Direction (Qs.1 to 10): Read the passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. There are some blanks given in the passage based on which some questions are framed, and some words are highlighted as well to help you answer some of the questions.

The beach is boring, declares a poster at a backpacker cafe in Fontainhas, Panjim’s Latin Quarter with _____ (A) lanes and ruby-red villas. The poster is the only decoration at the spartan café that offers free Wi-Fi and dorm beds for Rs.650 a night. But Nikhil Mundhra spent one month in Panjim only for the sea and sand. (B) He’s not your monetization (a) tourist—the 24-year-old India sales head for a digital regular (b) company is one of India’s growing number of digital nomads who remotely (c) on the internet to work depend (d), without a fixed home base.

“Beaches are the best part of Goa,” says Mundhra, who would hit Miramar daily for an hour-long run. The rest of the time, he worked out of 91springboard, a co-working space in Panjim’s St Inez, away from the crowds hell-bent on touring. In December, Mundhra moved to Alt Life, a hostel that doubles as a coworking space in Dharamkot in Himachal Pradesh. (C) He continues to work steadily/ for his Canadian employer, plans treks / to the Dhauladhars on weekends, /and ring in a productive New Year./ “The best part of the day: the evening bike rides,” says Mundhra. To these young travellers, who chase work-travel balance, it is the freedom to experience slices of local culture that makes a workday meaningful. What makes an ideal _____ (D), though, is the internet. For millennials, who entered the workforce around 2003 in an era of relatively higher salaries postliberalization, travel was never about pilgrimages or visiting relatives. Many of them are choosing to see the world at their own pace, sampling Ros omelette in Goa and biking in high-altitude Kangar to collect social media mileage that would outdo any souvenir. (E) Unlike their predecessors (a), the backpacker and the flashpacker, digital nomads (b) aim to be financially (c) self-sufficient to sustain their lifestyle (d). Though millennials seem carefree, it does take time to discard the rule-based world they’ve grown up in and the notion that life must be lived with caution. Mohammed Danish, a bootstrapped engineer building a SaaS product, hit upon the benefits of mixing work and travel after he quit his job as chief technology officer at a co-working company in 2018 and decided to see the world.

(F) “I met many who were working remotely or on their own projects and was amazed to see this culture _____. It is an adventurous life. I carry only one backpack with all the things need,” says Danish, 26, now in his hometown of Anupshahr in Uttar Pradesh after a month-long stay in Singapore. (G) For Mundhra, it was about job (a) a 12 to 14-hour workday, his routine (b) at his first ditching (c) at an Indore startup after graduating (d) as an engineer from Vellore Institute of Technology. The other path his classmates took was to cram for the IIT Common Admission Test. Instead, Mundhra says he is doing what he likes. “Isn’t that important? If not, there will be no individuality. We will all be the same.” Mundhra is not alone in his desire to set himself apart. Millennials are the “disrupted generation”, shaped by technological and societal transformation, says Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2019. Millennials are no less ambitious than previous generations but 57% of those surveyed would rather see the world than have children or buy homes. (H) Many don’t hesitate to leave jobs; /they actively consider freelance or contract work /if workplaces aren’t inclusively enough /or the pay insufficient. (I) To live without worrying about money is possible only if _____. Danish works 70% of the time Monday to Thursday. “I work in cafes, public libraries and sometimes drop in at companies and co-working spaces to network,” he says. Mundhra works four hours a day, talks to colleagues on Slack or Skype, and switches off on weekends. It was in 1997 that the term ‘digital nomad’ was first used by computer scientist Tsugio Makimoto and journalist David Manners, writes Greg Richards a professor at Tilburg University’s School of Social and Behavioural Sciences. (J) He says traditional (a) backpackers can be seen as a “neo-tribe”, enclaves (b) in self-sufficient gathering (c), while the digital nomad “utilizes existing digital and logistic infrastructure (d) to maintain a fluid, individualised lifestyle”. Professor emeritus Joshua Meyrowitz of New Hampshire University says society is witnessing a return to early nomadism—hunting and gathering. The ‘location-independent traveller’ tries to integrate with the local community, while avoiding the structures of ‘system’, he writes.