Class 11 English · Original EZT practice
The Adventure - Jayant Narlikar (Class 11 English, Hornbill, Chapter 5)
The Adventure is Chapter 5 of Class 11 Hornbill (pp. 43-56), Jayant Narlikar's story of a historian who slips into an India where the Marathas won at Panipat. Professor Gangadharpant Gaitonde boards the Jijamata Express and finds a British outpost Bombay, an East India Company 'not only alive but flourishing', and a library where his own five volumes record a history he never lived. A torn page from 'Bhausahebanchi Bakhar' comes back with him as proof. This page follows the two days, Rajendra Deshpande's two-theory explanation, and Gaitonde's last presidential chair, with fresh practice questions. (Note: this is original practice, not a textbook exercise key.)
6 original worked examples, 6 fresh self-check questions and 4 mixed questions, with explained answers. These are not copied textbook exercises, an official chapter index or a full answer key. No affiliation with NCERT is claimed.
Official sources for topic and edition context, checked 25 October 2026:
1. The story at a glance
The wrong train ride: 'THE Jijamata Express sped along the Pune-Bombay route considerably faster than the Deccan Queen'; beyond the long tunnel lies 'a small station called Sarhad', where an Anglo-Indian checks permits - 'This is where the British Raj begins.' British Bombay: the blue carriages carry 'GBMR' - 'Greater Bombay Metropolitan Railway' - and 'the tiny Union Jack painted on each carriage'; facing the station stands 'EAST INDIA HOUSE HEADQUARTERS OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY', though history books said the Company 'had been wound up shortly after the events of 1857'. The English high street: Hornby Road holds 'Boots and Woolworth departmental stores, imposing offices of Lloyds, Barclays and other British banks' - and no Handloom House. The missing son: at Forbes building the receptionist reports, 'I am afraid I can't find anyone of that name either here or in any of our branches' - and Gaitonde wonders, 'If he himself were dead in this world, what guarantee had he that his son would be alive?' The library: at the Asiatic Society library his five volumes arrive; up to Aurangzeb 'history was as he knew it' - the change lies in volume five, where 'the Marathas won it handsomely' and 'Abdali was routed and he was chased back to Kabul' by Sadashivrao Bhau and 'the young Vishwasrao'. Strangest of all: 'The style of writing was unmistakably his, yet he was reading the account for the first time!' The India that followed: Vishwasrao and Madhavrao 'combined political acumen with valour'; the Company was 'reduced to pockets of influence near Bombay, Calcutta and Madras'; democratic bodies gradually replaced the Peshwas; and a confident India 'had allowed the British to retain Bombay as the sole outpost', the lease to expire in 2001 under a 1908 treaty. The Bakhar clue: in Bhausahebanchi Bakhar he finds how close it came - 'A shot brushed past his ear. Even the difference of a til (sesame) would have led to his death.' Leaving at closing time, 'Absent-mindedly, he also shoved the Bakhar into his left pocket.' The thousandth address: at Azad Maidan 'The presidential chair unoccupied!' draws him 'like a piece of iron attracted to a magnet'; he tells the crowd 'an unchaired lecture is like Shakespeare's Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark' - they answer with 'a shower of tomatoes, eggs and other objects', swarm the stage, and 'in the crowd Gangadharpant was nowhere to be seen.' The evidence: back in his own world, found in the Azad Maidan in the morning, he shows Rajendra 'a page torn out of a book' - where Vishwasrao survives - against his own copy's 'And God expressed His displeasure. He was hit by the bullet.' Rajendra concedes 'facts can be stranger than fantasies'. Rajendra's explanation: catastrophe theory turns battles on single moments, and quantum theory's 'lack of determinism' lets many worlds exist; 'You neither travelled to the past nor to the future. You were in the present but experiencing a different world', the bifurcation at Panipat - and the trigger, perhaps, 'the neurons in your brain'. The close: Gaitonde had been wondering 'what course history would have taken if the result of the battle had gone the other way' - the topic of 'my thousandth presidential address'; instead, 'my thousandth address was made on the Azad Maidan when I was so rudely interrupted', and he has 'conveyed my regrets to the organisers of the Panipat seminar.'
2. Key details and what they signal
The 999 meetings: Gaitonde has 'the experience of speaking at 999 meetings' and has 'faced the Pune audience at its most hostile' - the chair is his life's stage, which is why an empty one pulls him across a crowd like iron to a magnet. The two Bakhars: one bullet's width - 'the difference of a til (sesame)' - separates the two histories, and the story prints both versions of the same passage so the reader can hold them side by side. The absent-minded pocket: the Bakhar goes into his left pocket by habit, not design - the only object to cross between worlds, and therefore the only proof. The adapted-version note: the chapter flags itself as an adapted version of the original story - a small signpost that the text in hand is already one world among variants. The 1908 treaty and the 2001 lease: in the other India, the British presence is a commercial arrangement with an expiry date - empire rewritten as a tenancy, the exact inverse of the history Gaitonde taught. The regrets: he gives up the thousandth address rather than chair another meeting - the professor who crossed worlds over an empty chair retires from chairs altogether.
