CSAT Solved Papers/ 2024/Q33
2024 CSAT — Q33
Passage
Only with long experience and opening of his wares on many a beach where his language is not spoken, will the merchant come to know the worth of what he carries, and what is parochial and what is universal in his choice. Such delicate goods as justice, love and honour, courtesy, and indeed all the things we care for, are valid everywhere but they are variously moulded and often differently handled, and sometimes nearly unrecognizable if you meet them in a foreign land, and the art of learning fundamental common values is perhaps the greatest gain of travel to those who wish to live at ease among their fellows.
When we meet other people while we travel, we learn to differentiate between
Thinking pathway
Locate. This is a locate-the-detail question: scan for the exact idea the stem names — here, what travel teaches us to tell apart — and read the line that states it. The passage: through long experience on foreign beaches, “the merchant come to know the worth of what he carries, and what is parochial and what is universal in his choice,” and that “delicate goods as justice, love and honour… are valid everywhere but they are variously moulded.”
Test (qualifier-match). The keyed option must preserve the passage’s exact distinction. “Parochial vs universal” applied to values (justice, love, honour) maps precisely to “local values and universal values” — (c). No qualifier is flipped; it is a direct lexical match (parochial = local).
Eliminate by anatomy. (a) “imagination and understanding,” (b) “communities and nationalities,” and (d) “friends and foes” are all claims the passage never actually makes — none names the parochial/universal distinction the passage actually draws; they are plausible “travel-broadens-you” pairings the text never states. The transferable rule on locate-the-detail questions: match the passage’s own words (parochial/universal → local/ universal), and reject near-themes that sound travel-related but aren’t in the line. Key: (c).
Evidence in the text
“the merchant come to know the worth of what he carries, and what is parochial and what is universal in his choice” — parochial = local, universal = universal; through travel one learns to tell local values from universal ones, exactly (c).
Worked rationale
The passage says travel teaches the merchant “what is parochial and what is universal in his choice,” and that fundamental values are “valid everywhere but… variously moulded.” The distinction we learn is between what is local (parochial) and what is universal.
(c) — local values and universal values — is the direct match. (a), (b), (d) name distinctions the passage does not draw.
Answer: (c).
Why the other options miss
- A a claim the passage never actually makes: “imagination and understanding” is a generic travel-improves-the-mind pairing; the passage draws no such contrast.
- B a claim the passage never actually makes: “communities and nationalities” sounds travel-relevant but is not the parochial/universal distinction the line states.
- D a claim the passage never actually makes: “friends and foes” is unrelated to the passage’s point about values.
Specialist insight
This is a pure locate-the-line item: the passage’s exact phrase is “what is parochial and what is universal,” and “parochial” is simply “local.” The distractors are thematically plausible (travel, people, the world) but none reproduces the text’s actual distinction. The Hindi-medium-friendly move: don’t be thrown by “parochial” — the line pairs it with “universal,” so it must mean the local/narrow side; (c) is the only option carrying that pair.
The line says travel teaches "what is parochial and what is universal" — i.e. local vs universal values — the other pairs are travel-flavoured but not in the text — (c).