Question

Read the passage and answer the question. Passage: When the old post office in the village of Rampur closed down, its building stood empty for two years. The windows were broken, the paint peeled from the walls, and children played cricket in the dusty yard outside. Then a retired schoolteacher named Meera decided to turn the building into a library. She wrote letters to publishers, to former students and to anyone she thought might help, and slowly books began to arrive, in parcels, in sacks and sometimes in the arms of visitors. Within a year the shelves held three thousand books, and the reading room, once a sorting office, was full every evening. Farmers came to read newspapers, students came to prepare for examinations, and old men came simply to sit in the quiet. The library charged nothing, and its only rule was that every book must return to its shelf. Meera says the building has not changed its purpose at all: it still delivers messages, only now the messages travel more slowly, and they last much longer. The word 'peeled' in the passage is closest in meaning to: