Prasanna

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Online Education for Silk Road Summary in English by Nick Middleton

Silk Road by Nick Middleton About the Author

Silk Road Summary in English

The narrator was leaving Ravu and heading towards Mount Kailash to complete the kora. It was in the early hours of the morning that they were set to leave. Lhamo gave the narrator a long-sleeved sheepskin coat, which all the men wore, as a farewell present. Tsetan assessed him as they got into his car. They took a short cut to get off the Changtang. Tsetan knew a route that would take them south-west, almost directly towards Mount Kailash. It involved crossing several fairly high mountain passes, he said. Going that way would not be a problem if there was no snow but that one could never know till one reached there.

From the gently rising and falling hills of Ravu, the short cut took them across vast open plains, dry grazing land, with nothing in them except a few small antelopes. Moving ahead they noticed that the plains became more stony than grassy. Here they saw a herd of wild ass that were racing around and of which Tsetan had told them even before they appeared.

The drive again became steep. They crossed drokbas tending their flocks. Thickly clad men and women stared at their car and at times waved at them while the sheep would turn away from the vehicle. They passed nomads’ dark tents pitched in the isolated places usually with a huge black dog, a Tibetan big, smooth-haired dog guarding them. These dogs would observe them from a distance and as they drew closer, they would rush towards them and chase them for about a hundred metres. These hairy dogs were pitch black and usually wore bright red collars and barked angrily with enormous jaws. They were absolutely fearless of their vehicle and would run straight onto their way. Tsetan had to brake and turn sharply to avoid them. It was because of their ferocity that these Tibetan mastiffs were brought from Tibet to China’s imperial courts as hunting dogs.

As they entered a valley, they could see snow-capped mountains and the wide river but mostly blocked with ice that was sparkling in the sunshine. As they moved ahead, on their upward track, the turns became sharper and the ride bumpier. The rocks around were covered with patches of bright orange lichen. Under the rocks, seemed unending shade. The narrator felt the pressure building up in his ears so he held his nose, snorted and cleared them. Just then Tsetan stopped and the three of them—Tsetan, Daniel and the narrator walked out of the car.

It continued to snow. The snow that had collected was too steep for their vehicle to scale, so there was no way of going around the snow patch. The narrator looked at his wristwatch and realized that they were at 5,210 metres above sea level.

The snow didn’t look too deep, but the danger was that if the car slipped it could turn over. Tsetan grabbed handfuls of soil and threw it across the frozen surface of ice. Daniel and the narrator stayed out of the vehicle to lessen Tsetan’s load. He backed and drove towards the dirty snow, and with no difficulty the car moved on. But after ten minutes of driving, there was another obstruction. Tsetan assessed the scene and this time he decided to drive round the snow. It was a steep slope scattered with big rocks, but Tsetan got past them. The narrator checked his watch again; they were 5,400 metres above sea level and his head began to ache terribly. He gulped a little water for relief.

When they reached the top of the pass at 5,515 metres, they noticed large rocks decorated with white silk scarves and ragged prayer flags. All of them took a clockwise round them as is the tradition and Tsetan checked the tyres on his vehicle. He stopped at the petrol tank. The lower atmospheric pressure was allowing the fuel to expand.

The narrator was soon relieved of headache as they went to the other side of the pass. At two o’clock, they stopped for lunch and ate hot noodles inside a long canvas work tent, put up beside a dry salt lake. The plateau was covered with spots of salty desert area and salt lakes, leftovers of the Tethys Ocean, which surrounded Tibet before the steep climb. Here there was a lot of activity, men with pickaxes and shovels were moving around wearing long sheepskin coats and salt-covered boots. All of them were wearing sunglasses against the bright light of the trucks as they came laden with piles of salt.

By late afternoon they reached a small town, Hor, back on the main east-west highway that followed the old trade route from Lhasa to Kashmir. Daniel took a ride in a truck and went to Lhasa. Tsetan and the narrator bade him farewell.

Hor was a gloomy place covered with dust and rocks and devoid of vegetation. It was scattered with a lot of refuse that had gathered over the years. It was regrettable as this town was on the shore of Lake Manasarovar, Tibet’s most honoured lake. Ancient Hindu and Buddhist study of the universe pinpoints Manasarovar as the source of four great Indian rivers: the Indus, the Ganges, the Sutlej and the Brahmaputra. Actually, only the Sutlej flows from this lake, but the headwaters of the others all rise nearby on the sides of Mount Kailash. They had tea in Hor’s only cafe which, like all the other buildings in town, was built from badly painted concrete and had three broken windows but they had a good view of the lake through one of the windows.

