Read the passage given below and answer the question that follow by choosing the correct/most appropriate options:

It was said that the eclipse of the sun would be visible from Benares. But it needed more than smoked glass to see the eye of faith was also indispensable. That alas, we did not possess. Partial to the point of being non-existent. The eclipse remained for us at least, unseen. Not that we minded. For it was not to look at the moon's silhouette that we had rowed out that morning on the Ganges; It was to look at the Hindus looking at it. The spectacle was vastly more extraordinary.

There were, at the lowest estimate, a million of them on the bathing ghats that morning A million. All the previous night and day they have been streaming into the town. We had met them on every road, trudging with bare feet through the dust, an endless and silent procession. In bundles balanced on their heads they carried provisions and cooking utensils and dried dung for fuel, with the new clothes which it is incumbent on pious Hindus to put on after their bath in honour of the eclipsed sun. Many had come far. The old men leaned wearily on their bamboo staves. Their children astride of their hips the burden on their heads automatically balanced, the women walked in a trance of fatigue. Here and there we would see a little troop that had sat down to rest Casually, as is the way of Indians, in the dust of the road and almost under the wheels of the passing vehicles.

And now the day and the hour had come. The serpent was about to swallow the sun. It was about to swallow him in Sumatra, at any rate. Benares it would do no more than nibble impercetibly at the edge of his disk. The serpent, should one say, was going to try to swallow the sun. A million of men and women had come together at Benares to assist the Light of Heaven against his enemy.