Direction () : Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.
The 150-kilometre road trip from Narnaul to Delhi took all of three hours. For young Ashok Khemka, it was well worth the effort. The newly minted IAS officer, posted in Narnaul, had a date with a charming young woman in Delhi and was keen to see her. The young lady in question was his fiancée and Ashok, on his maiden posting as an IAS officer of the Haryana cadre, was naturally eager to meet her as often as possible.
As a member of the 1991 batch of LBSNAA in Mussoorie, he had found himself in the crosshairs of groom hunters. Ambitious parents of marriageable daughters descended (and possibly still do) on the academy on an annual basis to stalk young trainees in the hope of finding an “IAS match”. Khemka had managed to evade them all. It was in Delhi that he had met Jyoti, the woman destined to illuminate his home.
She had graduated from the University of Delhi and was contemplating a course in journalism. But Jyoti’s father had taken a shine to Khemka and was keen on the match. Jyoti had a deep respect for her father’s opinion, so she had decided to go with the flow. Jyoti and Ashok were engaged in a quiet ceremony at her home on the auspicious occasion of Dussehra in 1993. Every alternate weekend, he would head to Shakti Nagar in Delhi to meet her, before hightailing it back to Narnaul. He had no idea that someone was keeping tabs on his movements.
As a sub-divisional officer (SDO), Khemka reported to the deputy commissioner of the district. He had not exactly hit it off with his boss, who fancied himself a man of culture and a connoisseur of music and dance.