Antonyms Questions and Answers

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People are drawn to vegetarianism by all sorts of motives. Some of us want to live longer, healthier lives or do our part to reduce pollution. Others have made the switch because we want to preserve earth's natural resources or because we've always loved animals and are ethically opposed to eating them.

Vegetarianism promotes a natural way of life. But despite its implicit message of universal love and non-violence it has not spread as it should have. This may be because it usually is an inward-looking habit and is best cultivated in the mind.

Leading a vegetarian way of life helps the animal kingdom co-exist with man. The animals supply milk, manure and energy. This has been central to the Indian culture for thousands of years. A vegetarian life style is natural, multifaceted and helps self-preservation in a healthy way. Food and health are closely related.

Vegetarian foods provide an infinite variety of flavours whereas non-vegetarian foods have hardly any taste of their own. In fact, non-vegetarian foods have to be seasoned with ingredients from the vegetable kingdom to make them palatable.

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Pelicans are birds. There are more than half a dozen species of pelicans. All of them have the sack for which the birds are best known all over the world. The sack is like a big bag of skin hanging under their bill, or their mouth. These large carnivorous birds use them to catch fish. Many pelicans fish by swimming in a group. They may form a line or a "U" shape and drive fish into shallow water by beating their wings on the surface. When the fish collect in the shallows, the pelicans simply scoop them up. The brown pelican, on the other hand, dives on the fish from above and traps them in its bill. Pelicans do not store fish in their pouch, but simply use it to catch them and then tip it back to drain out water and swallow the fish immediately. The American white pelican can hold some 11.5 litres of water in its bill. Young pelicans feed by sticking their bills into their parents' throats to retrieve food.

Along with giant pouch, pelicans are large birds with short legs, and they appear rather clumsy on land. Once in water, they are strong swimmers, thanks to their webbed feet. This means that webbing connects all four of their toes, even the back toe.

Pelicans are found on many of the world's coastlines and also along lakes and rivers. They travel in flocks. They also breed in groups called colonies, which typically gather on islands. The average life span of pelicans in the wild is about 10 to 25 years and their average body size is about 1.8 metres but when they open their wings their wingspan is around 3 metres. These large birds usually weigh around 13 kg.

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Which one of the following words is opposite in meaning to the word given below?

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Aimee had a painful childhood. She was born in 1975 with no shin bones. The doctors therfore had to amputate both her legs so that she would be able to walk later in life. Unfortunately, she had to undergo a number of surgeries at the age of two, five and eight, and had to spend a long time in a hospital. Aimee grew up with artificial legs. Her mother, however, treated her as a self-sufficient person who did not require any special treatment. She was gradually able to learn how to move and run, and even play various sports like softball and go swimming, hiking and skiing.

When she was in high school, Aimee discovered her passion for athletics. Towards the end of high school, she participated in the Boston track and field meet for the disabled. On arriving in Boston, she was surprised to discover that she was the only athlete wearing wooden legs. The rest of the athletes had metal, shock-absorbent legs that she didn't even know existed. Not to mention that all the other athletes had at least one normal leg. This fact did not shake her determination; instead it made her push herself harder to succeed. And succeed she did - she not only won, she also broke a national record in doing so. She decided to enter the long jump competition next, an event that double amputees were technically 'not supposed' to enter. A year later, she broke the world record in it.

Aimee was not happy with the way prosthetic legs were designed. So she invited innovators to combine science and art, and design unconventional prosthetic legs. She was soon wearing cheetah legs, handcrafted wooden legs, jellyfish legs and many more. She now began getting invitations from different parts of the world to talk about her life story and designer legs. The fashion and beauty industry took note of Aimee's talent and beauty and asked her to model for, or endorse beauty products. Today she is a global model for a leading brand of cosmetics.

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Soon some idea struck her and she went to the window and hollered, 'Roopa! Roopa!' After calling out for Roopa, she had a look at the things that she had brought for her. Roopa had to sit for her home science examination the next day and Tarawati had collected things like some kitchen items, a bucket, a mug and a stool that Roopa required for the practical examination.