After half an hour’s stop, they drove westwards out of the town towards Mount Kailash.

The narrator was surprised to see Hor because it was absolutely different from what he had read about it. Ekai Kawaguchi, a Japanese monk who had been there in 1900, was so stirred by the holiness of the lake that he burst into tears. A few years later, the place had a similar effect on Sven Hedin, a Swede visitor.

They reached a guesthouse in Darchen after 10.30 p.m. They were 4,760 metres above the sea level. It was a disturbed night. The narrator had terrible cold because of the open-air rubbish dump in Hor. With his nostrils blocked he found it difficult to breathe. He was tired and hungry and thus started breathing through his mouth.

But barely had he slept when he woke up abruptly. His felt a peculiar heaviness in his chest; he sat up and cleared his nasal passages. He felt relieved but the moment he lay down he intuitively felt that something was wrong. He was not breathless but simply could not sleep. The fear of dying in his sleep kept him awake.

The next morning Tsetan took him to the Darchen Medical College. It was a new building that looked like a monastery from the outside. It had a very solid door that opened into a large courtyard. In the consulting room was a Tibetan doctor who did not have the equipment that a doctor would have. Clad in a thick pullover and a woolly hat, he listened to the narrator’s symptoms and said it was because of the altitude and cold. He assured the narrator that he would be fine and gave him a brown envelope stuffed with fifteen screws of paper that contained brown powder that tasted like cinnamon. He was asked to take them with hot water. The narrator did not like the look of the contents but took them anyway. He slept very soundly.

When Tsetan was assured that the narrator was going to be well, he left him and returned to Lhasa. As a Buddhist, it didn’t really matter if the narrator died but he thought it would be bad for business. After the narrator got his rest and a good night’s sleep, Darchen didn’t look so awful. It was still dusty, and had heaps of rubble and refuse, but the bright sun gave him a view of the Himalayas. He saw the snow-capped mountain, Gurla Mandhata, with a small cloud hanging over its peak.

The town had a few general stores selling Chinese cigarettes, soap and other basic provisions, as well as the usual strings of prayer flags. In front of one, men collected in the afternoon for a game of pool on a strange table in the open air, while nearby women washed their long hair in the icy water of a narrow brook near the guesthouse. Darchen felt stress-free and slow but for the narrator this was a major disadvantage. There were no pilgrims. He had been told that in the peak of the pilgrimage season, the town was full of visitors. That was the reason for his being there in the beginning of the season, but it seemed that he was too early.

One afternoon he sat with a glass of tea in Darchen’s only cafe thinking about the paucity of pilgrims and the fact that he hadn’t made much progress with his self-help programme on positive thinking. After some contemplation, he felt he could only wait. He did not like the idea of going alone on a pilgrimage.

The kora was seasonal because parts of the road were likely to be blocked by snow. He had no idea if the snow had cleared, but he saw the large pieces of dirty ice on the banks of Darchen’s stream. From the time when Tsetan had left, he had not met anyone in Darchen who could answer even the basic questions in English till he met Norbu.

The narrator was in a small, dark cafe with a long metal stove that ran down the middle. The walls and roofs were covered with multi-coloured sheets of plastic that is made into shopping bags in many countries. Plastic is one of China’s most successful exports along the Silk Road today. He sat beside a window so that he could see the pages of his notebook. He also had a novel with him. Norbu saw the book, came to him, sat opposite and asked the narrator if he was ‘English’. They stated a conversation. The narrator could make out that he did not belong to that place as he was wearing a windcheater and metal-rimmed spectacles of Western style. He told the narrator that he was a Tibetan, but worked in Beijing at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in the Institute of Ethnic Literature. He, too, had come to do the kora.

Norbu had been writing academic papers about the Kailash kora and its importance in various works of Buddhist literature for many years, but he had never actually done it himself. When the narrator told him what brought him to Darchen, he was excited and wanted to work with him as a team. He soon realized that Norbu was as ill-equipped as him for the pilgrimage. He kept telling the narrator how fat he was and how tough it was going to be for him to walk. He wasn’t really a practising Buddhist, it became known, but he had enthusiasm and he was a Tibetan.

Although at first the narrator had thought that he would make the trek in the company of religious people but then felt that Norbu would turn out to be the ideal companion. Norbu suggested that they hire some yaks to carry the luggage, as he said it was not possible for him to prostrate himself all round the mountain as that was not his style, and anyway his tummy was too big.

