on alone. "I raised all the silly arguments I could think of: Your daughter's still in college, she's not married, how's she going to manage? All silly things. But basically, I was angry because I felt betrayed. There was a terrible sense of loss. It's like, you've lost your mother."
A few days after the ceremony, still at Rumtek, Freda received what was clearly an anguished letter from Kabir. Manorma Dewan was part of the extended family—her husband's flat was the venue of Kabir's meeting with his newly-robed mother—and remembers the central message of that letter: "You have become very selfish." Manorma agreed with that view. Freda replied immediately by telegram, and followed that up with a three-page handwritten missive to her 'darling son'. Kabir still has that letter. "I have been in a maze of pain, feeling your and Guli's," she wrote. "You all knew one day this step would be taken; we even joked about my losing my hair! Somehow, now had to be the time."

Q. What does the phrase 'loomed large' as used in the passage mean?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

It was the biggest decision of her life, the one for which she is most remembered, but Freda Bedi didn't tell her children that she was being ordained as a Buddhist nun. There was no family council, no private conversation, not even, it seems, a letter to announce her intention.
"There was this terrible feeling of betrayal," Kabir Bedi recalls. It was 1966 and the height of the Delhi summer. Kabir was 20, a student at one of India's most prestigious university colleges, St Stephen's, and still recovering from a broken back. He understood that Buddhism loomed increasingly large in his mother's life, but hadn't been prepared for her ordination as a nun.
He was angry and said so. Why? he demanded of his mother; why now? He still remembers her response. "It is something I felt I had to do and I knew if I started discussing it with everybody, God knows what might have happened." Kabir was seven when his mother found Buddhism while on a United Nations mission to Burma (now Myanmar). He had accompanied her back there when she studied meditation, and had himself enrolled briefly as a novitiate. He had worn the robes and shaved off his hair—in much the same manner as his mother had now done. He had spent time with his mother at the camps in Assam set up for the Tibetans who fled across the mountains to escape Chinese rule—that's where she first became immersed in Tibetan belief and culture. He had taught at the Young Lamas' Home School she established. It had felt like a shared journey. Now Freda, Sister Palmo as she became known, had decided to press on alone. "I raised all the silly arguments I could think of: Your daughter's still in college, she's not married, how's she going to manage? All silly things. But basically, I was angry because I felt betrayed. There was a terrible sense of loss. It's like, you've lost your mother."
A few days after the ceremony, still at Rumtek, Freda received what was clearly an anguished letter from Kabir. Manorma Dewan was part of the extended family—her husband's flat was the venue of Kabir's meeting with his newly-robed mother—and remembers the central message of that letter: "You have become very selfish." Manorma agreed with that view. Freda replied immediately by telegram, and followed that up with a three-page handwritten missive to her 'darling son'. Kabir still has that letter. "I have been in a maze of pain, feeling your and Guli's," she wrote. "You all knew one day this step would be taken; we even joked about my losing my hair! Somehow, now had to be the time."

Q. Based on the information set out in the passage, which of the following is most accurate?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

