Consider the following lists of events and rearrange them in the correct sequence.

1. One day, a cyclone bringing winds of over 160 kilometres per hour carried away the boat.
2. My father worked at building the boat on the seashore with the help of a relative, Ahmed Jalluluddin.
3. My father was doing good business with the boat, ferrying pilgrims from Rameswaram to Dhanuskodi and ba ck.
4. The Pamban bridge collapsed with a train full of passengers on it.
5. I was about six years old when my father started building a wooden sailboat.
6. I watched the boat take shape.
7. The cyclone also took with it some of the landmass of Sethukkarai.
8. The wooden hull and bulkheads were seasoned with the heat from wood fires.

Consider the following lists of events and rearrange them in the correct sequence.

1. The newspapers were bundled and thrown out from the moving train on the Rameswaram Road.
2. The Second World War broke out in 1939, when I was eight years old.
3. A state of emergency was declared.
4. Samsuddin was the sole distributor for newspapers in Rameshwaram.
5. Samsuddin helped me to earn my first wages.
6. Samsuddin's newspaper agency was a one-man organisation.
7. Samsuddin was forced to look for a helping hand to catch the bundles.
8. It catered to the demands of the 1,000-strong literate population of Rameswaram town.
9. Soon India was forced to join the Allied Forces.
10. The newspapers would arrive at Rameswaram station by the morning train from Pamban.
11. The first casualty was the suspension of the train halt at Rameswaram station.
12. Our area being isolated was not affected by the war.

Every child is born, with some inherited characteristics, into a specific socio-economic and emotional environment, and trained in certain ways by figures of authority. Explain.

But it was the time I spent with Jallaluddin and Samsuddin that perhaps contributed most to the uniqueness of my childhood and made all the difference in my later life. Explain.

Adversity always presents opportunities for introspection. Explain.