The Ghat of the only world class 11 English snapshots chapter 6 Explanation, summary, Question and answers

The Ghat of the only world class 11 English snapshots chapter 6 Explanation, summary, Question and answers

The Ghat of the only world CBSE Class 11 English snapshots chapter 6 -detailed Explanation of the Lesson along with Meaning of difficult words. also the explanation is followed by as summary of the lesson. all the Exercise along with Question with Answer given at the back of the lesson have been covered.

The Ghat of the only world by

(Amitav Ghosh )

The Ghat of the only world class 11 Introduction

The Ghat of the only world written by Amitav Ghosh is a Promise fulfilled by a friend before. cancer took him totally and consumed shahid’s life’he made the author promise him to write about him he died. the lesson revolves around shahid, what he liked and how he lived his life as if it celebration even after he was diagnosed by the disease.

The Ghat of the only world class 11 Explanation.

A dying man, an expatriate from Kashmir, asks the author to write something about him after he is gone .the following piece is what Amitav Ghosh wrote to keep his Promise.

Glossary”

• Expatriate – a person who lives outside

The First time that Agha Shahid Ali spoke to me about his approaching death was on 25th April 2001. the conversation began routinely. I had telephoned to remind him that we had been invited to a friend’s house for lunch and that I was going to come by his apartment to pick him up. Although he had been under treatment for cancer for some fourteen months’ Shahid was still on his feet and perfectly lucid, except occasional lapses of memory.

Glossary”

• Lucid– Understandable

I heard him thumbing through his engagement book and then suddenly he said’ oh dear I cant’t see a thing there was a brief pause and then he added’ I hope this doesn’t mean that I’m dying Although Shahid and I had talked a great deal over the last many weeks’ I had never before heard him touch on the subject of death. I did not know how to respond. his voice was completely at odds with the content of what he had just said” light to the point of jocularity.

Glossary”

• Engagement book– Schedule book
• At odds-in conflict or at variance
• Jocularity -said or done as a joke

I mumbled something innocuous” No Shahid – of course not. You’II be fine; he cut me short.in a tone of voice that was at once Quizzical and direct, he said” when it happens I hope You’II write something about me ‘ I was shocked into silent and a long moment passed before I could bring myself to say the things that people say on such occasions.

Glossary”

• Mumbled – say something making it difficult to hear
• Innocuous– not harmful or offensive
• Quizzical -indicating mild or amused puzzlement

Shahid you ‘II be fine; you have to be strong ‘ from the window of my study I could see a corner of the building in which he live. some eight blocks away. it was just a few months since he moved there’ he had been living a few miles away. in Manhattan. when he had a sudden blackout in february 2000. after tests revealed that he had a malignant brain tumour. he decided to move to Brooklyn .to be close to his youngest sister, Sameetah. who teaches at the pratt Institute- a few blocks away from the street where I live.

Glossary”

• Malignant – Uncontrollable’ dangerous

Shahid ignored my reassurances. he begin to laugh and it was then that I realised that he was dead serious. I understood that he was entrusting me with a quite specific charge’ he wanted me to remember him not through the spoken recitatives of memory and friendship, but through the written word. Shahid knew all too well that for those writers for whom things become real only in the process of writing there is an inbuilt resistance to dealing with loss and bareavement, he he knew that my instincts would have let me to search for reasons to avoid writing about his death. I would have told myself that I was not a poet’ that our friendship was of recent date. that there were many others who knew him much better and would be writing from greater understanding and knowledge. all this Shahid had guessed and he decided to shut off those routes while me’

Glossary”

• Recitatives – Dialogues, conversations
• Bereavement -Loss’ deprivation’ grief sorrow

he he knew that my instincts would have let me to search for reasons to avoid writing about his death. I would have told myself that I was not a poet’ that our friendship was of recent date. that there were many others who knew him much better and would be writing from greater understanding and knowledge. all this Shahid had guessed and he decided to shut off those routes while there was still time.

You Must write about me clear though it was that this imperative would have to be acknowledged. I could think of nothing to say’ what are the words in which one Promises a friend that one will write about him after his death? finally. I said Shahid I will I’II do the best I can’

By the end of the conversation I knew exactly what I had to do’I picked up my pen, noted the date, and wrote down everything I remember of that conversation this. I continued to do for the next few months’ it is this record that has made it possible for me to fulfill the pledge I made that day.

