**Read the following passage carefully.**

(1) My grandmother kept a small brass box of seeds that she never planted. Every winter she would take it down from the shelf, open the lid, and run her fingers through the dry, rattling contents as if counting old friends. When I asked

Question

**Read the following passage carefully.**

(1) My grandmother kept a small brass box of seeds that she never planted. Every winter she would take it down from the shelf, open the lid, and run her fingers through the dry, rattling contents as if counting old friends. When I asked her why she kept seeds she had no intention of sowing, she only smiled and said, "A seed is a promise. You do not break a promise just because the season is wrong."

(2) For a long time I thought this was simply the harmless sentiment of an old woman who disliked throwing things away. It was only after she was gone, and I found the box still full, that I began to understand her differently. The seeds were not useless; they were *insurance*. If every harvest failed, if every shop closed, if the world she trusted fell quiet, my grandmother would still have something small and living in her hands — the raw material of a garden, and therefore of hope.

(3) We are fond, in our time, of calling such habits impractical. We prefer what can be bought again tomorrow to what must be patiently saved today. But I have noticed that the people who weather hard times best are often the ones who, like my grandmother, keep a quiet reserve against the day the world changes its mind. The brass box now sits on my own shelf. I, too, have learned not to break a promise just because the season is wrong.

**On the basis of your reading, answer the questions that follow.**

(a) Why did the grandmother keep seeds she never planted, in her own words? (comprehension, 2 marks)
(b) What did the narrator first think of his grandmother's habit, and how did his view change? (analysis, 2 marks)
(c) What can you infer about the narrator's character from the last paragraph? (inference, 2 marks)
(d) Choose the option that best captures the meaning of "A seed is a promise": (MCQ, 1 mark)
   (i) Seeds are expensive and must be guarded.
   (ii) Keeping a small living reserve is an act of faith in the future.
   (iii) Gardening is a difficult hobby.
   (iv) Old people dislike throwing things away.
(e) Vocabulary-in-context (3 marks):
   (i) Find a word in paragraph 2 that means 'protection against future loss'.
   (ii) Find a word in paragraph 3 that is the opposite of 'practical'.
   (iii) What does the phrase "the day the world changes its mind" suggest?

Accepted Answer

> [!TLDR]
> A reflective literary passage built around a single image — a grandmother's box of unplanted seeds — which the writer gradually reads as a symbol of quiet, patient hope. Approach it by tracking how the narrator's *understanding changes* across the three paragraphs, and by treating the seeds as both a literal object and a symbol. For inference, read the narrator's actions, not just his statements; for vocabulary, match the idea inside the named paragraph.

**How to read it first:** The passage moves from *puzzlement* (why keep seeds you never plant?) to *understanding* (they are insurance, a promise, hope) to *adoption* (the box is now his). That arc is the central idea — hold it.

**(a) Why did she keep the seeds, in her own words? (2 marks)**
*Model answer:* She kept them because, as she put it, "A seed is a promise" — and one does not break a promise "just because the season is wrong"; the seeds stood for a commitment to the future she would not abandon.
*How it is derived:* The question says "in her own words", so the grandmother's quoted line in paragraph 1 is the evidence; frame it, quoting the key phrase.

**(b) The narrator's first view and how it changed. (2 marks)**
*Model answer:* At first he dismissed it as "the harmless sentiment of an old woman who disliked throwing things away." After she died and he found the box still full, he understood the seeds as *insurance* — a living reserve of hope against a time when everything else might fail.
*How it is derived:* This is an analysis question asking for a *before and after*. Locate both states in paragraph 2 — the dismissal and the later realisation — and present the shift.

**(c) Inference about the narrator's character. (2 marks)**
*Model answer:* We can infer that he has grown **thoughtful and values foresight and hope** — he now keeps the brass box on his own shelf and repeats her words, showing he has adopted her patient, forward-looking outlook.
*How it is derived:* Inference from *action*:

Q.Read the following passage carefully.

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