NCERT Class 9 English The Accidental Tourist

The Accidental Tourist

OF all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding. I am constantly filled with wonder at the number of things that other people do without any evident difficulty that are pretty much beyond me. I cannot tell you the number of times that I have gone looking for the lavatory in a cinema, for instance, and ended up standing in an alley on the wrong side of a selflocking door. My particular specialty now is returning to hotel desks two or three times a day and asking what my room number is. I am, in short, easily confused. I was thinking about this the last time we went en famille on a big trip. It was at Easter, and we were flying to England for a week. When we arrived at Logan Airport in Boston and were checking in, I suddenly remembered that I had recently joined British Airways’ frequent flyer programme. I also remembered that I had put the card in the carry-on bag that was hanging around my neck. And here’s where the trouble started. The zip on the bag was jammed. So I pulled on it and yanked at it, with grunts and frowns and increasing consternation. I kept this up for some minutes but it wouldn’t budge, so I pulled harder and harder, with more grunts. Well, you can guess what happened. Abruptly the zip gave way. The side of the bag flew open and everything within — newspaper cuttings and other loose papers, a 14- ounce tin of pipe tobacco, magazines, passport, English money, film —was extravagantly ejected over an area about the size of a tennis court.

I watched dumbstruck as a hundred carefully sorteddocuments came raining down in a fluttery cascade, coins bounced to a variety of noisy oblivions and the now-lidless tin of tobacco rolled crazily across the concourse disgorging its contents as it went.  “My tobacco!” I cried in horror, thinking what I would have to pay for that much tobacco in England now that another Budget had come and gone, and then changed the cry to “My finger! My finger!” as I discovered that I had gashed my finger on the zip and was shedding blood in a lavish manner. (I am not very good around flowing blood generally, but when it’s my own — well, I think hysterics are fully justified.) Confused and unable to help, my hair went into panic mode. It was at this point that my wife looked at me with an expression of wonder —not anger or exasperation, but just simple wonder — and said, “I can’t believe you do this for a living.” But I’m afraid it’s so. I always have catastrophes when I travel. Once on an aeroplane, I leaned over to tie a shoelace just at the moment someone in the seat ahead of me threw his seat back into full recline, and found myself pinned helplessly in the crash position. It was only by clawing the leg of the man sitting next to me that I managed to get myself freed.

THINK ABOUT IT

1. Bill Bryson says, “I am, in short, easily confused.” What examples has he given to justify this?

2. What happens when the zip on his carry-on bag gives way?

3. Why is his finger bleeding? What is his wife’s reaction?

4. How does Bill Bryson end up in a “crash position” in the aircraft?

5. Why are his teeth and gums navy blue?

6. Bill Bryson “ached to be suave”. Is he successful in his mission? List his ‘unsuave’ ways.

7. Why do you think Bill Bryson’s wife says to the children, “Take the lids off the food for Daddy”?

8. What is the significance of the title?

Please refer to attached file for NCERT Class 9 English The Accidental Tourist