NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 4 The Tunnel — Let us think and reflect

False.

He looked back “to reassure himself that there was still daylight outside” — that is, to comfort himself in the pitch darkness, not to watch for a train.

A. there was nothing to see in the tunnel

The extract says it in so many words: “Suraj didn't stop, because there was nothing to do in the tunnel and nothing to see.”

It means that for the several hours between two trains, no engine, no smoke and no human noise fill the cutting — so the jungle takes it back. The bats, lizards, birds and even the leopard move through the tunnel and along the tracks as if the railway were not there.

Curiosity — an adventurous, questioning nature that has to find things out first-hand.

He does not walk through the tunnel for any gain. There is nothing to see and nothing to do, yet “he had simply wanted to walk through, so that he would know what the inside of a tunnel was really like”. Knowing about it was not enough; he wanted to know it by experience.

His concern was for the leopard's life. The night mail was ten minutes away, and if the animal was still inside the tunnel when the engine charged through, “it will be run over and killed”.

He puts it as a matter of personal responsibility: “I can't let that happen.”

… the leopard knew him well — they had seen each other many times, and although it preys on goats and stray dogs, it had never shown any interest in harming human beings.

His words are: “Not this leopard. It knows me well. We have seen each other many times. It has a weakness for goats and stray dogs, but it will not harm us.”

The true sentences are B, C and D.

B. cautious

He has just said twice that the leopard will not harm them — so he is not afraid (D). But he adds “Even so, I'll take my axe with me”. Those two words are the key: he is taking a sensible precaution against the small chance that he is wrong.

He is making a joke, but the joke carries real feeling. He means that the tunnel is his in every way that matters, and that the Government merely borrows it to run trains through.

His reason is: “It is truly my tunnel, since no one else will have anything to do with it.” Nobody else wants this lonely posting, nobody else inspects the tunnel twice a day, nobody else keeps it clear of obstacles or waves the flag and the lamp. The care is entirely his, so the ownership feels like his too.

The example: “Nothing happens to me out here. But last month, when I went into town, I was almost run over by a bus.” In years of living beside a jungle full of leopards he has not been hurt once; one visit to town nearly killed him.

What it tells us about him:

• He is completely at home in the jungle. He knows its sounds, its animals and its habits, so its dangers are predictable to him.
• He is not afraid of wild animals — he judges danger by experience, not by reputation.
• He finds the town, with its traffic and crowds, more frightening than the forest — a gentle criticism of what we usually call “civilised” life.
• He is content with his solitary life and does not envy town-dwellers.

He no longer lives beside the jungle; he lives inside it, on its own terms. The story shows this again and again:

• The night sounds of the forest — the barking deer, the fox, the nightjar — “were familiar to him and he did not give them much thought”, while Suraj could not even identify them.
• He recognised the leopard purely from a sawing sound in the dark, and had already been alerted by “a padded footfall, a rustle of dry leaves”.
• He speaks of the animal as a neighbour and calls it “my leopard”, and knows its habits — that it comes to this range for a few days every month.
• He risks his own safety to save it from the night mail rather than let the train kill it.
• He has planted marigolds in front of his hut and a vegetable patch behind it, and sleeps on a cot in the open with a banana leaf over his face.
• He says plainly that he feels safer here than in a town.

On the surface they have nothing in common: one is an ageing watchman living alone in a forest cutting, the other a schoolboy from a town whose father runs a business. What draws them together is:

• A shared love of the trains. Suraj cycles out of town just to watch the steam engine burst from the tunnel; Sunder Singh has organised his whole life around the same two trains. Neither of them has to explain this to the other.
• Curiosity meeting loneliness. Suraj wants to know things; Sunder Singh says, “I don't often have visitors,” and invites him to sit down at once. Each supplies what the other lacks.
• Respect between them. Sunder Singh never talks down to the boy — he calls him “my friend” and answers his questions seriously, even the cheeky one about lending the leopard to the Government.
• A love of the jungle. Suraj is not frightened of the forest at night; he would rather walk into a tunnel with a leopard in it than sit alone outside.
• A shared adventure. Driving the leopard out of the tunnel together, shouting side by side in the dark, turns an acquaintance of two days into a real friendship.

Because that is exactly what he looks like from a speeding night train. The story's last sentence says he “would always remain a firefly for those travelling thousands as he lit up the darkness for steam engines and leopards”.

The comparison works on three levels:

• Literally — in a huge black forest, the passengers see nothing of him but one tiny moving light, exactly like a firefly among the trees.
• By size — a firefly's light is very small, and so is his part in the great machine of the railway. Yet without it the train would be in danger.
• By worth — a firefly makes its own light in the middle of darkness. Sunder Singh, alone and unnoticed, keeps the tunnel safe for “those travelling thousands” who will never learn his name.

Yes, clearly. Everything he does in the story is done for the sake of experience rather than for any reward:

• He cycles out of the town alone, takes a jungle path, leaves his cycle in a village and walks over a low scrub-covered hill just to watch a train come out of a tunnel. It is not even a station, and he is not catching a train.
• He stands close enough for “waves of hot steam” to strike him in the face, and only steps back instinctively.
• He walks the whole length of a pitch-dark tunnel with no torch, simply “so that he would know what the inside of a tunnel was really like”.
• He comes back at night, through a jungle full of unfamiliar sounds, to see the night mail go through.
• When Sunder Singh says “You stay here”, he refuses and walks into a tunnel that has a leopard in it — even though his throat is dry with fear.