The morning the Moon came to our courtyard: warm-up · Grade 7

The passage and its 4 questions

Directions: Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions in full sentences.

• On the morning of July 21, 1969, our whole lane in Pune squeezed into Mrs. Kulkarni's courtyard, because hers was the only radio loud enough for everyone. I was eleven. I had brought my school notebook, planning to write down history as it happened, the way real reporters did.
• My grandfather arrived last, leaning on his cane and grumbling. "Men walking on the
• Moon," he muttered. "Next they will tell us the sea is sweet." A few neighbors laughed, but I noticed that he chose the stool closest to the radio.
• The broadcast hissed and crackled like oil in a hot pan. Voices from impossibly far away spoke in quick, clipped English about numbers and checklists, and my uncle translated into Marathi for the older women, though even he paused sometimes, frowning. The little landing craft had touched down hours earlier, in the middle of our night. Now we were waiting for a human foot to touch the dust.
• Then the hissing changed. Someone far away said that a boot was on the surface. Mrs.
• Kulkarni gasped. The milkman, who had stopped with his bicycle at the gate, took off his cap. For a long moment no one in the courtyard spoke, and I realized I had written nothing at all. My pencil was simply hovering above the page.
• That evening the Moon hung over the rooftops, not quite half full, and I climbed up to the terrace. My grandfather was already there. He did not say anything about sweet seas. He only pointed upward and asked, very quietly, whether I thought the footprints were still there.
• "Yes," I told him. "There is no wind up there to blow them away." Years later I became a science teacher, and I still tell my students about that morning. The most important thing I learned, I tell them, was not in the broadcast. It was in my grandfather's face.
• 1. Why did the neighbors gather in Mrs. Kulkarni's courtyard?
• 2. From which point of view is the story told? Who is the narrator, and when is she telling it?
• 3. The grandfather grumbles, yet chooses the stool closest to the radio. What does this suggest about him?
• 4. Choose a word the author used on purpose. What effect does it have?