SECOND SIGHT
A few days later I was working on a report that had to go that night when my friend the Secretary to the Prime Minister of Nepal walked into my office. With his clothes dirty and creased, he presented a very different appearance from the spruce and well-dressed official I had last seen in the company of the Prime Minister. He accepted the chair I offered him and he told him about his troubles. The following is the story he told me.
‘On the last day of our visit to Calcutta, the Minister took the ladies of his household to the shop of Hamilton and Co., the leading jewellers in the city, and told them to select the jewels they fancied. The jewels were paid for in silver rupees. The selection of the jewels, the counting of the cash, the packing of the jewels into the suitcase I had taken to the shop for the purpose, and the scaling of the case by the jeweller, all took more time than we had anticipated. The result was that we had to dash back to the hotel, collect our luggage and retinue, and hurry to the station where our special train was waiting for us.’
‘We arrived hack in Kathmandu in the late evening, and the following morning the Prime Minister asked me for the suitcase containing the jewels. Every room in the palace was searched and everyone who had been on the trip to Calcutta was questioned, yet no trace of the suitcase was found, nor would anyone admit having seen it at any time. I remembered having taken it out of the car that conveyed me from the shop to the hotel, but after that, I could not remember having seen it at any point of the journey. I am personally responsible for the case and its contents and if it is not recovered I may lose more than my job, for according to the laws of our land I have committed a great crime.’
‘There is in Nepal a hermit who is credited with second sight, and I went to him. I found the hermit. an old man in tattered clothing, living in a cave on the side of a great mountain, and I told him my troubles. He listened to me in silence, asked no questions, and told me to come back the next morning. The following morning he told me that as he lay asleep the previous night he had a vision. In the vision, he had seen the suitcase, with its seals intact, in a corner of a room hidden under boxes and hags of many kinds. The room was not far from a big river, had only one door leading into it, and this door was facing the East. This is all the hermit could tell me, so I obtained permission to leave Nepal for a week and I have come to see if you can help me. It is possible that the Ganges is the river the hermit saw in his vision’.
There were many rooms at Mokameh Ghat in which a miscellaneous assortment of goods was stored but I knew of only one that answered the description. This room was the parcel office at Mokameh Junction, two miles from Mokameh Ghat. At the parcel office the clerk in charge denied all knowledge of the suitcase, but he raised no objection to the pile of luggage in the office being taken out on to the platform. When this was done, the suitcase was revealed with all its seals intact. J. Corbett
1.Based on your reading of the passage answer the following questions-
(a) Why was the narrator was surprised when the secretary walked into his room?
the Secretary went to (f)________________________________________________________ in order to
(g)_______________________________________________________________ . Finally the suitcase
was recovered in (h)________________________________________________________________
________________________________________
2.From lines 1-11 In the passage find words that mean the opposite of the following. Give one word for each. Write your answers in the spaces provided.
(a) untidy and dirty ________________________________________________________________
(b) refused ______________________________________________________________________
(c) similar _______________________________________________________________________
(d) cause ________________________________________________________________________
3.What were the steps taken to trace the missing suitcase in Nepal and then in India ?
Answers
1.(a) he looked quite different in appearance.
(b) The ladies of the Prime Minister’s household
(c) select the jewels they liked
(d) hotel
(e) the shopping had taken much time.
(f) a hermit
(g) get some help to find out the suitcase
(h) the parcel office at Mokameh Ghat Junction.
2.(a) spruce and well-dressed
(b) accepted
(c) different
(d) result
3. In Nepal, the Secretary went to a hermit to know about the lost suitcase. After getting some clues he, then, went to the narrator. The narrator matched the description with that of the parcel office at Mokameh Ghat Junction. The suitcase was found among the luggage piled in that room when it was searched.
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