Class 11 English

Khushwant Singh on his grandmother — the temple school, the move to the city, the sparrows, and a friendship that changes shape without ever breaking.

A family sails into a storm south of Australia and survives it — a first-person account of what courage looks like when it is just doing the next repair.

The boy king under a CT scanner, the damage Carter did getting him out, and what forensic archaeology can and cannot settle about how he died.

Professor Gaitonde wakes in a India where the Marathas won at Panipat — Jayant Narlikar using catastrophe theory and quantum ideas to build an alternate history.

A pilgrim's journey to Mount Kailash — high passes, altitude sickness, a Tibetan mastiff, and the kindness of people met on the way.

A Photograph, The Laburnum Top, The Voice of the Rain, Childhood and Father to Son — each with its central idea, the poetic devices the exam asks you to name, and the lines worth quoting.

Two boys of the Garoghlanian tribe, a stolen horse, and a family honesty so absolute that nobody will say the word "stolen" out loud.

A daughter returns after the war to the house holding her mother's things, and decides that some doors are better left closed.

A one-act comedy in which a taken-for-granted mother swaps places with a neighbour for an afternoon, and the household discovers what she actually does.

A young doctor refuses to accept that a newborn is stillborn — A.J. Cronin on the half hour that decides whether a life begins.

A narrative poem in which a just and placid king is hanged by his own decree, and a melon takes the throne — satire on rules followed past the point of sense.

The largest section of the paper at 26 marks — unseen and case-based passages, and the exact note-making format that earns the title, numbering, key and notes marks.

The seven marks CBSE actually tests — gap filling on tenses and clauses, and re-ordering or transforming sentences without changing what they mean.

Sixteen marks of creative writing, and most of them are format marks — classified advertisements, posters, a 120-150 word speech and a debate, each with its own scoring scheme.