Follow the chain, change the viewpoint
Three links. One answer.
Mira says: “Rhea is my mother’s brother’s daughter.” Before reading a method, follow the words once yourself.
You will learn to keep the reference person fixed, then deliberately change the viewpoint. Reuse the parent arrows from Lesson 1; do not try to memorize every possible chain.
What is Rhea to Mira?
Show answer
Correct answer: C
Mira’s mother has a brother, whose daughter is Rhea. Rhea is a cousin, specifically Mira’s maternal uncle’s daughter.
Option A: The mother’s brother is one generation above Mira; his daughter moves down again.
Option B: The route branches through the mother’s sibling, not a shared stated parent.
Option D: This stops after the first link and ignores brother and daughter.
Hint: Keep each possessive phrase attached to the person immediately before it.
What you will be able to do
About 25 minutes, including practice.
- Trace a nested relation from the reference person.
- Reverse a relation without copying the original label.
- Separate blood relations, in-laws and unstated parenthood.
- Anchor: the word “my” refers to Mira. Write Mira first. Do not begin from an attractive answer option.
- Expand: “my mother” gives Mira’s parent. “My mother’s brother” gives the mother’s male sibling. “His daughter” gives Rhea.
- Check generations: up to mother, sideways to her brother, down to Rhea. Rhea is in Mira’s generation. This rules out mother, but it does not by itself prove sister or cousin.
- Name the path, not just the row: child of a parent’s sibling = cousin. The mother–brother–daughter path gives the precise Hindi term ममेरी बहन.
Now turn the question around
Anaya is Bharat’s sister. Bharat is Chitra’s father. Chitra is his daughter.
Text version: Anaya ↔ Bharat is a labelled sibling link; Bharat → Chitra is a parent-to-child link. Anaya and Chitra are female, Bharat is male, as the stated relationship words specify.
For “How is X related to Y?”, stand at Y and name X’s role. Reversing the question changes which person’s role and gender matter.
What is Anaya to Chitra?
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Correct answer: A
Chitra’s father is Bharat; his sister is Anaya. Anaya is the father’s sister, a paternal aunt.
Option B: Niece is the reverse direction here.
Option C: The path is through Chitra’s father, not her mother.
Option D: Anaya is in the parent generation.
Hint: Start at Chitra, not Anaya.
Reverse it: what is Chitra to Anaya?
Show answer
Correct answer: D
Anaya’s brother is Bharat; his daughter is Chitra. Chitra is Anaya’s brother’s daughter, a niece (भतीजी), not a sister’s daughter (भांजी).
Option A: That copies the earlier answer without reversing the viewpoint.
Option B: The parent is Bharat, not Anaya.
Option C: The connecting sibling Bharat is a brother, not a sister.
Hint: Use Anaya’s sibling’s stated gender.
What changes when a clue is removed?
Remove “Chitra is his daughter”. “Bharat is Chitra’s father” still tells you Bharat is male. It does not tell you whether Chitra is a niece or nephew. The safe answer is “Anaya’s brother’s child”. A reverse relation may need gender evidence that the forward answer did not need.
A marriage link has its own job
Leena is Maya’s mother. Maya is Rohan’s wife. Leena is Rohan’s mother-in-law: a spouse’s mother. But Rohan’s gender has not been stated by the word “wife”, which describes Maya. Do not infer it from Rohan’s name or from the marriage.
Likewise, a spouse of a parent is not automatically a parent of that person’s child. Add a parent arrow only when a clue supplies one.
Your turn: 10 independent problems
Write your route in words: name the reference person, then each intermediate person, then the asked-for person. Reserve parent arrows for the family map. The support fades here: choose your own diagram before opening a hint.
- Z says: “V is my mother’s sister’s son.” What is V to Z?
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Correct answer: B
Z’s mother has a sister, whose son is V. V is the son of Z’s maternal aunt: a cousin (मौसेरा भाई).
Option A: This stops at the parent generation and also changes sister to brother.
Option C: The route branches through an aunt, not a shared parent.
Option D: V is in Z’s generation, not a sibling’s child.
Hint: After the mother’s sister, follow one more link.
- U is the daughter of T’s father’s brother. What is U to T?
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Correct answer: D
T’s father has a brother, whose daughter is U. U is a cousin on the father’s brother’s branch. The uncle’s relative age is not needed.
Option A: The uncle’s daughter is one generation below the uncle.
Option B: A shared generation does not establish a shared parent.
