NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 1 –38Wisdom Paves the Way (play) — Let us think and reflect (I)

Statement A is false.

Rectified: Dev Datt believes that finding employment will take a long time and a good deal of patience. He says, “Ten days are but a short span in the grand scheme of things. We may still have many more roads to wander before we find employment befitting all four of us.”

Statement B is true — Ram Datt says, “I am confident he would recognise our talents and appoint us to his service.”

It tells us he has a clear, unembarrassed sense of his own worth, and that he trusts merit to be recognised where the judge is fair.

Notice what he does not ask for. He does not hope the King will pity four tired travellers or give them work out of charity. His hope is precise: “he would recognise our talents and appoint us to his service.” That is a request to be judged, not helped — and a man who wants to be judged is a man who thinks he will survive the judgement.

It also marks him as the group’s optimist. Ten days into a failing search he is still thinking about an audience with a king, while Har Datt is worrying about how it could ever be arranged. The play ends by proving him right, which turns his confidence into something more than a character trait: it is the reason they are walking towards Ujjain at all.

B. moving forward with determination

C. He is cautious and thoughtful, preferring to plan ahead.

The others fail on the same evidence: he doubts the task, not their abilities, and he does not suggest giving up (A); wanting a strategy is the opposite of rushing in (B); and he is the one making the suggestion, not waiting for someone else to (D).

B. Both (A) and (R) are true, but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).

C. notice details that others might overlook

D is the tempting wrong answer, because the men seem to know things they could not have seen. But they predict nothing; they reconstruct what has already happened. B is the opposite of what they do, and A describes arguing with beliefs, which never occurs in the play.

… because only that morning they were four unemployed strangers on a dusty road, ten days from home, hoping merely for “employment befitting all four of us”; even an audience with the King had seemed, in Har Datt’s words, “no simple task”. To be offered posts as the King’s own advisers was so far beyond that hope that they had never permitted themselves to imagine it.

It shows a ruler who values evidence, fairness and merit above rank, wealth or reputation — and the scene proves each one before the offer is made.

• He tests before he judges. He never asks the four whether they stole the camel. He asks each one how he knew — “And how did you deduce this?”, “How did you arrive at this conclusion?”, “Explain how you came to such a conclusion.” A ruler who wanted a quick verdict would not have asked four times.
• He changes his mind when the evidence changes. The men enter as accused thieves and leave as advisers. Nothing about them altered; only what the King knew.
• He protects the innocent and corrects the accuser. “Your accusations are baseless and misguided… be mindful of whom you accuse in the future.”
• He values ability wherever he finds it. Four penniless strangers with no family name are offered the highest positions in his court simply because they can think — “Such minds are rare and highly valued in my court.”
• He wants to be advised, not obeyed. “Your counsel shall guide my decisions” — a ruler secure enough to want people around him who see what he does not.