English Language · English

Read the following passage carefully: 'In a roadside town, a shopkeeper kept two habits that puzzled his neighbours. Each evening, he wrote a small tally on a scrap of paper—who had borrowed salt, who had promised to return grain—and then he tied the paper to a nail near the door. Each morning, he poured a pitcher of water around a young tamarind tree that shaded the queue outside his shop. When prices spiked and tempers rose, the shopkeeper did not lecture; he measured carefully, rounded in the buyer's favour when the scale trembled, and pointed to the shade when quarrels threatened to spread. Some called him timid, others shrewd. He said only that a town keeps its own weather, and that shade is cheaper to make than storms are to calm. One monsoon failed. Credit grew longer than patience. The tally nail sagged under its knots; the tree yellowed, its leaves curling like hands. The shopkeeper refused to sell a shipment of damp rice he had been offered at a bargain, and he refused to shame those who delayed repayment. When a traveller dropped a purse of coins at dusk, he hung it by the nail with a note, trusting that gossip would do the rest. By morning the owner arrived, astonished that a full purse had slept outdoors untouched. 'Not untouched,' the shopkeeper said, tapping the nail. 'Kept by everyone who walked past.' Later, a flood undid the drought's arithmetic. Water seeped into storerooms; debts and promises washed together. The tree's roots held the verge from collapse, and the shop became a shelter where ledgers were read aloud, not to accuse but to remember. Payments resumed slowly. The purse returned a second time; the tally slips grew lighter; the tamarind regained its shine. Years after, when the shopkeeper's son asked why his father never hurried profit, the old man traced a circle in the dust and said, 'What you keep in others' memory returns with interest, and what you plant for shade cools your own doorstep last.'' What is the tone of the passage?