What is irony? How is it different from satire and paradox? Give appropriate examples to illustrate your answer.

Read the following poem carefully and answer the following questions.

Amalkanti
(Nirendranath Chakrabarti)
Amalkanti is a friend of mine,
we were together at school.
He often came late to class
and never knew his lessons.
When asked to conjugate a verb,
he looked out of the window
in such puzzlement
that we all felt sorry for him.

Some of us wanted to be teachers,
some doctors, some lawyers.
Amalkanti didn't want to be any of these.
He wanted to be sunlight —
the timid sunlight of late afternoon,
when it stops raining
and the crows call again,
the sunlight that clings like a smile
to the leaves of the jaam and the jaamrul

Some of us have become teachers,
some doctors, some lawyers.
Amalkanti couldn't become sunlight.
He works in a poorly lit room
for a printer.
He drops in now and then to see me,
chats about this and that
over a cup of tea, then gets up to go.
I see him off at the door.
The one among us who's a teacher
could easily have become a doctor.
If the one who'd wanted to be a doctor

had become a lawyer,
it wouldn't have made much difference to him.
All of us got more or less what we wanted,
all except Amalkanti —
who used to think so much about sunlight
that he wanted to become sunlight.

a. How is Amalkanti’s dream different from that of the other boys in the class? What does it
tell us about him?

b. What do you think is the speaker's attitude towards Amalkanti: full of pity, critical or
sympathetic? Why? Pick out the lines to support your answer.

c. The tone of the speaker in the first three stanzas of the poem is confident and amused but
the tone in lines 12-17 and the last stanza of the poem changes. Does it become:
i surprised/full of wonder?
ii appreciation?
iii lyrical?
 Give reasons for your answer.

d. Do you think Amalkanti is a failure? Why/Why not? Pick out the appropriate lines.

Find appropriate homophones of the following. One is done for you: 5
throne - thrown
died, great, gate, bale, heard

The words below have a literal as well as an extended meaning. Write the literal meaning of the words. Use the following words in sentences of your own using the ‘extended’ meaning.

angry, train, mouth, break and brain

Blow, blow thou winter wind Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude.

Make a sentence with the following words to bring out the difference between them:

friend, colleague, ally, acquaintance, associate

Rewrite the following sentences using a polite structure. Context/situation is given in brackets:

Bring all documents to the office. (for the meeting)

I can’t come on time. (to the teacher)

Open the window. (to a stranger in the train).

Pass the salt. (to a guest)

Gift wrap this for me. (to the shopkeeper)

Send me mail on this. (to a junior colleague at work)

8

Lend me your camera for a day. (to your friend)

Give me some notes on this topic. (to your teacher)

Buy me a drink. (to a colleague)

What’s your name? (to a new colleague)