It was the biggest decision of her life, the one for which she is most remembered, but Freda Bedi didn't tell her children that she was being ordained as a Buddhist nun. There was no family council, no private conversation, not even, it seems, a letter to announce her intention.
"There was this terrible feeling of betrayal," Kabir Bedi recalls. It was 1966 and the height of the Delhi summer. Kabir was 20, a student at one of India's most prestigious university colleges, St Stephen's, and still recovering from a broken back. He understood that Buddhism loomed increasingly large in his mother's life, but hadn't been prepared for her ordination as a nun.
He was angry and said so. Why? he demanded of his mother; why now? He still remembers her response. "It is something I felt I had to do and I knew if I started discussing it with everybody, God knows what might have happened." Kabir was seven when his mother found Buddhism while on a United Nations mission to Burma (now Myanmar). He had accompanied her back there when she studied meditation, and had himself enrolled briefly as a novitiate. He had worn the robes and shaved off his hair—in much the same manner as his mother had now done. He had spent time with his mother at the camps in Assam set up for the Tibetans who fled across the mountains to escape Chinese rule—that's where she first became immersed in Tibetan belief and culture. He had taught at the Young Lamas' Home School she established. It had felt like a shared journey. Now Freda, Sister Palmo as she became known, had decided to press on alone. "I raised all the silly arguments I could think of: Your daughter's still in college, she's not married, how's she going to manage? All silly things. But basically, I was angry because I felt betrayed. There was a terrible sense of loss. It's like, you've lost your mother."
A few days after the ceremony, still at Rumtek, Freda received what was clearly an anguished letter from Kabir. Manorma Dewan was part of the extended family—her husband's flat was the venue of Kabir's meeting with his newly-robed mother—and remembers the central message of that letter: "You have become very selfish." Manorma agreed with that view. Freda replied immediately by telegram, and followed that up with a three-page handwritten missive to her 'darling son'. Kabir still has that letter. "I have been in a maze of pain, feeling your and Guli's," she wrote. "You all knew one day this step would be taken; we even joked about my losing my hair! Somehow, now had to be the time."

Q. What can be inferred from Freda Bedi's response to Kabir's letter?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

Job performance is affected by a number of factors. Motivation alone does not lead to increase in performance. Ability and technology moderates the relationship between motivation and performance. The higher the levels of ability and motivation, the higher the level of performance will be. However, increasing motivation beyond an optimal level tends to produce a dysfunctional result because it is accompanied by an increasing level of anxiety. A high level of anxiety often disrupts performances.

The relationship between satisfaction and performance is not clear. Satisfaction may or may not lead to high performance depending on the perceived availability of valued outcomes and the perceived expectancy that a person’s effort and performance will lead to receiving the valued rewards. If the person expects that his performance will lead to increased rewards which he values, the level of his motivational effort will increase, if he anticipates less, his motivational effort will increase, if he anticipates less, his motivational effort will be lower.

The relationship between job dissatisfaction and poor performance seems to be clearer than that between satisfaction and performance. Dissatisfaction leads to poor performance by means of apathy, absenteeism, turnover, sabotage, and strike. In addition, high performers are more vulnerable to job dissatisfaction because they tend to expect more from their jobs than low performers.

Job satisfaction is more closely related to the decision to join and remain in an organisation than to the motivation to produce. The motivation to produce largely depends on the availability of valued outcomes (valence), the perceived instrumentality of performance for receiving incentive rewards, and the perceived expectancy that effort leads to performance. The task of satisfying employees is much easier than the task of motivating them because the former can be achieved by rewarding them while the latter requires such additional constraints as establishing performance-reward contingencies and designing motivating work systems.

Q. The individual’s decision to remain in the organisation depends on

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

Job performance is affected by a number of factors. Motivation alone does not lead to increase in performance. Ability and technology moderates the relationship between motivation and performance. The higher the levels of ability and motivation, the higher the level of performance will be. However, increasing motivation beyond an optimal level tends to produce a dysfunctional result because it is accompanied by an increasing level of anxiety. A high level of anxiety often disrupts performances.

The relationship between satisfaction and performance is not clear. Satisfaction may or may not lead to high performance depending on the perceived availability of valued outcomes and the perceived expectancy that a person’s effort and performance will lead to receiving the valued rewards. If the person expects that his performance will lead to increased rewards which he values, the level of his motivational effort will increase, if he anticipates less, his motivational effort will increase, if he anticipates less, his motivational effort will be lower.

The relationship between job dissatisfaction and poor performance seems to be clearer than that between satisfaction and performance. Dissatisfaction leads to poor performance by means of apathy, absenteeism, turnover, sabotage, and strike. In addition, high performers are more vulnerable to job dissatisfaction because they tend to expect more from their jobs than low performers.