Silk Road Summary Questions and Answers

Question 1.
Why did the narrator undertake the journey to Mount Kailash? Describe his memories of the day when they set out on their journey.
Answer:
The narrator was moving towards Mount Kailash to complete the kora. He recalls the day, when they set out from Ravu, with nostalgia. It was a ‘perfect’ early morning to start a journey. The clouds looked like long French loaves glimmering pink as the rising sun shone on them. The far-away mountain peaks glowed with a rose-tinted colour. Lhamo presented him with one of the long-sleeved sheepskin coats that all the men there wore, for protection against cold.

Question 2.
Describe the initial phase of their journey.
Answer:
As they set out, they took a shorter route to get off the Changtang. It was a road that would take them south¬west, almost directly towards Mount Kailash. It required crossing several quite high mountain passes. Tsetan was confident that if there was no snow they would have a comfortable journey but that they would not know till they got there.

From the gently sloping hills of Ravu, the short cut took them across vast open plains with nothing in them except a few antelopes grazing in the arid pastures. As they moved ahead, the plains became more stony than grassy. There, the antelopes were replaced by herds of wild ass.

Question 3.
What did the narrator notice about the ‘drokbas’?
Answer:
As the narrator went further up the hills from the rocky wasteland, he noticed the solitary drokbas tending their flocks. Sometimes these well-wrapped figures would halt briefly and stare at their car. They seldom waved as they crossed. When the road took them close to the sheep, the animals would swerve away from the speeding car.

Question 4.
The narrator was fascinated by the awesome mastiffs. Why?
Answer:
Crossing the nomads’ dark tents pitched in remoteness, the narrator noticed that a huge black dog, a Tibetan mastiffs, guarded most of the tents. These monstrous creatures would tilt their great big heads when someone moved towards them. As they drew closer, these dogs would race straight towards them, like a bullet from a gun. These dogs were pitch black and usually wore bright red collars. They barked furiously with their gigantic jaws and were so fearless that they ran straight into the path of their vehicle. They would chase them for about a hundred metres. The narrator could understand why Tibetan mastiffs became popular in China’s imperial courts as hunting dogs.

Question 5.
How did Tsetan manoeuvre across the first patch of snow that they came across?
Answer:
Tsetan stopped at a tight bend and got out because the snow had covered the path in front of them. This unexpected-depository was too steep for their vehicle to mount. Tsetan stepped on to the covered snow, and stamped his foot to determine how sturdy it was. The snow was not deep but the car could turn over. Tsetan took handfuls of dirt and threw them across the frozen surface. Daniel and the narrator, too, joined in. When the snow was spread with soil, Tsetan backed up the vehicle and drove towards the dirty snow. The car moved across the icy surface without noticeable difficulty.

Question 6.
When did the narrator feel unwell or the first time? What did he do?
Answer:
When they went further up the trail and were 5,400 metres above the sea level, the narrator got an awful headache. He took gulps from his water bottle, which is supposed to help during a speedy uphill journey. His headache soon cleared as they went down the other side of the pass.

Question 7.
What was the sight on the plateau ruins of the Tethys Ocean?
Answer:
The narrator and his friends stopped for lunch in a long canvas tent, part of a work camp erected beside a dry salt lake. The plateau was covered with salty desert area and salty lakes that were remnants of the Tethys Ocean. This place was bustling with activity.

Men with pickaxes and shovels were moving back and forth in their long sheepskin coats and salt-covered boots. All wore sunglasses as protection against the dazzling light of blue trucks that energed from the lake with piles of salt.

Question 8.
Why was the narrator sorry to see the miserable plight of Hor?
Answer:
Hor was a dismal place with no vegetation. It only had dust and rocks coupled with years of accumulated refuse. He found this unfortunate because this town was on the banks of Lake Manasarovar, Tibet’s most venerated stretch of water.

Question 9.
What is the belief about Lake Manasarovar? What is the fact?
Answer:
According to ancient Hindu and Buddhist cosmology Manasarovar is the source of four great Indian rivers: the Indus, the Ganges, the Sutlej and the Brahmaputra. In actuality only the Sutlej flows from the lake, but the headwaters of the all others rise nearby on the flanks of Mount Kailash.

