Travel Writing — DU B. A. (Hons) English Previous Year Question Papers

3. Candidates have to answer ANY THREE questions in Part A and ANY THREE questions in Part B. 4. Questions in Part A carry 10 marks each, and questions in Part B carry 20 marks each. 1. (a) Identify, contextualize and critically comment on the following extract: "The more one pays for a journey, the less one sees of the country. Luxury is a thick, opaque curtain dropped between the traveller and the reality of the people; it insulates one from the heat, the dust, the noise, and the smells— but it also insulates one from the truth. Rachel and I preferred the third-class carriages, where the air was thick with the scent of jasmine and dried fish, and where a conversation was the natural consequence of sharing a wooden bench." (b) Write a short note on Dervla Murphy's understanding of caste in Coorg. 2. (a) Identify, contextualize and critically comment on the following extract: "The scenery was a repetitive blur of paddy fields and water buffalo, but inside the carriage, the drama was relentless. My companion, a man of staggering dullness, spent four hours describing the intricacies of his stamp collection. I realized then that the horror of travel is not the discomfort of the road, but the inescapable company of other people." (b) Write a short note on the writer Yashar Kemal, who Theroux meets in Turkey. 3. (a) Identify, contextualize and critically comment on the following extract: "Walking the Indian streets is not like walking the streets of London or New York. Here, the street is a home, a marketplace, a temple, and a graveyard all at once. To walk them is to be bruised by the sheer density of life." (b) Who is Dom Moraes, and what role does he play in the narrative? 4. (a) Identify, contextualize and critically comment on the following extract: "Here, at the Sandheads, some sixty miles south of Sagar Island, among the dome-shaped sands to the west of the Pilot's Ridge, invisible twenty fathoms below, where the long tails of sand ran down towards the deeps of the Indian Ocean, where the merchant ships waited for the pilots and the tide and the river, in its multiple guise as Hooghly, Bhagirathi, Ganges, deposited on the bottom the dark olive mud mixed with glistening sand that shone like iron filings, the last scourings of a sub-continent, we felt that we had come to the end at last." (b) Write a short note on Wanda, as a travel companion to Newby. 5. (a) Do you think Murphy's daughter in On a Shoestring to Coorg affects the pace, place and perspective of the journey? Discuss how Murphy balances her roles as an adventurous explorer and a protective mother within the text. (b) In her representation of the Kodava people, does Murphy succeed in providing a nuanced cultural portrait, or does she fall into the trap of "romanticizing" traditional societies as a reaction against Western modernization? Discuss. 6. (a) Why does Theroux choose the word "Bazaar" to describe the railway journey?