Option C: The clue begins through T’s father, not mother.
Hint: Keep the father’s side separate from the mother’s side.
- D is E’s sister. F is D’s son. What is F to E?
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Correct answer: A
E’s sister is D and her son is F. F is E’s sister’s son: भांजा. E’s gender is unnecessary.
Option B: Brother’s son would be भतीजा; D is a sister.
Option C: That reverses the generation direction.
Option D: D, not E, is F’s stated parent.
Hint: The connecting sibling is explicitly a sister.
- H is J’s brother. K is H’s daughter. What is K to J?
Show answer
Correct answer: C
J’s brother is H; H’s daughter is K. K is J’s brother’s daughter: भतीजी.
Option A: That would require H to be J’s sister.
Option B: The parent link belongs to H, not J.
Option D: An aunt is above the child generation, not below J.
Hint: Which Hindi word matches a brother’s daughter?
- P is Q’s brother. Q is R’s mother. R is male. What is R to P?
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Correct answer: B
Q is female because she is a mother. Therefore she is P’s sister. Her male child R is P’s sister’s son, भांजा.
Option A: P is R’s maternal uncle; that is the reversed question.
Option C: The parent Q is P’s sister, not brother.
Option D: R is one generation below P.
Hint: Do not answer P’s relation to R; the question asks the reverse.
- A is B’s father. B is C’s mother, and C is B’s daughter. What is C to A?
Show answer
Correct answer: D
A → daughter B → daughter C. B is female because she is a mother. C is A’s daughter’s daughter, a granddaughter.
Option A: C is below A, not above A.
Option B: This misses the intermediate generation B.
Option C: A is C’s maternal grandfather; the question asks C’s role.
Hint: Begin at A and count the two downward parent links.
- B is the father of A’s mother. C is B’s son. What is C to A through these links?
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Correct answer: A
A’s mother and C share B as a father. C is male, so C is the mother’s brother: maternal uncle. The word mother prevents confusing her with B’s son C.
Option B: The link runs through A’s mother, not father.
Option C: B is the grandfather; C is B’s son.
Option D: C is the mother’s sibling, one generation above A.
Hint: B has a daughter who is A’s mother and a son C.
- P is Q’s mother. Q is R’s wife. What is P to R?
Show answer
Correct answer: C
Q is R’s spouse, and P is that spouse’s mother. That is mother-in-law (सास). No parent link from P to R was given.
Option A: Q’s mother is not automatically R’s mother.
Option B: The route uses a parent link plus marriage, not a sibling link.
Option D: Daughter-in-law means a son’s wife, in the opposite generation from a spouse’s mother.
Hint: Name the parent of a spouse.
- S is T’s father. T is U’s husband. Which is the most precise supported relation of U to S?
Show answer
Correct answer: D
T is S’s son because T is S’s child and is described as a husband. U is that son’s spouse. “Husband” establishes T’s gender, not U’s. Calling U a daughter-in-law or son-in-law would require U’s gender.
Option A: This assumes the spouse’s gender without a clue.
Option B: This also assumes U’s gender without a clue.
Option C: U is connected to S’s child, not to S’s parent generation.
Hint: Which person is described by “husband”?
- J is the father of K and L. K is M’s mother; L is N’s father. M is female. What is M to N?
Show answer
Correct answer: B
N’s father L and M’s mother K share father J. K is L’s sister. Her daughter M is N’s paternal aunt’s daughter: फुफेरी बहन.
Option A: From N’s viewpoint the route begins with the father.
Option C: The parents are siblings; no common parent for M and N is stated.
Option D: K is N’s paternal aunt; M is K’s daughter.
Hint: Trace from N, not M: first the father’s sister, then her daughter.
A four-move routine
Anchor → expand → draw → name. If the question is reversed, run the routine again. Do not reverse only the words in your old answer.
Quick retrieval: a sister’s son is भांजा; a brother’s son is भतीजा. A sister’s daughter is भांजी; a brother’s daughter is भतीजी. These Hindi terms depend on the connecting sibling, not on the questioner’s gender.
Ready for Lesson 3? Explain one fact the sentence “A is B’s spouse” gives you, and one fact about B’s child it does not give you. Next you will use that distinction to detect incomplete clues.
Quick reference
Anchor → expand one phrase → draw → answer from the requested viewpoint. A generation count is a check, not the full answer. For a reverse relation, re-check the target person’s gender. A spouse is not automatically the other parent of a child.
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