Unseen Passage for Class 5 – Life Stories

Reading comprehension lesson 19: Life stories · Set 583 · 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.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.
   
   Why did no one else go out? (a) They were away (b) They were too scared (c) They were asleep (d) They had no boats
2. 2.Thangam lived in a village in the Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu. Her family grew vegetables, but the plants gave few beans. A visitor from the farm college told her that bees help plants make fruit and seeds. Thangam learned to keep bees in wooden boxes. She placed the boxes at the edge of the fields. That season, the plants gave many more beans. She also sold honey at the weekly market. Now many families in her village keep bees too.
   
   Where did Thangam live? (a) In a big city (b) In the Thar desert (c) In the Nilgiri hills (d) Near the sea
3. 3.Fatima lived in a village in Rajasthan where the nearest doctor was forty kilometres away. When she was eleven, her little brother fell very sick. They had to travel all night to reach a hospital. That night, Fatima decided to become a doctor. She studied by a kerosene lamp and walked five kilometres to school. Her teachers helped her prepare for the medical exam. She became a doctor at twenty-six. Then she came back and opened a small clinic in her own village.
   
   How far away was the nearest doctor? (a) Five kilometres (b) Ten kilometres (c) Four kilometres (d) Forty kilometres
4. 4.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”.
   
   How did she get more books? (a) She wrote them (b) The school sent them (c) She bought new ones (d) People gave old books
5. 5.Gopal was a potter in a small town in West Bengal. People had started buying plastic pots, and his business was slow. One day, his son suggested making clay water bottles and lamps with painted designs. Gopal was unsure, but he tried. His son showed the new pots at a town fair. Many visitors liked them because clay keeps water cool naturally. Soon orders came from other cities. Now Gopal teaches young people in his town to make pottery.
   
   What was Gopal’s work? (a) Painter (b) Tailor (c) Farmer (d) Potter
6. 6.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 long did she take to swim across the river? (a) One year (b) Three months (c) One month (d) Two weeks
7. 7.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”.
   
   Why did she build fences? (a) To keep out children (b) Goats ate the plants (c) To mark her land (d) To stop the wind
8. 8.Uncle Shankar has driven the school bus in Mysuru for twenty-two years. He knows the name of every child who rides with him. He keeps a notebook with all their birthdays. On each birthday, he plays a song and gives the child a toffee. He never drives fast, even when the bus is late. Once, he stopped the bus to help an old woman cross the road. Many of his first students now send their own children on his bus. They say he is part of their family.
   
   What does he keep in his notebook? (a) Children’s birthdays (b) Road maps (c) Bus timings (d) Phone numbers
9. 9.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.”
   
   How old was she when she became a bus driver? (a) Twenty (b) Eighteen (c) Twenty-four (d) Thirty
10. 10.Bhimrao was a farmer in a dry village in Maharashtra. For many years, his wells dried up before summer. He watched the rainwater rush away down the hill every monsoon. One year, he dug a small pond at the low end of his field. He also planted trees along the edges to hold the soil. The pond filled with rain and slowly soaked into the ground. The next summer, his well still had water. Soon, ten other farmers in the village dug ponds too.
    
    How many other farmers dug ponds? (a) Twenty (b) Ten (c) Five (d) Two
11. 11.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 Sherin learn to drive first? (a) A truck (b) A scooter (c) A car (d) A bus
12. 12.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.
    
    What did Mohan sell? (a) Books (b) Fruit (c) Toys (d) Tea

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