SOLVED PAPER 2022 (CDS) (I) (English)

Passage -I

All organisms such as plants, animals, microorganisms and human beings as well as the physical surroundings interact with each other and maintain a balance in nature. All the interacting organisms in an area together with the non-living constituents of the environment form an ecosystem. Thus, an ecosystem consists of biotic components comprising living organisms and abiotic components comprising physical factors like temperature, rainfall, wind, soil and minerals.

For example, if you visit a garden you will find different plants, such as grasses, trees; flower-bearing plants like rose, jasmine, sunflower; and animals like frogs, insects and birds. All these living organisms interact with each other and their growth, reproduction and other activities are affected by the abiotic components of the ecosystem. So, a garden is an ecosystem. Other types of ecosystems are forests, ponds and lakes. These are natural ecosystems while gardens and crop-fields are human-made ecosystems.

The general tone of the passage is

Passage-II

As we discussed food and sang every song we could remember and talked incessantly, we were slowly moving deeper into the Atlantic, and we got the feeling, really, that we belonged there, and that the ships that passed on the horizon were only hurrying strangers. We were actually living on the ocean. We discovered that the birds all seemed to league up at night-time, resting on the water by the hundreds. When we came poking along, we seemed so much a part of the sea that the birds wouldn't move until we were about five yards away. Then they'd flutter off, leaving feathers floating in the water and settle again a few yards away.

The dolphins and porpoises would come up at sunset and move in among us and the birds. They'd come up very lazily under the birds, which would go up on their heels and flap their wings a bit and then settle right down again. Two whales joined us one evening and played ring-around-rosie so close to us that Chay could have reached out an oar and tapped one.

We had calculated that we had just enough rations to make England but the easterly winds caused an agonising reappraisal. It would have been an interesting experience, running right down like that but we felt we must not risk other people's lives by making them search for us. We decided to accept rations from the next ship that stopped. Was it a mature decision?

This was also the time when the strain of the voyage really began to tell on us. I wrote in my log: 'I have known fear many times in my life, and indeed I have often striven to develop a situation that provided fear in both boxing and parachuting. I have never known anything like this - cannot be over tomorrow, or for many tomorrows. Somehow it is like being rubbed down with sandpaper. I honestly do not know how many storms there have been now and each leaves us progressively weaker.'

"Tonight we lie and wait. Nothing could save us if we get into difficulties. No ship could get us off these seas even if it arrived in time. We are completely in God's hands, at the mercy of the weather. All night the wind screams louder and louder, and the sound of the sea grows. We talk of many things the night train to Scotland, the many things we've done and slowly we are overtaken by an enormous feeling of humility and a desire to return to try and live a better life. The weather reached a climax at 0300 and then declined rapidly. Thank goodness we could not see the sea.'

"We were actually living on the ocean," implies