While looking at the things that she had collected for Roopa, Tarawati recalled her husband who had died a few years ago. She remembered him berating her for not treating Roopa well. 'Roopa's mother! Do not think only sons deserve all love and care and not daughters'. I'm determined to give Roopa good education so that she leads a happy and meaningful life. You are not educated yourself. That's probably why you don't want her to be educated. This is not fair on your part. You must change your views and let her grow and flower into a happy, confident individual.'

Thinking of her husband's admonition on this account, Tarawati felt emotional. The fact of the matter was that Roopa's parents differed on Roopa's upbringing and fought with each other on the issue. The fight continued for days together and often it was Roopa who intervened to broker peace between them. On his death-bed too, Roopa's father had cried and pleaded with her to treat Roopa in a nice manner. Hugging Roopa, he had told Tarawati, 'Take care of Roopa. Give her good education and let her decide the course of her life herself.' While recalling the interaction, tears rolled down Tarawati's eyes.

Meanwhile, the evening shadows were getting darker. Tarawati was exhausted and had a headache too. She looked at her dust-laden feet and then around the room. In order to bring some semblance of order, she forced herself to get up and get going. Then she called her daughter again, Roopa! Roopa!'.

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We sallied out at three o'clock in the afternoon, having finished our tiffin and coffee. The main job for the day was to mount and frame the photograph. Uncle carried it in his hand delicately, enclosed in an old envelope, as if it were fragile and likely to perish at a finger's pressure. As we went down the street, a neighbour standing at his door hailed us and demanded, "Where are you taking the young fellow?" He was an engineer who worked in some distant projects on the hills, coming home once in a while and then again disappearing from our society. He was a particular friend of my uncle as they occasionally gathered for a game of cards in my house. He asked, "I am here for a few days. Can't we have a session some time?"

"Of course, of course," said my uncle without much fervour, "I will let you know", and moved on.

"Won't aunt get angry?" I asked, remembering the arguments they had had after every card session. The card players would have been sitting around in the middle of the hall, demanding coffee and edibles, and playing far into the night. My aunt would complain after the company had dispersed, "Sitting there with your friends, you lock me up in the kitchen all day! What madness seizes you people when you touch a pack of cards, I wonder!" Worn out by her attacks, my uncle began to avoid his friends, the company gradually dwindled and disappeared. But it did not prevent them from dreaming about cards or luxuriating in visions of a grand session. Somewhere my uncle was supposed to have lost a lot of money through the card games, and my aunt was very definite that he should never go near cards again, although he kept saying, "We play only Twenty-eight, and not Rummy, after all, Twenty-eight...".

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As science progresses, superstitions ought to grow less. On the whole, that is true. However, it is surprising how superstitions linger on. If we are tempted to look down on savage tribes for holding such ideas, we should remember that even today, among most civilised nations, a great many equally stupid superstitions exist and are believed in by a great many people. Some people will not sit down thirteen at a table; or will not like to start anything important on a Friday; or refuse to walk under a ladder. Many people buy charms and talismans because they think they will bring them luck. Even in civilised nations today, many laws are made on the basis of principles which are just as much unproved. For instance, it is often held as a principle that white people are by nature superior to people of other colours. The ancient Greeks believed that they were superior to the people of Northern and Western Europe. The only way to see if there is anything in such a principle is to make scientific studies of a number of white and black and brown people under different conditions of life and find out just what they can and cannot achieve.

It is, however, true that the increase of scientifc knowledge does reduce superstition and also baseless guessing and useless arguments and practices. Civilised people do not argue and get angry about what water is composed of. The composition of water is known, and there is no argument about it.

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Water is the core of life; hence water must be central to our spiritual thinking. Water is not only most of earth, but also most of life. Therefore water conservation must be our deepest concern.

The Himalayan mountain range is among the highest, youngest and most fragile ecosystem of the planet. The Himalayas have given us some of the great river systems of the earth including the Indus, Ganga, Brahmaputra, Nu Salween, Yangtze and the Mekong. The Himalayas are also called the 'Third Pole', for they contain the largest mass of ice and snow outside the earth's polar region, the north and south poles. There is a permanent snowline above 5,000 metres. Some of the glaciers in the region are the longest outside the two poles. The Himalayas serve as water towers, providing water on a sustained basis to more than 1,000 million people and millions of hectares of land in South Asia. The greenery, benevolent climate, highly productive ecosystems, food production and overall happiness in South Asia are in fact, attributable to the bounty of the Himalayas. They are not only beautiful; they are life-givers. Little wonder that they are venerated as the abode of gods.