Question 10.
The narrator ‘slept very soundly. Like a log, not a dead man’. Explain.
Answer:
After going to the Tibetan doctor the narrator soon recovered. Unpalatable as it seemed, the medicine led him to a quick recovery. Hence the narrator had a healthy and sound sleep unlike when he was ailing and restless. He slept undisturbed. He was not tossing and turning because he was sound a sleep, not because he felt lifeless.

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Online Education for The Thief’s Story Summary in English by Ruskin Bond

The Thief’s Story by Ruskin Bond About the Author

The Thief’s Story Summary in English

Anil, a young man of 25, was a writer. He earned his living by writing books or articles for various magazines. He was a large-hearted and simple man. Once, when he was watching a wrestling match, a young boy named Hari Singh approached him and expressed his desire to serve him. He said that he would cook for him. Anil believed him and gave him the job. Hari Singh was an expert thief and used to change his name and place to avoid the police and his old employers. He used to make money while buying supplies for him.

One day, he got a chance to steal Anil’s money, from under the mattress. He ran away to go to another place by train. But at the park, his inner voice made him restless. He did not want to cheat a large-hearted and simple man like Anil, who had trusted him. He also wanted Anil to teach him to write simple sentences. He immediately came back to Anil’s house and placed the money as it was.

Next morning, Anil gave him fifty rupees and told him that he would pay him regularly. Anil forgave him as he wanted to give him another chance to improve.

The Thief’s Story Summary Questions and Answers

Question 1.
How did the thief (Hari Singh) realise that Anil knew that his money had been stolen?
Answer:
The thief realised that Anil knew he had stolen his money because he found some of the notes still wet, as if they were taken out in the rain. He gave a fifty-rupee-note to Hari Singh the next morning, and he promised to give him more money, though he did not have any contract for giving any money.

Question 2.
How did Hari Singh know that Anil had forgiven him?
Answer:
Hari Singh realised that Anil knew about the theft because he found some of the notes still wet. He gave him a fifty-rupee-note and did not mention anything about the theft. This made him feel that Anil had forgiven him.

Question 3.
Who is ‘I’ in this story? Why did he change his name every month?
Answer:
‘I’ in this story is a 15 year old boy who is an experienced and successful thief. He changes his name every month to hide his real identity from his new employer and the police.

Question 4.
Why, according to Hari Singh, is it easier to rob a greedy man than a careless person like Anil?
Answer:
Hari Singh has correlated theft with the sense of satisfaction, a thief gets pleasure when a person comes to know that he has been robbed. Hari Singh says that a greedy man can afford to be robbed too whereas a careless man at times may never come to know that he has lost something or he has been robbed. This carelessness, on the part of a person robbed, deprives a thief of the pleasure which he gets out of theft.

Question 5.
What was the thief s immediate reaction when he stole Anil’s money?
Answer:
Hari Singh stole six hundred rupees and crawled out of the room. When he was on the road, he started running. He kept the notes in his waist held there by the string of his pyjama. He felt as if he was an oil rich Arab for a week or two.

Question 6.
What made the thief come back to Anil?
Answer:
Hari Singh came back to Anil because Anil trusted him. He did not want to miss the chance of being educated. Education could certainly make him a better man. He was fed up with the life of a thief, i. e. stealing and being caught and beaten.

Question 7.
What was Anil’s job? What did he usually do with the money he earned?
Answer:
Anil was a writer. He used to write articles for magazines. He was a spendthrift and used to spend money on his friends. He did not bother to save money for his future.

Question 8.
What does the thief say about the reactions of different types of people when they were robbed? How did he think Anil would react when he discovered the theft?
Answer:
The thief had robbed all kinds of people. According to him, the greedy men were scared of being robbed. The rich men showed anger. The poor men accepted their fate after being robbed. He thought that Anil would show only a touch of sadness. He would not be sad for the loss of money, but for the loss of trust.

Question 9.
What made him a successful thief?
Answer:
He always changed his name after stealing. He even managed to change the place. He tried his best to appear pleasing and innocent so the employers never suspected him to be a thief.

Question 10.
Why was he about to be dismissed? What made Anil reinstate him?
Answer:
He cooked very terrible meal which infuriated Anil. He gave the food to the stray dog and asked him to be off. But he got his job back by flattering Anil who was a simple and large-hearted man.

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Online Education for A Horse and Two Goats Story Summary by R. K. Narayan

A Horse and Two Goats Summary by R. K. Narayan About the Author

R.K. Narayan was an Indian writer best known for his short stories set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was born on 10th October, 1906, in the then Madras. His full name was Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayan- swami. He was the leading author along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao.