3. Theme
History's hinge moments: the story's India diverges at one bullet at Panipat - 'A crucial event gone the other way' - and the whole argument is whether single moments can carry a nation's course. Many worlds: Rajendra's quantum picture - the electron that 'may be here, there, anywhere' - lets 'all those alternative worlds' exist; 'so far as reality is concerned all alternatives are viable but the observer can experience only one of them at a time.' Evidence and belief: fantasy becomes fact for Rajendra only when the torn page exists; 'Until I saw this material evidence, I had simply put your experience down to fantasy.' Pride and the chair: Gaitonde's undoing is not curiosity but ceremony - the unoccupied presidential chair is the one object in either world he cannot ignore.
Choose, solve, check, then try a fresh question.
Before calculating, read the method prompt and name the condition that makes it useful. Write your own attempt. Open the steps only when you need them, and use the check to catch a wrong sign, unit or interpretation. Finish with the fresh question before reading its answer.
Board the wrong India
Choose the method: Permits, then Union Jack.
EZT practice question
What are the first signs on the journey that this Bombay is not the one Gaitonde knows?
Show the worked solution
- The border: the train stops at 'a small station called Sarhad', where an Anglo-Indian checks permits.
- The announcement: 'This is where the British Raj begins.'
- The carriages: blue GBMR coaches - 'Greater Bombay Metropolitan Railway' - with 'the tiny Union Jack painted on each carriage'.
Answer: The permit check at 'a small station called Sarhad' - 'This is where the British Raj begins' - and the blue GBMR carriages with 'the tiny Union Jack painted on each carriage'.
Check: Sarhad, the permit check, GBMR, the Union Jack.
Watch for this: Do not wait for the library to start doubting - the story plants its evidence from the tunnel onward, in paint and paperwork, before any history book is opened.
Now try it yourself
Why does the story begin the other India on a train and not in a textbook?
Check your answer
Because Gaitonde is a historian - the shock lands hardest when the difference is physical and administrative, something even his learning cannot footnote away.
The permits make the fantasy bureaucratic, and therefore believable.
Ask for Vinay Gaitonde
Choose the method: Name, then guarantee.
EZT practice question
What does Gaitonde ask at the Forbes building, and why does the answer shake him?
Show the worked solution
- The request: he asks for Mr Vinay Gaitonde at the Forbes building.
- The answer: the receptionist can find 'anyone of that name' neither there nor in any of the company's branches.
- The fear: 'If he himself were dead in this world, what guarantee had he that his son would be alive?'
Answer: He asks for Mr Vinay Gaitonde; the receptionist finds 'anyone of that name' nowhere - and Gaitonde realises that if he is dead in this world, his son may never have been born.
Check: The Forbes building, the name found nowhere, the son guarantee.
Watch for this: Do not skim this as a wrong address - it is the moment the other India becomes personal: history's hinge reaches into his own family.
Now try it yourself
Why does the story test the son before the history books?
Check your answer
So the stakes are set by love, not curiosity - Panipat will explain the mechanism, but the missing name is what makes it matter.
The personal loss precedes the intellectual proof.
Find the page where history turns
Choose the method: Aurangzeb, then Panipat.
EZT practice question
Where exactly does the library's history diverge from the one he knows?
Show the worked solution
- The sameness: up to Aurangzeb, 'history was as he knew it'.
- The turn: in volume five, at the Battle of Panipat - 'the Marathas won it handsomely'.
- The route: 'Abdali was routed and he was chased back to Kabul' by Sadashivrao Bhau and 'the young Vishwasrao'.
Answer: In volume five, at the Battle of Panipat - 'the Marathas won it handsomely', Abdali routed and chased back to Kabul; up to Aurangzeb, history had been as he knew it.
Check: Aurangzeb as the boundary, volume five, the Maratha victory, Kabul.
Watch for this: Do not miss the eeriest line - 'The style of writing was unmistakably his, yet he was reading the account for the first time!': in this world he wrote the other history himself.
Now try it yourself
Why make Gaitonde the author of the history he never lived?
Check your answer
It collapses the last distance between the worlds - the same man, the same pen, a different bullet; identity survives even when events do not.
The familiar style is the story's quietest, strangest proof.
Produce the torn page
Choose the method: Bakhar, then bullet.
EZT practice question
What makes Rajendra take the story seriously after first calling it fantasy?
Show the worked solution
- The first reading: Rajendra 'had simply put your experience down to fantasy'.
- The object: Gaitonde shows 'a page torn out of a book' - Bhausahebanchi Bakhar, where the bullet merely brushes past Vishwasrao's ear.
- The collision: his own copy of the same Bakhar reads 'And God expressed His displeasure. He was hit by the bullet.' - 'facts can be stranger than fantasies'.
Answer: Material evidence: the page torn from Bhausahebanchi Bakhar, where the bullet misses Vishwasrao - against his own copy, where 'He was hit by the bullet.'
Check: The torn page, the brushed ear, the hit-by-the-bullet original.
Watch for this: Do not credit the tale alone - Rajendra yields only to the page: 'Until I saw this material evidence, I had simply put your experience down to fantasy.'