Job satisfaction is more closely related to the decision to join and remain in an organisation than to the motivation to produce. The motivation to produce largely depends on the availability of valued outcomes (valence), the perceived instrumentality of performance for receiving incentive rewards, and the perceived expectancy that effort leads to performance. The task of satisfying employees is much easier than the task of motivating them because the former can be achieved by rewarding them while the latter requires such additional constraints as establishing performance-reward contingencies and designing motivating work systems.

Q. Which of the following tasks is easier according to the passage?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

Job performance is affected by a number of factors. Motivation alone does not lead to increase in performance. Ability and technology moderates the relationship between motivation and performance. The higher the levels of ability and motivation, the higher the level of performance will be. However, increasing motivation beyond an optimal level tends to produce a dysfunctional result because it is accompanied by an increasing level of anxiety. A high level of anxiety often disrupts performances.

The relationship between satisfaction and performance is not clear. Satisfaction may or may not lead to high performance depending on the perceived availability of valued outcomes and the perceived expectancy that a person’s effort and performance will lead to receiving the valued rewards. If the person expects that his performance will lead to increased rewards which he values, the level of his motivational effort will increase, if he anticipates less, his motivational effort will increase, if he anticipates less, his motivational effort will be lower.

The relationship between job dissatisfaction and poor performance seems to be clearer than that between satisfaction and performance. Dissatisfaction leads to poor performance by means of apathy, absenteeism, turnover, sabotage, and strike. In addition, high performers are more vulnerable to job dissatisfaction because they tend to expect more from their jobs than low performers.

Job satisfaction is more closely related to the decision to join and remain in an organisation than to the motivation to produce. The motivation to produce largely depends on the availability of valued outcomes (valence), the perceived instrumentality of performance for receiving incentive rewards, and the perceived expectancy that effort leads to performance. The task of satisfying employees is much easier than the task of motivating them because the former can be achieved by rewarding them while the latter requires such additional constraints as establishing performance-reward contingencies and designing motivating work systems.

Q. Which of the following statement/s/is/are true in the context of the passage?

(A) Ability leads to performance.
(B) Job satisfaction certainly leads to higher performance.
(C) High anxiety adversely affects performance.

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

Job performance is affected by a number of factors. Motivation alone does not lead to increase in performance. Ability and technology moderates the relationship between motivation and performance. The higher the levels of ability and motivation, the higher the level of performance will be. However, increasing motivation beyond an optimal level tends to produce a dysfunctional result because it is accompanied by an increasing level of anxiety. A high level of anxiety often disrupts performances.

The relationship between satisfaction and performance is not clear. Satisfaction may or may not lead to high performance depending on the perceived availability of valued outcomes and the perceived expectancy that a person’s effort and performance will lead to receiving the valued rewards. If the person expects that his performance will lead to increased rewards which he values, the level of his motivational effort will increase, if he anticipates less, his motivational effort will increase, if he anticipates less, his motivational effort will be lower.

The relationship between job dissatisfaction and poor performance seems to be clearer than that between satisfaction and performance. Dissatisfaction leads to poor performance by means of apathy, absenteeism, turnover, sabotage, and strike. In addition, high performers are more vulnerable to job dissatisfaction because they tend to expect more from their jobs than low performers.

Job satisfaction is more closely related to the decision to join and remain in an organisation than to the motivation to produce. The motivation to produce largely depends on the availability of valued outcomes (valence), the perceived instrumentality of performance for receiving incentive rewards, and the perceived expectancy that effort leads to performance. The task of satisfying employees is much easier than the task of motivating them because the former can be achieved by rewarding them while the latter requires such additional constraints as establishing performance-reward contingencies and designing motivating work systems.

Q. Which of the following combination of factors affects job performance?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

Job performance is affected by a number of factors. Motivation alone does not lead to increase in performance. Ability and technology moderates the relationship between motivation and performance. The higher the levels of ability and motivation, the higher the level of performance will be. However, increasing motivation beyond an optimal level tends to produce a dysfunctional result because it is accompanied by an increasing level of anxiety. A high level of anxiety often disrupts performances.

