DELHI PUBLIC SCHOOL BANGALORE EAST

Cambridge International
Academic Session 2022-23
Mid Term
Revision Worksheet 2
Subject: English Date:
Name: Class: 9

I. Read Text C, The Gift, in the insert and then answer Questions 2(a)–(d) on this question paper.

Text C: The Gift

This text is taken from a longer narrative. At this point in the story, it is the night of Natalia’s sixteenth
birthday. Her grandfather, a doctor, has arrived back late at night from visiting patients. He has
woken Natalia and asked her to follow him quietly through the streets of their city.

We were nearing the end of our side street and I assumed the silence of our walk would be shattered
by the bustle along the tramway. But when we got there, nothing, not even a single passing car. Every
window was dark. The hazy moon seemed to gather the silence up around it like a net. Not a sound:
no sirens, no rats in the bins that lined the street. My grandfather stopped, looked up and down the
street, then turned left.

‘It’s not far now,’ he said.

I caught up with him long enough to see that he was smiling. ‘Not far to where?’ I said, out of breath,
angry. I drew myself up and stopped. ‘I’m not going any further until you tell me.’

He turned to look at me, indignant. ‘Lower your voice you fool,’ he hissed. Suddenly his arms went
over his head in a wide arc. ‘Can’t you feel it? No one in the world awake but us.’ And off he went
again.

We passed empty windows of shops that had gone out of business; lightless buildings; a beggar
sleeping so soundly that I would have thought him dead if I hadn’t realised that the moment had
closed around us, making everything still.

Suddenly grandfather stopped ahead of me and stood, pointing into the distance, his hand shaking
with excitement.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Look!’

I peered out into the street. On the other side, there was a street lamp with a dying bulb. I was
opening my mouth to say ‘What?’ and then I saw it. Half a block from us, an enormous shadow was
moving along the street.

At first I thought it was a tram, but its shape was too organic, too lumpy, and it was going far too
slowly for that, making almost no noise. It was swaying, swaying up the street with an even
momentum in a rolling motion that was drawing it away from us like a tide, and every time it rocked

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forward, something about it made a soft dragging sound on the rails. As we watched, the thing
sucked in air and then let out a deep groan.

‘That’s an elephant!’ I said.

My grandfather said nothing. His glasses had fogged up during the walk, but he wasn’t taking them
off to wipe them. He took my hand; we watched the animal.

Its ears were folded back against the domed, bouldered head with big-lidded eyes; the arched roll of
the spine fell away into the hips; dry folds of skin shook around the shoulders and knees as it shifted
its weight. It seemed to take up the whole street. It dragged its curled trunk like a fist along the
ground.

Several metres in front of it, holding a bag of something that must have been enormously tempting, a
short young man was walking slowly backward, drawing it forward with whispers.

‘I saw them at the train station as I was coming home,’ my grandfather said.

The elephant passed: slow, graceful, enchanted by the food in the young man’s hand.

‘No one will ever believe this,’ I said.

My grandfather looked at me like he’d never seen me before. ‘You must be joking,’ he said.

‘Look around. Think for a moment – do you think anybody would understand? Do you think it will
matter to them?’

Later that year, we would read about how some soldiers had found an elephant near death at the site
of an abandoned circus; about how, despite everything, despite closure and bankruptcy, the zoo
director had said, ‘Bring him in – eventually the kids will see him.’ The newspapers ran a picture of
him, standing stark-ribbed in his new pen at the zoo, an advert of better times to come, hope for the
future and the end of the war.

Question 2

(a) Identify a word or phrase from the text which suggests the same idea as the words underlined:

(i) Natalia was expecting the quietness of their walk to be broken suddenly.
....................................................................................................................................

(ii) Natalia slowed herself down and made herself as tall as possible before refusing to go any
further.
.....................................................................................................................................

(iii) Her grandfather spoke to her in a low, angry voice.

......................................................................................................................................

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 (iv) The homeless person was fast asleep.
......................................................................................................................................

(b) Using your own words, explain what the writer means by each of the words underlined:

I peered out into the street. On the other side, there was a street lamp with a dying bulb. I was
opening my mouth to say ‘What?’ and then I saw it. Half a block from us, an enormous shadow
was moving along the street.

(i) peered ...........................................................................................................................

(ii) dying .............................................................................................................................
(iii) enormous .....................................................................................................................

(c) Use one example from the text below to explain how the writer suggests Natalia’s experiences
and feelings that night.

Use your own words in your explanation.

I peered out into the street. On the other side, there was a street lamp with a dying bulb. I was
opening my mouth to say ‘What?’ and then I saw it. Half a block from us, an enormous shadow
was moving along the street.

.............................................................................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................................................................

II. Write about 300 to 350 words on one of the following questions. Answer on this question paper.

Either

Descriptive writing

1. Describe an occasion when a group of people are eating together.

OR

Narrative writing

2. Write a story that includes the words, ‘… nothing could have prepared him for what he saw …’.

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