Now try it yourself
Why must the proof be a torn page and not a memory?
Check your answer
Because memory can be dismissed as dream; paper that disagrees with every copy in this world cannot be argued away.
The story honours the historian's own standard: no document, no case.
Explain with the electron
Choose the method: Odds, then worlds.
EZT practice question
How does Rajendra use the electron to explain two days in another India?
Show the worked solution
- The uncertainty: quantum theory cannot say where an electron will be - it 'may be here, there, anywhere'; there is a 'lack of determinism'.
- The inference: many world-pictures can exist at once - 'all those alternative worlds'.
- The rule: 'so far as reality is concerned all alternatives are viable but the observer can experience only one of them at a time.'
Answer: Quantum theory cannot predict the electron, only its odds - so many worlds can exist at once, and 'the observer can experience only one of them at a time.'
Check: The electron's anywhere, the lack of determinism, the one-at-a-time rule.
Watch for this: Do not let Rajendra call it time travel - his verdict is precise: 'You neither travelled to the past nor to the future. You were in the present but experiencing a different world.'
Now try it yourself
Why pair catastrophe theory with quantum theory?
Check your answer
Catastrophe theory supplies the hinge - one bullet at Panipat flips the course; quantum theory supplies the rooms - both courses exist to be experienced.
One theory opens the door, the other furnishes the house.
Take the presidential chair
Choose the method: Magnet, then tomatoes.
EZT practice question
What role does the Azad Maidan lecture play in the story?
Show the worked solution
- The pull: at Azad Maidan 'The presidential chair unoccupied!' draws him 'like a piece of iron attracted to a magnet'.
- The lecture: he tells the crowd 'an unchaired lecture is like Shakespeare's Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark'.
- The ejection: the audience answers with 'a shower of tomatoes, eggs and other objects', swarms the stage - 'and in the crowd Gangadharpant was nowhere to be seen.'
Answer: It is the way back: the unoccupied presidential chair pulls him on stage, the audience ejects him bodily, and 'in the crowd Gangadharpant was nowhere to be seen' - he wakes in his own world the next morning.
Check: The empty chair, the Hamlet line, the tomatoes, the disappearance.
Watch for this: Do not read the chair as vanity alone - with 999 meetings behind him, the chair is his profession's summit; the story makes his strength the door between worlds.
Now try it yourself
Why does the exit happen through humiliation rather than sleep or injury?
Check your answer
Because only a force as strong as his pride could pull him back - the crowd's rejection ejects him from a world he entered through ceremony.
The chair takes him across; the chairless crowd sends him home.
Try a mixed set
Choose a method or explanation before opening each answer.
1. First signs of the other Bombay?
Show answer and reason
Permits at Sarhad - 'This is where the British Raj begins'; GBMR carriages with the Union Jack.
The difference is administrative before it is historical.
2. Where the histories diverge?
Show answer and reason
Volume five, Panipat - 'the Marathas won it handsomely'; Abdali chased back to Kabul.
One bullet is the hinge of both worlds.
3. What convinces Rajendra?
Show answer and reason
The torn Bakhar page where Vishwasrao lives - 'facts can be stranger than fantasies'.
No document, no case.
4. Rajendra's verdict?
Show answer and reason
'You were in the present but experiencing a different world.'
Catastrophe theory hinges it; quantum theory houses it.
Try it yourself
Work these on paper before checking any notes. Answers are deliberately not shown here.
- In two sentences, explain how the 1908 treaty and the 2001 lease invert the history Gaitonde taught.
- Contrast the two Bakhar passages - the bullet that hits and the shot that brushes an ear - and say what 'the difference of a til (sesame)' claims about history.
- Explain in your own words why the chapter's note that it is 'an adapted version' suits a story about many worlds.
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Questions about this practice page
- Who wrote The Adventure?
- Jayant Narlikar. The chapter carries no biographical note, only the remark that 'The present story is an adapted version' of the original text.
- What is The Adventure about?
- Historian Professor Gaitonde slips into a present-day India where the Marathas won the Battle of Panipat - a Bombay of Union Jacks and East India House - and returns with a torn Bakhar page; his friend Rajendra Deshpande explains the crossing with catastrophe theory and quantum theory's many worlds.
- How is the other India different from the one Gaitonde knows?
- The Marathas' Panipat victory checked the East India Company, which survived only as a commercial presence - Bombay held on a lease expiring in 2001 - while India, never enslaved, 'had learnt to stand on its feet and knew what self-respect was', moving from the Peshwas to elected bodies on its own terms.
- What is the Bhausahebanchi Bakhar in the story?
- A Maratha bakhar (historical chronicle) Gaitonde consults for the battle account - he finds bakhars entertaining but doctored, 'Sometimes, buried in the graphic but doctored accounts, he could spot the germ of truth' - and its torn page becomes his one piece of evidence.
- Where is The Adventure in the Class 11 book?
- Chapter 5 of Hornbill, the Class 11 English textbook (pp. 43-56 by the current NCERT contents page; page numbers differ between printings, so check your own copy).