The relationship between satisfaction and performance is not clear. Satisfaction may or may not lead to high performance depending on the perceived availability of valued outcomes and the perceived expectancy that a person’s effort and performance will lead to receiving the valued rewards. If the person expects that his performance will lead to increased rewards which he values, the level of his motivational effort will increase, if he anticipates less, his motivational effort will increase, if he anticipates less, his motivational effort will be lower.

The relationship between job dissatisfaction and poor performance seems to be clearer than that between satisfaction and performance. Dissatisfaction leads to poor performance by means of apathy, absenteeism, turnover, sabotage, and strike. In addition, high performers are more vulnerable to job dissatisfaction because they tend to expect more from their jobs than low performers.

Job satisfaction is more closely related to the decision to join and remain in an organisation than to the motivation to produce. The motivation to produce largely depends on the availability of valued outcomes (valence), the perceived instrumentality of performance for receiving incentive rewards, and the perceived expectancy that effort leads to performance. The task of satisfying employees is much easier than the task of motivating them because the former can be achieved by rewarding them while the latter requires such additional constraints as establishing performance-reward contingencies and designing motivating work systems.

Q. The task of motivating employees is difficult due to

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

Here we come to the heart of the matter: I've never left Istanbul – never left the houses, streets and neighbourhoods of my childhood. Although I've lived in other districts from time to time, fifty years on I find myself back in the Pamuk Apartments, where my first photographs were taken and where my mother first held me in her arms to show me the world. I know this persistence owes something to my imaginary friend, and to the solace I took from the bond between us. But we live in an age defined by mass migration and creative immigrants, and so I am sometimes hard-pressed to explain why I've stayed not only in the same place, but the same building. My mother's sorrowful voice comes back to me, 'Why don't you go outside for a while, why don't you try a change of scene, do some travelling …?'
Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul – these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilisations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness; mine, however, requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate: I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.
Flaubert, who visited Istanbul a hundred and two years before my birth, was struck by the variety of life in its teeming streets; in one of his letters he predicted that in a century's time it would be the capital of the world. The reverse came true: after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the world almost forgot that Istanbul existed. The city into which I was born was poorer, shabbier, and more isolated than it had ever been its two-thousand-year history. For me it has always been a city of ruins and of end-of-empire melancholy. I've spent my life either battling with this melancholy, or (like all Istanbullus) making it my own.
At least once in a lifetime, self-reflection leads us to examine the circumstances of our birth. Why were we born in this particular corner of the world, on this particular date? These families into which we were born, these countries and cities to which the lottery of life has assigned us – they expect love from us, and in the end, we do love them, from the bottom of our hearts – but did we perhaps deserve better? I sometimes think myself unlucky to have been born in an ageing and impoverished city buried under the ashes of a ruined empire. But a voice inside me always insists this was really a piece of luck.

Q. What could be the reason for the author never leaving Istanbul?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

Here we come to the heart of the matter: I've never left Istanbul – never left the houses, streets and neighbourhoods of my childhood. Although I've lived in other districts from time to time, fifty years on I find myself back in the Pamuk Apartments, where my first photographs were taken and where my mother first held me in her arms to show me the world. I know this persistence owes something to my imaginary friend, and to the solace I took from the bond between us. But we live in an age defined by mass migration and creative immigrants, and so I am sometimes hard-pressed to explain why I've stayed not only in the same place, but the same building. My mother's sorrowful voice comes back to me, 'Why don't you go outside for a while, why don't you try a change of scene, do some travelling …?'
Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul – these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilisations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness; mine, however, requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate: I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.
Flaubert, who visited Istanbul a hundred and two years before my birth, was struck by the variety of life in its teeming streets; in one of his letters he predicted that in a century's time it would be the capital of the world. The reverse came true: after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the world almost forgot that Istanbul existed. The city into which I was born was poorer, shabbier, and more isolated than it had ever been its two-thousand-year history. For me it has always been a city of ruins and of end-of-empire melancholy. I've spent my life either battling with this melancholy, or (like all Istanbullus) making it my own.
At least once in a lifetime, self-reflection leads us to examine the circumstances of our birth. Why were we born in this particular corner of the world, on this particular date? These families into which we were born, these countries and cities to which the lottery of life has assigned us – they expect love from us, and in the end, we do love them, from the bottom of our hearts – but did we perhaps deserve better? I sometimes think myself unlucky to have been born in an ageing and impoverished city buried under the ashes of a ruined empire. But a voice inside me always insists this was really a piece of luck.