Graham Greene was his friend and mentor. He was also instrumental in getting publishers for Narayan’s books which included Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher. Narayan’s The Financial Expert was known as one of the original works of 1951, He won Sahitya Academy Award for The Guide which was adapted for film. His style was simple, easy and highlighted the social context and everyday life of his characters.

There is humor and pity in his stories. In his career of sixty years, he won many awards and honors including the AC Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature, the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan, India’s third and second highest civilian awards. He was also nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India’s Parliament. He died in the year 2001 On 13th May at the age of 94.

A Horse and Two Goats Summary of the Story

The story opens with a clear picture of the poverty in which the protagonist Muni lives. Only one Big House out of thirty houses in the village is made up of brick. The others including Muni are made up of bamboo’s thatch, straw, mud and other materials. There is no running water or electricity supply. Muni’s wife cooked food over a fire in a mud pot. One day Muni has shaken down six drumsticks from the tree growing in front of his house and asks his wife to prepare them in a sauce for him. She agrees, provided he can get the other ingredients like rice, dhaal, spices, oil and a potato.

Muni has not been so poor since the beginning. Once he owned a flock of forty sheep and goats which he used to graze every day. But years of drought, famine and an epidemic had destroyed all and he is left with only two goats. And because he belongs to a lower caste, he was never allowed to go to school. He and his wife have no children to take care of them in their old age. They run their house from the odd jobs his wife does at the big house.

Muni has taken so much credit from every shop that when he asks for the ingredients his wife requires for cooking the drumsticks, he is refused. There is nothing in the house to cook so his wife asks him to fast till evening and graze the goats. Muni goes to his usual place on the outskirts where he would sit on the pedestal of the old horse statue and his goats meandered. The horse statue is made up of clay and is brightly coloured.

As Muni waits for the evening, he notices a yellow coloured wagon from which a red faced American wearing khaki gets down and asks him for a nearby gas station. Then he notices the statue and exclaims ‘Marvelous’.

Muni mistakes him as a policeman or a soldier and he wants to run away but finds it difficult due to his old age. The two starts conversing in their own language without understanding each other. The American offers him a cigarette and then gives him his business card which Muni thinks to be warrant card. He gives innocent explanation that he knows nothing about the crime the man is investigating.

American put forth his desire to buy the horse statue as he thinks Muni is the owner of it. The two talk about their own life. Muni tells him about the statue what his father and grandfather had told him. The American listens with fascination and appreciates his sound. Muni tells him that he has never been to school and only Brahmins went to school in those days therefore he doesn’t know Parangi language. He further describes the horse as their guardian. At this the American replies that he assures that the statue will have the best home in the U.S.A.

This way trying to understand each other’s language, they continued their conversation. Ultimately, the American waved a hundred rupee note and hand it over to Muni. Muni thinks it is an offer for the goats. He happily runs back home leaving his goats. But his wife suspects him of theft and threatens to leave him. On the other hand, the American gets the help to detach the horse from its pedestal and place it in his station wagon.

A Horse and Two Goats Summary Theme

The story is about a misunderstanding between an Indian and an American. A major theme is clash of cultures as exhibited by the wealthy American and the poor Hindu, Muni. Main focus is on miscommunication. Narayan used humor in place of anger to demonstrate how the two worlds are entirely differing from each other: the two cultures exist in the same time and space but speak different languages either literally or metaphorically.

The two main characters in the story are equally different: Muni is a poor, rural, illiterate, Hindu, dark complexioned whereas the American is wealthy, urban, educated, Christian and white. Behaving like a religious man, Muni accepts his fate while the American is willing and determined to take major steps to change his life. Both are unaware of each other’s lifestyle.

The inability to understand one another’s language leads only to confusion but does not harms anyone. Both the men are dissatisfied conversing with each other but still finds company while talking. Each gives details of his life without realizing that the other hears and understands nothing. At the end of their meeting each man gets what he wants or needs without any loss. The selection of words is mind blowing. While the reader may find this conflict painful at times, but it’s amusing altogether. One can say that it’s a fine example of comic masterpiece.

A Horse and Two Goats Summary Characters

Muni

He is the protagonist of the story. He is old and extremely poor. But he had not always been poor. He had a large flock of sheep and goats but fortunes declined and now he was left only with two goats. He and his wife had no source of income and besides they had no children to take care of them in old age.