To keep the Third Pole preserved through assured conservation is one of the greatest challenges for the contemporary world. Himalayan mountains are a common but fragile natural resource. As mountain ecosystems have enormous bearing on the earth's systems, their special care, regeneration and conservation of their pristine resources would only bring more happiness, peace and prosperity to large parts of the world. In Agenda 21, Chapter 13 of the United Nations, the importance of mountains is underlined : "mountain environments are essential to the survival of global ecosystems."

The Himalayas in the state of Uttarakhand are especially rich in water resources. This area is home to dozens of perennial streams and numerous other rain-fed rivers along with innumerable rivulets, waterfalls and ponds, etc.

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Freedom is one of the most important factors in life. Man has fought politically all over the world for freedom. Religions have promised freedom, not in this world but in another. In the capitalist countries, individual freedom exists to some degree, and in the communist world it has been denied. From ancient times, freedom has meant a great deal to man, and there have been its opponents, not only political but religious through Inquisition, by excommunication, tortures and banishments, and the total denial of man's search for freedom. There have been wars and counter-wars fought for freedom. This has been the pattern of man's endeavours for freedom throughout history.

Freedom of self-expression and freedom of speech and thought exist in some parts of the world, but in others it does not. Those who have been conditioned, revolt against their backgrounds. This reaction which takes different forms is called 'freedom'. The reaction to politics is often to shun the field of politics.

One economic reaction is to form small communities based on some ideology or under the leadership of one person, but these soon disintegrate. The religious reaction against established organisations of belief is to revolt, either by joining other religious organisations or by following some guru or leader or by joining some cult. Or one denies the whole religious endeavour.

One thinks of freedom only as freedom of movement, either physical or movements of thought. It appears that one always seeks freedom on the surface. Surely, this is rather a limited freedom, involving a great deal of conflict, wars and violence.

Inner freedom is something entirely different. It has its roots not in the idea of freedom but in the reality of freedom. It covers all the endeavours of man. Without inner freedom life will always be an activity within the limited circle of time and conflict.

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1. Kangri Karchok, the Kailash Purana of the Tibetans describes the sacred elephant-mouthed river or Langchen Khambab as a long and extensive river that rises from the 'lake unconquerable', the Tso Maphan or Manasarovar that flows from the mountainous regions of Tibet. According to this holy book, this cold river with its sands of gold, circles the holy Manasarovar seven times before taking its course to the west.

2. The Langchen Khambab flows down from the red coloured mountains of the Kanglung Kangri Glacier in the Trans-Himalayan region of Tibet, channelling its way through the earth forests of Tholing and Tsparang of the Gugi Kingdom. These earth forests are full of pillars formed by rocks that collectively appear like a forest from afar - an 'out of the world' landscape that was formed by geological movements of the earth and erosion by wind and water. The Khyunglung ruins also lies on the northern bank of the Sutlej river in this valley which was once known as the 'Garuda Valley".

3. This mighty river then flows north-west for about 260 km before entering Himachal Pradesh through Shipki La cutting across the formidable Himalayan ranges of Zanskar, the Greater Himalaya and the Dhauladhar. Subsequently, the waters meander through the gigantic Kinnaur Kailash-Jorkanden Range at Reckong Peo creating the terrifying Sutlej gorge. Then it streams into Shimla, Kullu, Mandi and Bilaspur and is responsible for the rich cultivation of grapes, apples and apricots all along its banks. After its confluence with the River Spiti at Khab it is known as Sutlej.

4. It is 1,448 km in length, making it the longest among the five rivers of Punjab. Extensively used for irrigation, it is topographically divided into the Upper Sutlej Basin and Lower Sutlej Basin. It leaves the Himachal boundary to enter the plains of the Punjab at the Bhakra Dam, the second highest gravity dam and a major point of water supply and electricity generation for the North of India.