Unseen Passage for Class 5 – Life Stories

Reading comprehension lesson 19: Life stories · Set 324 · 12 questions

Reading tip (Follow the person): Find the person and the problem they saw. Follow what they did, in order. Find what changed in the end, and why.

1. 1.Lalita Ben lived at the foot of a bare, rocky hill in Gujarat. When she was young, the hill had many trees, but people had cut them for firewood. Lalita Ben decided to plant one sapling every week. She carried water up the hill in two pots every morning. Goats ate many of her young plants, so she built fences of thorny branches. After twenty years, a small forest covered the hill. Birds and rabbits came back to live there. Children now call it “Lalita’s Forest”.
   
   How often did she plant a sapling? (a) Every year (b) Every day (c) Every month (d) Every week
2. 2.As a child in Kochi, Sherin loved watching the big blue buses go by. Her uncle was a bus driver, and he sometimes let her sit in the front seat. People laughed when she said she would drive a bus one day. Sherin learned to drive a scooter, then a car, and then a heavy vehicle. She practised for months and passed a difficult driving test. At twenty-four, she became the first woman bus driver in her depot. She says, “Never let anyone laugh away your dream.”
   
   What did people do when she spoke of her dream? (a) They clapped (b) They cried (c) They laughed (d) They helped
3. 3.Ammini Amma lived beside a river in Kerala but never learned to swim. When she was sixty, floods came to her village. She was scared and had to be rescued in a boat. After the floods, she decided to learn swimming. Every morning, she practised in the river with a young coach named Arun. Within three months, she could swim across the river. Now, at sixty-five, she teaches swimming to village children for free. She says it is never too late to learn.
   
   How old was she when the floods came? (a) Sixty-five (b) Fifty (c) Seventy (d) Sixty
4. 4.Dasan was a fisherman in a coastal village in Tamil Nadu. He knew the sea better than anyone in his village. One stormy night, a small boat with three young fishermen was caught in big waves. Everyone else was too scared to go out. Dasan tied a rope to his own boat and rowed into the storm. After an hour, he came back pulling the small boat behind him. All three young men were safe. Since then, Dasan has trained many villagers to swim and save lives at sea.
   
   What did Dasan tie to his boat? (a) An anchor (b) A rope (c) A net (d) A lamp
5. 5.Tsering Dorje was an electrician in a small village in Ladakh. In winter, the village often lost power for days. Tsering learned how to set up solar panels at a training camp in Leh. He fixed panels on the roof of the village school first. Now the classrooms have lights even on the coldest days. Then he helped every home in the village get a solar lamp. Children can study after dark. The villagers call him the man who brought the sun indoors.
   
   What did every home get? (a) A fridge (b) A heater (c) A solar lamp (d) A radio
6. 6.Rekha always loved fixing things. As a girl in Indore, she opened up old radios and clocks to see how they worked. After school, she joined a training course for motor mechanics. She was the only girl in a class of thirty. At first, some customers did not trust her to repair their scooters. Rekha did not give up and worked carefully. Slowly, people saw that her repairs lasted longest. Today she runs her own garage and trains other girls.
   
   Which words in the passage mean “stop trying”? (a) Fix (b) Work (c) Trust (d) Give up
7. 7.Suresh worked as a guard in a factory in Ranchi. On Sundays, he coached cricket in an empty field near his home. At first only boys came. One day, a girl named Salma asked if she could play too. Suresh gave her a bat and watched her hit the ball over the fence. Soon more girls joined, and he started a girls’ team. He bought balls and pads with his own savings. Last year, his team won the district cup.
   
   Which girl asked if she could play? (a) Rekha (b) Priya (c) Anita (d) Salma
8. 8.Every evening, Mohan closed his tea stall near the railway station in Kanpur. Then he spread a mat under a street light. Children who could not go to school came there to learn. Mohan had studied only up to Class 10, but he taught them reading and simple maths. He bought chalk and slates with the money he earned from selling tea. Some of his students later joined the government school nearby. One of them, Ravi, is now a teacher himself. Mohan still runs his stall and his evening class.
   
   Where was his stall? (a) Inside a school (b) Near a temple (c) At the bus stand (d) Near the railway station
9. 9.Kamala Devi grew up in a village in Bihar where there were no books. She learned to read only after she got married, with help from her daughter. Reading made her feel she could see the whole world. In 2005, she cleared one room of her house and filled it with old books. She asked people in the town to give away books they did not need. Soon, children came every evening to read and do homework. Today the library has over three thousand books. The village calls her “Kitab Amma”.
   
   What does the village call her? (a) Teacher Amma (b) Kitab Amma (c) Book Didi (d) Library Nani
10. 10.Ramesh was a cobbler who sat under a neem tree near the bus stand in Nagpur. He mended shoes and bags from morning till night. He earned very little, but he saved a few coins every day in a tin box. His dream was to send his daughter, Pooja, to college. Pooja studied hard under the street lamp after helping her father. When she finished school, Ramesh opened the tin box. There was enough money for her first year at college. Today Pooja is a nurse.
    
    What was his dream? (a) Send Pooja to college (b) Buy a big shop (c) Buy a bus (d) Move to a city
11. 11.Kamala Devi grew up in a village in Bihar where there were no books. She learned to read only after she got married, with help from her daughter. Reading made her feel she could see the whole world. In 2005, she cleared one room of her house and filled it with old books. She asked people in the town to give away books they did not need. Soon, children came every evening to read and do homework. Today the library has over three thousand books. The village calls her “Kitab Amma”.
    
    Where did Kamala Devi grow up? (a) In Delhi (b) In a village in Bihar (c) In a city in Bihar (d) In a town in Assam
12. 12.Joseph Pinto was the postman of a group of hill villages in Goa for thirty years. He walked about fifteen kilometres every day, because there were no roads for vehicles. In the rains, he wrapped the letters in plastic to keep them dry. Many old people could not read, so he read their letters aloud to them. He also wrote replies for them. When he retired, the villagers held a party under the big mango tree. They gave him a walking stick carved with all their names.
    
    How did he help old people who could not read? (a) Cooked for them (b) Taught them maths (c) Read letters to them (d) Gave them money

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