Glossary”

• Imperative – Giving an authorities command

this. I continued to do for the next few months’ it is this record that has made it possible for me to fulfill the pledge I made that day.

I knew Shahid’s work long before I met him his 1997 collection. the country o me his voice was like none I had ever heard before. at once lyrical and fiercely disciplined engaged and yet deeply inward. not for him the mock-causal

Glossary”

• Pledge – Promise
• Fiercely – In a Powerful manner

Almost prose of so much contemporary poetry” his was a voice that not ashamed to speak in a bardic register. I knew of no one else who would even conceive of publishing a line like” Mad Heart. be brave

Glossary”

• Contemporary– People living at the same time
• To speak in a bardic register– A poetic style
• Conceive -form a plan or idea in the mind

In 1998″ I quoted a line from the country without a post office in an article that touched briefly on Kashmir. at the time all I knew about Shahid was that he was from Srinagar and had studied in delhi. University myself. but although our time there had briefly overlapped we had never met, we had friends in common however and one of them put me in touch with Shahid. in 1998 and 1999 we had several conversation on the phone and even met a couple of times.

but we were no more than acquaintances until he moved to brooklyn the next years, once we were in the same neighbhourhood, we began to meet for occasional meals and quickly discovered that we had a great deal in common. by this time of course Shahid’s condition was already serious. yet his illness did not impede the progress of our friendship.

Glossary”

• Impede– Became an obstacle

we found that we had a huge roster of common friends’ in india America and elsewhere’ we discovered a shared love of rogan Josh. Roshanara begum and Kishore kumar a mutual indifference to cricket and an equal attachment to old bombay films because of Shahid’s condition even the most trivial exchanges had a special charge and urgency.

Glossary”

• Roster-list

the inescapable poignance of taking about food and half-forgotten figures from the past with a man who knew himself to be dying was multiplied. in this instance by the knowledge that this man was also a poet who had achieved greatness- Perhaps the only such that I shall ever know as a friend .

Glossary”

• Trivial– of little value or importance
• Poignance– the quality of evoking a keen sense of sadness

One afternoon the writer Suketu Mehta. who also lives in Brooklyn. joined us for Lunch together we hatched a plan for an adda- by definition a gathering that has no agenda. other than conviviality . Shahid was enthusiastic and we began to meet regularly from time to time other writers would join us. on one occasion a crew arrived with a television camera. Shahid was not in the least bit put out’ I’m so shameless. I just love the camera.

Shahid had a sorcerer’s ability to transmute the mundane into the magical. Once I accompanied Iqbal. his brother and hena, his sister on a trip to fetch him home from hospital. this

Glossary”

• Hatched -make a secret plan
• Conviviality-the quality of being friendly and live

was on 21 may I buy that time he had already been through several unsuccessful operations now he was back in hospital to undergro a surgical procedure that was intended to relieve the pressure on his brain his head was shaved and the shape of the tumour was visible upon his bare scalp its edges outline by metal sutures when it was time to leave the ward a blue uniform Hospital escort arrived with a wheelchair

Glossary”

• Sutures– a stitch or row of stitches holding together and edges a wound or surgical or surgical incision

Shahid waved him away declaring that he was strong enough to walk out of the hospital on his own but he was Groggier then he had thought and his knees Buckled after no more than a view step Iqbal went running off to brain back of the wheelchair while the rest of learning against the Cheerless Hospital well a kind of Rapture descended on

Glossary”

• Groggier-weak or unsteady, especially from illness
• Buckled– bend and give way under pressure or strain
• Rapture – a feeling of intense pleasure or joy
• Descended -came in his mind (here)

Shahid when the hospital orderly returned with the wheelchair Shahid gave him a beaming smile and asked where he was from educator the man said and Shahid clapped his hands gleefully together ,Spanish he cried at the top of his voice

Glossary”

• Educator– a country in south America

I always wanted to learn Spanish just to read law Shahid gregariousness had no limit there was never in evening wasn’t there was a party e in his living room I love it that so many people are here it told me once I love it that people come and there’s always food

Glossary”

• Lorca-Garcia Lorca is spain’s most deeply approach highly revered poet and dramatist
• Gregariousness -fond of the company

I love this spirit of festival it means that I don’t have time to be depressed this apartment was a spacious and airy split- level on the 7th floor of a newly renovated building there was a cavernous study on the top of floor and a wide terrace that provided a magnificent view of the the man Manhattan Skyline across the east river Shahid loved this view of the Brooklyn waterfront sleeping like a Ghat into the east river under the glittering life of Mahatma

