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

When the two brothers, Dukhiram Rui and Chidam Rui set out in the morning with axes in their hands to work as day laborers, their two wives were hurling insults and abuses _______ each other. But like other natural noises, the neighbors had become used to this shouting. As soon as they heard them, they would say to one another, “There they go again”. There was nothing unexpected about their quarreling every day; this was just their normal undeviating behavior. Just as nobody questions the rising of the sun in the east, nobody in the neighborhood was curious about why the two sisters-in-law started quarreling in the morning each day. There is no doubt that the discord between the two wives affected the two husbands much more than it did their neighbors, but even the two brothers did not consider it to be a serious problem. The two brothers considered domestic life as a long journey on a bullock cart, and the ceaseless creaking noises and jerking movements of springless wheels were only a natural, necessary part of this journey. In fact, on days when their home was quiet and a heavy silence hung over it, they were afraid that some unnatural, unforeseen danger was about to happen – they did not know what to expect. On the day when our story begins, the two brothers returned home just before evening, tired from their labors. The house was utterly still. 

The heat outside was stifling. In the evening there was a slight shower and heavy clouds still hung overhead; there was not a breath of wind in the air. The jungle around the house and the weeds had grown luxuriantly during the monsoon, and the thick, heavy smell of rotting vegetation from the water-logged jute fields stood like motionless walls around the house. A frog was croaking from the swamp behind the cowshed and the still evening sky was full of the sounds of crickets. In the distance, the Padma, swollen with monsoon rains and overhung with new clouds, looked ominous. Nearby, the paddy fields were already flooded and the water lapped close to human habitations. The force of the sweeping waters had uprooted a few mangoes and jackfruit trees whose roots clawed the empty air like fingers desperately outspread to clutch something firm.