A passage is given with 5 questions following it. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
Everyone expected Mary Zophres to win for her retro-revival Technicolor clothes in La La Land — the eventual winner, Colleen Atwood for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, seemed surprised too. But as other awards began to slip away from the well-reviewed musical, a theme could be teased out. What is Fantastic Beasts if not a plea for equal treatment of people, magical or otherwise? Then, Arrival, a film about the inherent benignity of aliens (read immigrants) won for Best Sound Editing. Hacksaw Ridge, which is, in a way, an anti-guns movie, won in two categories. Fences, about an African-American father who fears racial discrimination, took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Earlier, Moonlight, featuring two minority communities (black and gay), won for Best Supporting Actor. This turned out to be one of those years the Oscar voter was underestimated. As a majority of voters are actors, there was the tendency to think they'd reward La La Land, a celebration of creation: the heroine wants to make movies, the hero wants to make jazz. It looked like the year of The Artist all over again.
A passage is given with 5 questions following it. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
I had seen this road many years ago when my parents moved to Mundakotukurussi, our ancestral village. However, in those early years, I hadn't begun exploring the countryside. I stored the unknown road in my head under 'One Day I Will'. Ten years ago, when I recovered from a herniated disc, it was to discover that I had a useless left leg. Though I managed to lose the limp, I hated not being able to stride around as I used to. I needed a challenge to tell myself that I wasn't going to buckle to a creature called sciatica. Thus the 'One Day I Will' arrived. "Where does the road by the medical shop lead to?" I asked my parents while visiting them next. "Chalavara," they said. "It's not an easy road to walk on," my father added. "There are too many ups and downs." Chalavara was a superior grade of a village as compared to Mundakotukurussi, with a high school, a fine library, ATMs and several shops. But it also has two approach roads. The one I had chosen was a narrow back road used by the locals and that settled it for me. I needed to know for myself I could walk a road that wasn't going to be easy. And the next day, I would get up and walk that road again.
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Discrimination, prejudice and stereotypes are commonly found among human societies and yet, people find themselves in denial of them. It is implicitly found in many than not and we all try to either out rightly say we do not have such mental notions or simply become ignorant and stick with the believes. As humans, it is our tendency to look at things, whether we are direct participants or observers of it, and make certain judgments regarding the same. These judgments can be called our appraisals and the things, person or situation can be called as the stimuli. Stereotypes are the beliefs or the cognitive aspect that we have toward stimuli, prejudice is the emotional response or the affect aspect that stems from our stereotypical thoughts and discrimination is the display of actions or the behavioral aspect on the stimuli based on the stereotypical belief that we hold. In simpler words, what we think is stereotype, what we feel is prejudice and what we exhibit as behavior is discrimination. They are mostly negative and untrue because they come without any proper validation or contact of the correct information. Being in denial and implicitly holding these beliefs can be detrimental to self and the environment and it is important to address them in order to resolve any negative notion. The most effective way is direct communication with the stimuli involved as this gives a chance to actually see and re-evaluate our appraisals regarding our previously held beliefs. Working around our stereotypes is better way of dealing with it rather than just sitting on them and keeping them to self. If this were to be employed in reality, the cases of communalism, racism, sexism and many more of such harmful notions could be brought down to a good extent. At the same time, for that to happen, it is important to facilitate independent and rational thinking as well.
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The archaeological site of El Tajin, located in the present-day Mexican State of Veracruz, is remarkable for many reasons. The site boasts many buildings, temples, palaces and ball courts, but the most impressive of all is the stunning Pyramid of the Niches. This temple was obviously of great symbolic importance to the people of El Tajin: it once contained exactly 365 niches, marking its connection to the solar year. Even after the fall of El Tajin, sometime around 1200 A.D., locals kept the temple clear and it was the first part of the city discovered by Europeans.
Unlike many other great Mesoamerican temples, which were completed in stages, the Pyramid of the Niches in El Tajin seems to have been built all at once. Archaeologists speculate that the temple was built sometime between 1100 and 1150 A.D., when El Tajin was at the height of its power. It is made of a locally available sandstone. The stone for the building was quarried from a site along the Cazones River some thirty-five or forty kilometers from El Tajín and then floated there on barges.
The Pyramid of the Niches is rich in symbolism. The 365 niches clearly represent the solar year. In addition, there were once seven levels. Seven times fifty-two is three hundred and sixty four. Fifty-two was an important number for Mesoamerican civilizations: the two Maya calendars would align every fifty-two years, and there are fifty-two visible panels on each face of the Temple of Kukulcan in Chichen Itza. On the monumental stairway, there were once six platform-altars (now there are five), each of which featured three small niches: this reaches a total of eighteen special niches, representing the eighteen months of the Mesoamerican solar calendar.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, three of India’s most important partners in Southeast Asia, could not have come at a more important moment in Indian foreign policy positioning. In the past few months, the government has shifted considerably in its signalling, with Mr. Modi visiting China and Russia for informal summits with Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, respectively. The fact that these visits have taken place at a time the U.S. administration has sharpened its aim at China and Russia with sanctions and threats of a trade war suggests Mr. Modi is also attempting to moderate India’s strategic posturing on the global stage, and striving for a more balanced approach in what it increasingly sees as an uncertain world. India has also maintained its commitment to relations with the U.S. in order to build a “free and open” Indo-Pacific region, maintain the “international rules-based order”, and work together to combat terrorism and terror financing — as they have done more recently at the UN and the Financial Action Task Force. Meanwhile, India’s membership of both the Quadrilateral (with the U.S., Japan and Australia) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (the Russia-China-led grouping of Central Asian countries, whose summit Mr. Modi will attend this week) is also an indicator of the new balance that New Delhi seeks. It is significant that in Singapore Mr. Modi chose the platform of the Shangri-La Dialogue of defence leaders of the Asia-Pacific region to emphasise Indian “strategic autonomy”. In his speech on the concept of the “Indo-Pacific” he referred to India’s relations with Russia, the U.S. and China. Given his government’s particular distaste for the term in the past, it is telling that Mr. Modi appeared to be channelling some of the “Bandung spirit of 1955” that led to the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement, when he praised Singapore for teaching the world the importance of making “free and fair choices” and “embracing diversity at home”. “When nations stand on the side of principles, not behind one power or the other, they earn the respect of the world,” Mr. Modi said as he unveiled a seven-point vision for the Indo-Pacific region. While warning the world about the possible return of “great power rivalries”, he emphasised the importance and centrality of the ASEAN in the concept of the Indo-Pacific. The “principled” vision Mr. Modi projects is a departure from the transactionalism and pragmatism espoused by many in South Block over the last few years. However, it may also be a return to familiar moorings of Indian foreign policy, necessitated by what the Prime Minister identified as the “shifting plates of global politics and the fault lines of history”.