Q. As mentioned in the passage, how does the author characterise his life in the city?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

Here we come to the heart of the matter: I've never left Istanbul – never left the houses, streets and neighbourhoods of my childhood. Although I've lived in other districts from time to time, fifty years on I find myself back in the Pamuk Apartments, where my first photographs were taken and where my mother first held me in her arms to show me the world. I know this persistence owes something to my imaginary friend, and to the solace I took from the bond between us. But we live in an age defined by mass migration and creative immigrants, and so I am sometimes hard-pressed to explain why I've stayed not only in the same place, but the same building. My mother's sorrowful voice comes back to me, 'Why don't you go outside for a while, why don't you try a change of scene, do some travelling …?'
Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul – these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilisations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness; mine, however, requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate: I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.
Flaubert, who visited Istanbul a hundred and two years before my birth, was struck by the variety of life in its teeming streets; in one of his letters he predicted that in a century's time it would be the capital of the world. The reverse came true: after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the world almost forgot that Istanbul existed. The city into which I was born was poorer, shabbier, and more isolated than it had ever been its two-thousand-year history. For me it has always been a city of ruins and of end-of-empire melancholy. I've spent my life either battling with this melancholy, or (like all Istanbullus) making it my own.
At least once in a lifetime, self-reflection leads us to examine the circumstances of our birth. Why were we born in this particular corner of the world, on this particular date? These families into which we were born, these countries and cities to which the lottery of life has assigned us – they expect love from us, and in the end, we do love them, from the bottom of our hearts – but did we perhaps deserve better? I sometimes think myself unlucky to have been born in an ageing and impoverished city buried under the ashes of a ruined empire. But a voice inside me always insists this was really a piece of luck.

Q. What does the word 'melancholy' as used in the passage mean?

Read the given passage and answer the question that follows.

Here we come to the heart of the matter: I've never left Istanbul – never left the houses, streets and neighbourhoods of my childhood. Although I've lived in other districts from time to time, fifty years on I find myself back in the Pamuk Apartments, where my first photographs were taken and where my mother first held me in her arms to show me the world. I know this persistence owes something to my imaginary friend, and to the solace I took from the bond between us. But we live in an age defined by mass migration and creative immigrants, and so I am sometimes hard-pressed to explain why I've stayed not only in the same place, but the same building. My mother's sorrowful voice comes back to me, 'Why don't you go outside for a while, why don't you try a change of scene, do some travelling …?'
Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul – these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilisations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness; mine, however, requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate: I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.
Flaubert, who visited Istanbul a hundred and two years before my birth, was struck by the variety of life in its teeming streets; in one of his letters he predicted that in a century's time it would be the capital of the world. The reverse came true: after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the world almost forgot that Istanbul existed. The city into which I was born was poorer, shabbier, and more isolated than it had ever been its two-thousand-year history. For me it has always been a city of ruins and of end-of-empire melancholy. I've spent my life either battling with this melancholy, or (like all Istanbullus) making it my own.
At least once in a lifetime, self-reflection leads us to examine the circumstances of our birth. Why were we born in this particular corner of the world, on this particular date? These families into which we were born, these countries and cities to which the lottery of life has assigned us – they expect love from us, and in the end, we do love them, from the bottom of our hearts – but did we perhaps deserve better? I sometimes think myself unlucky to have been born in an ageing and impoverished city buried under the ashes of a ruined empire. But a voice inside me always insists this was really a piece of luck.

Q. Why does the author mention great literary names of "Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul" in the passage?