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Kathmandu
Along Kathmandu’s narrowest and busiest streets, there are small shrines and flower-adorned deities. Apart from these, there are fruit sellers, flute sellers, hawkers of postcards, shops selling Western cosmetics, film rolls, chocolate, those selling copper utensils and Nepalese antiques. The author hears film songs that were blaring out from the radios, sounds of car horns and bicycle bells, vendors shouting out their wares. He says that stray cows roam about on the roads. He also draws a vivid picture of a flute seller with many bansuris protruding from his pole. He describes how the serene music produced by the flute seller is heard clearly above all the other noise.
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(i) Which route would the writer take back home if he were propelled by enthusiasm for travel per se?
(ii) Which route does he decide to take up?
(iii) Find the words/expressions from the passage which indicate the same meaning as in –
(a) by itself, (b) thrill.
(a) Why is the writer unable to tear himself away from the square?
(b) Why does the writer consider flute music ‘the most universal’?
(c) Find a word from the passage which means ‘harmony’.
How does the narrator describe Kathmandu?
How does Vikram Seth describe the Hindu temple?
How does Vikram Seth describe the Buddhist shrine of Kathmandu?
What is the belief associated with the half-immersed shrine in the river Bagmati ? What does it tell us?
What attracts Vikram Seth’s attention in the square? Why?
What differentiates the flute-seller from other hawkers and vendors?
How does the flute music affect the narrator?
What does the flute music remind Vikram Seth? Why?
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