His usual work was to set out every day to graze his goats on the outskirts of the town whereas his wife earned something by doing different jobs in the big house. While the goats meandered along to the foot of the horse statue on the edge of the village, he sat on its pedestal for the rest of the day and crouched under its belly for shade.

There he remembers his olden days when life was tough but they were never short of food. He was uneducated and illiterate because he was not Brahmin and only Brahmins were supposed to acquire education. Overall he created humor in the whole story through his accents and assumptions.

The American

The American was a businessman who entered the story when Muni was grazing his goats on the outskirts of the town. He wore Khaki and gave Muni the impression of a policeman or a soldier. He knew only English language but expected Muni to speak the same language. He was annoyed to know that Muni could speak only Tamil. His entry was symbolic of a new culture displaying Western culture. He was wealthy in contrast with Muni. He was very well acquainted with the fact that he was in the remotest of the Indian villages, still he was looking for the gas station and English speaking people.

He wanted to own the thing whatever he liked without giving a second thought. He wanted to own the horse statue as a souvenir for his living room at any cost and thought Muni as the owner of statue by the way Muni was sitting on its pedestal. He knew that nobody could understand his language still he listened Muni very seriously but very well acquainted with the fact that money would solve all the problems. He was a materialistic man who had no value for the cultural or religious importance of the statue.

The Shop man

The shop man is a man whose mood swings frequently. He has given Muni food on credit in the past, but now is no more willing to lend him anything as Muni has passed his limit. Muni owes him five rupees too which is a great amount. Sometimes they share a bit of humorous conversation, but apart from this they have no more connection. He sends him back disappointed when his wife asks for some ingredients to prepare drumsticks The Wife Muni’s wife has lived with him since they were children.

Neither of them was sure about their ages. They had spent years through prosperity and poverty. She was somewhat irritated with him now and had grown tired of him, but cared also. She was a typical Indian woman who was ready to cook whatever her husband wanted. At times she scolded him also. Her temper was manageable. She wanted to fulfill his request for a special meal. She worked hard in the big house as he did, or harder.

She picked up odd jobs as grinding corn, sweeping, scrubbing, for buying food stuff. In fact she was not dependent on Muni but Muni was dependent on her. She was ready to do as much work as she could for her living but was against earning the money by unfair means. Poverty had drained her down as she accused Muni of stealing after seeing hundred rupees and threatened to leave the house.

A Horse and Two Goats Summary Word-Meanings

1. dotting – mark with dots
2. grandiose – imposing
3. subcontinent – a large landmark forming a part of continent
4. gorgeous – beautiful, attractive
5. gargoyles – a water spout in the form of a grotesque carved face on a building
6. balustrade – a row of short pillars supporting a rail or coping
7. sallied – set out on a journey
8. pedestal – a base supporting a column or statue
9. crook – a hooked stick
10. snapped – break
11. foliage – leaves
12. avenue – a wide road
13. faggots – a tied bundle of sticks or twigs
14. dawn – the first light of the day, the beginning
15. millet – a cereal plant
16. tethered – tied to a spot with a rope or chain
17. triumph – a great victory
18. precisely – exactly
19. upturned – upside downails – make or become ill
20. inordinately – excessively
21. humor – quality of being amusing
22. debt – something owed
23. mumbled – spoke indistinctly
24. sneered – made a scornful remark or expression
25. famine – extreme scarcity of food
26. parapet – a low wall along the edge of balcony or a bridge
27. unobtrusively – not making oneself noticed
28. recoup – regain
29. fatigue – tiredness
30. conjure – summon, evoke
31. unleashing – releasing
32. weird – uncanny, bizarre
33. accosted – approached and spoke to
34. cronies – companion
35. lounging – sitting
36. hailed – an expression of greeting
37. summoned – ordered to appear in a law court
38. progeny – generation
39. meandered – wandered in a leisurely way
40. crouch – stoop low with knees tightly bent
41. prancing – moving springily
42. scythe – a tool with a curved blade on a long handle for cutting long grass
43. aquiline – curved like an eagle’s beak
44. vandals – a person who damages things willfully
45. gashed – long deep cut
46. lewd – treating sexual matters vulgarly
47. scrounge – borrow
48. sputtered – a spluttering sound
49. fidgeted – made small restless movements
50. slanderers – a false statement made by the people to damage one’s reputation
51. gainsay – to deny
52. inquisitor – curious
53. scruples – doubtful
54. pinioned – restrain by holding
55. obscure – uncertain
56. famished – extremely hungry
57. ruminated – think deeply.