Practice English Listening B2 Exercises – Diana’s story

a   Hyderabad, in India.

b   Her parents split up.

c   She went from door to door asking to rent a room.

d   Half past seven.

e   Because she realised the poor young girl didn’t even have a watch that worked and she took pity on her.

f   You will succeed if you try. You have to remember moments like that.

PRESENTER:   Diana is from Hyderabad in Southern India. Her parents split up when she was 13 and from the age of 14 she moved around, taking various jobs, and at the age of 18, she went to try and find work in Mumbai, then called Bombay.

DIANA:   I had 250 rupees in my pocket. Now 250 rupees is the equivalent of about umm four pounds, and the person who was a family friend who was supposed to meet me at the station wasn’t there. and then I went knocking from one door to the other looking for accommodation and umm it’s a very bizarre story but I did get accommodation. Someone sent me to somebody else and they said – like you call them ‘bedsits’ here, in India you call them paying guests and they said ‘oh so-and-so person keeps paying guests go there’, and I got sent from one place to the other off this main road and umm I knocked on this lady’s door and my watch said 7.30 and she opened the door and I said ‘look someone told me – can’t remember where down the line – someone said you keep, you know, paying guests,’ and she said ‘no I don’t, not any more, I’ve stopped for the last three years,’ and then I heard the English news in the background. Now the English news is from 9.30 to 9.45 and I said ‘Is that the English news?’ She said ‘Yes, and what is a young girl like you doing on your own on the streets at this time?’ and I said ‘but it can’t be because the English news is at 9.30’. She said, ‘Yes, a quarter to ten,’ and I showed her my watch and it stopped at 7.30 and she said, ‘Come inside.’ She was a Pakistani woman. She was married to an Englishman. She said, ‘Come inside.’ She says, ‘my hair’s standing and I just think God has sent you to me,’ and she took me in. She said, ‘Bring all your stuff and come tomorrow and umm go and get a job. When you get a job, then you can start paying me.’ So that’s the … it’s it’s just everything. I believe that everything you try to do, if you put yourself out there and give it your all … you will … you will achieve it. I think it’s very important that you look back and you connect with those experiences and you remember them as clearly as yesterday because if not, the superficial nonsense that goes on in your life like today can very easily take over you and you can lose perspective.

2

She won Miss World in 1997.

3

a   She was afraid of tripping on her high heels.

b   Millions.

c   Numb.

d   She looked at it as soon as she woke up.

e   She couldn’t stop grinning.

4

a   A sitting room and bedroom combined which you can rent.

b   We’re scared or shocked. Diana reports the Pakistani woman as saying ‘my hair’s standing’ which may well be a Pakistani English way of saying the same thing.

c   A lot of effort.

d   No. You can’t think at all.

e   Fantastically happy.

f   To stumble over your words, to mix them up as you speak.

g   Ordinary.

h   Keep a watch on someone (and look after them) to make sure they behave appropriately.

i   The place at the front of an aeroplane where a pilot sits.

DIANA:   … I think it’s very important that you look back and you connect with those experiences and you remember them as clearly as yesterday because if not, the superficial nonsense that goes on in your life like today Gin very easily take over you and you can lose perspective.

PRESENTER:   But Diana didn’t lose perspective. After a succession of jobs – including managing two of India’s most famous pop stars – she was entered into the Miss India beauty competition and she won it. Next she found herself representing her country in the Miss World competition, something that must have been quite daunting for the 23-year-old.

DIANA:   Your biggest fear is ‘I shouldn’t trip’ and because you’ve got these really high heels and these long long gowns and you’ve got all these steps that you’re walking up and down and it’s live on television you’ve got … thousands of people watching …

INTERVIEWER:   watched by …

DIANA:   … by millions. It is huge. Everybody watches it. You have more people watching them in India than you’d have them watching the Wimbledon finals or something, you know, or the Olympic Games or something. Yeah. Umm and your biggest fear is ‘I should not go blank’ because you’re asked questions on stage and yeah, you can just freeze.

PRESENTER:   But Diana didn’t freeze.  In front of a huge worldwide audience she heard a voice announce that Miss India, Diana Hayden, was the new Miss World.

DIANA:   Oooh you feel numb. The … you know it’s, it’s a saturation point. It’s too much for you to digest that your grin is stuck on your face. It was stuck on my face for weeks. I would position that crown in such a way that as soon as I opened my eyes I would see my crown. I did that for weeks. Ha ha. It was such a great feeling. You just you’re just grinning and you are just numb. If that’s what euphoria is, you know, umm you you can’t speak very clearly. You speak but you’re just so excited you’re tripping over your own words, and immediately there was a press conference on stage itself and it’s like ooh ooh ooh because you go from being nobody, a regular person. That’s not fair. It’s not a nobody. You go from being a regular person to being in every newspaper around the world and everyone knows. It went from going in a bus with 87 other girls to ‘and Miss World 1997 is Miss India’ to a stretch limousine, with bodyguards, where the heads of the company moved out of the presidential suite and I took over and chaperones rind that’s what it was right since then. You sit in the cockpits for take-offs and landings. You get treated like a queen you, you know, you have private planes, and all these flights and umm the red carpet and it’s just Lights! Camera! Action!