Glossary”

• Cavernous– Vast, huge”large spacious

The journey from the foyer shahid’s building to his door was a voyage between continents on the way up the rich fragrance of rogan josh and hack would invade the dour. grey interior of the elevator against. the background of the songs and voices that were always echoing out of his apartment. even the ringing of the doorbell had an oddly musical sound. suddenly Shahid would appear flinging open the door. releasing a great cloud of heeng into the frosty new york air. oh now rice, he would cry, clapping his hands how nice that you’ve

Glossary”

• Foyer-an entrance hall or other open area in a building used by the public
• Voyage– a long journey involving travel by sea or space
• Invade-occupy
• Dour-unfriendly

Come to see little mos-lem! Invariably, there’d be some half-dozen or more people gathered inside -poets, students writers relatives – and in the kitchen someone would always be cooking or making tea.

Glossary“

• Heeng -asafoetida’ a staple ingredient used in cooking
• Frosty– Freezing very cold
• Mos-lem -Muslim

Almost to the very end, even as his life was being consumed by his disease. he was the centre of a perpetual carnival an endless mela of talk, laughter. food and of course poetry.

No matter how many people there were Shahid was never so distracted as to lose track of the progress of the evening’s Meal. from time to time he would interput himself to shout directions to whoever was in the kitchen,

yes, now add the dahi now Even when his eyesight was falling, he could tell from the smell alone, exactly which stage the rogan Josh had reached and when things went exactly as they should he would sniff the air and cry out loud, Ah!Khana ka kya mehek hai.

Shahid was legendary for his prowess and preparation of a dinner party it was through one such party given while he was in Arizona. that he met james Merill. the poet who was to radically alter the direction of his poetry’ it was after this encounter that he began to experiment with strict Metrical patterns and verse forms. NO one had a greater influence on Shahid’s poetry than James Merill. Indeed In the poem in which he most explicitly Prefigured his own death. I dream I Am At the Ghat of the only world he awarded the envoy to Merill. Shahid, Hush this is me James the loved and always leaves.

Glossary”

• Legendary– Famous
• Prowess– skill or expertise in a particular activity or filed
• Metrical-relating to or composed in poetic metre

Shahid placed great store on authenticity and exactitude in cooking and would tolerate no deviation from traditional methods and recipes’ for those who took short cuts, he had only pity. he had a special passion for the food of his region. one variant of it in particular Kashmir. food in the pandit style’ I asked him once why this was so important to him and he explained that it was because of a recurrent dream. in which all the pandits had vanished from the valley of Kashmir. and their food had become extinct. this was a nightmare that hunted him and he returned to it again and again. in his conversation and his poetry.

At a certain point I lost track of you.

You needed me. you needed to perfect me.

In your absence you polished me into the enemy.

Your history gets in the way of my memory.

I am everything you. lost your perfect enemy. your memory gets in the way of my memory. there is nothing to forgive you won’t forgive me I hid my pain even from myself. I revealed my pain only to myself there is nothing to forgive you won’t forgive me. if only somehow you could have been mine. what would not have been possible in the world?

Glossary”

• Prefigured -be an early indication or version
• Envoy- a messenger or representative

Once in conversation he told me that he also loved bengali food’ I protested but shahid, you’ve never even been to Calcutta food when you ate. it you could see that there were so many things that you’ didn’t know about everywhere in the country ‘

what I say is why’ can’t you be happy with the cuisines and the clothes and the music and all these wonderful things? he paused and added softly. at least here we have been able to make a space where we can all come together because of the good things’

of the many’ good things in which he took pleasure none was more dear to him than the music of begum Akhtar. he had met the great ghazal singer when he was in his teens. through a friend and she had become an abiding presence and influence in his life. shahid had a fund of stories about her sharpness in repartee.

The Ghat of the only world class 11 summary

The lesson opens on a note where the author’s friend Shahid who has a malignant tumour wants him to write about him after his last breath and how the author resists. it this is because of his lack of ability to respond in a situation. like this Shahid knew him well and thus he made him agree on this. the author tells us how he made notes of every encounter and telephone conversation. with Shahid after that day to be able to write about. him now the author’s fascination with his friend dates back to a time when they were not friends, Amitav knew Shahid for his work in poetry. it was only through a friend that they met but remained only acquaintances.

A year later when shahid moved to brooklyn, they got closer upon frequent brunches. it was after a sudden temporary lapse of memory. that shahid moved from Manhattan to live with his sister. the author mentions one such day when he went along with shahid siblings to pick him up from the hospital after a surgery Shahid. refused to take the help of a wheelchair. claiming that he is still fit to trust his toes, upon seeing him lose his balance. they called the escort back with wheelchair. Shahid being full of life, got excited upon knowing that the knows Spanish as he had always wanted to learn the language.

The Ghat of the only world class 11 Question and answers

Question”1 what did you know about Shahid from this lesson?

Answer” Shahid was from Shrinagar who later migrated. to the US. he was a passionate poet and professor. he contracted cancer and had been given many therapies. but he could not be saved from his untimely death.

Question”2 what did shahid ask the writer to do after his death.

Answer” Shahid asked the writer to write something about him. he wanted the writer to remember him not through the spoken recitatives of memory and friendship, but through the written words.

Question”3 what was the impact of shahid’s world on the writer ?

Answer” The writer took it as a very important thing which would have to be obeyed. he could not think of anything to say. he had to search for words to convey his promise.

Question”4 How did shahid respond to the deterioration of the political situation in Kashmir?

Answer” The steady deterioration of the political situation in Kashmir and the violence and counter violence had a powerful effect on him. in time it became one of the central subjects his work and he created his finest work in writing about kashmir.

Question”5 what helped the writers to keep the promise he made to shahid?

Answer” The writer picked up his pen and noted the date. he wrote down everything he remembered of that Conversation. he continued to do so for the next few months. this record helped the writer to fulfil his pledge and promise.

Question”6 who helped shahid face his inevitable end ?

Answer” The love and support of shahid’s family and friends helped him to face his inevitable end. he was calm, good and humoured till the last.

Question”7 what do you know about shahid as a poet?

Answer” shahid was a renowned poet. his most celebrated work is’ the country without a post office that was published in 1997. his voice was unique -at once lyrical and disciplined, enraged and yet deeply inward.

Question”8 what was the impact of james Merrill on shahid”s poetry?

Answer” James Merrill, the poet , Completely changed the direction of shahid’s poetry. after coming in contact with him, shahid began to try out strict, metrical patterns and verse forms. no one had a greater influence on shahid’s poetry than james merrill.

Question”9 How did shahid justify his passion for the food of his region?

Answer” shahid was passionate for the food his region, particularly’ Kashmir food in the pandit style’ A persistent dream of vanishing Kashmiri pandits and nightmare that haunted him in his conversation and his poetry.

Question”10 shahid was a sparkling .teacher comment

Answer” shahid was teaching at Manhattan’s baruch college. the students adored him. they had printed a magazine and dedicated the issue to him. shahid did not show any sadness of the occasion. from beginning to end, he was a sparkling dive.

The Ghat of the only world class 11 MCQ’s Question and answers

Question”1 what impact did shahid’s death have upon the author?

1. He remains unaffected
2. He moved out of his place to distract himself
3. he felt a deep void
4. Not mentioned in the story

Question”2 shahid passed away while he was ……..

1. driving
2. asleep
3. cooking
4. writing

Question”3 shahid wanted to go to …………… during his last days.

1. Northampton
2. new york
3. Kashmir
4. None of the above

Question”4 Once in his childhood, what did shahid’s mother help to create in his room ?

1. A murti
2. A holy scripture
3. An artwork hindu gods
4. A Hindu temple

Question”5 Shahid firmly believed in …………… politics and religion.

1. separating
2. interconnecting
3. mingling
4. None of the above

Question”6 shahid by inclination was a political poet.

1. Yes
2. somewhat
3. No
4. Not mentioned in the story

Question”7 what did shahid described as’ the happiest time of his life ?

1. His time in Arizona
2. His time at new york university
3. His time at Manhattan’s college
4. His time at penn state

Question”8 No matter what the question , shahid worked …………… into his answer’ compete the sentemce.

1. poetry
2. passion
3. nationalism
4. music

Question”9 who had a great influence on shahid’s poetry ?

1. Amitav Gosh
2. suketu mehta
3. James Merrill
4. Roshnara begum

Question”10 shahid described’ the view of the Brooklyn waterfront slipping into the East River’ as a ………….

1. Ghat
2. waterfall
3. Fountain
4. None of the above

MCQ’s Answers

Q.NO	Answer	Q.No	Answer
1	C	6	C
2	B	7	D
3	C	8	A
4	D	9	C
5	A	10	A