Page 126 - DENG103_English - I

Unit 9: Khushwant Singh’s The Portrait of a Lady

and a number of translations and non-fiction books on Delhi, nature and current affairs. The Notes
Library of Congress has ninety-nine works on and by Khushwant Singh.
Khushwant Singh was a member of the Rajya Sabha (upper house of the Indian Parliament)
from 1980 to 1986. Among other honours, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974 by the
President of India (he returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the Union Government’s
siege of the Golden Temple in Amritsar).
Khushwant Singh is many things to many people. More you read about him, hungrier you get.
He is the high priest of journalism and can be said to be India’s best. he is a free thinker and
an international celebrity. Khushwant Singh had become a legend and an icon in his lifetime.
He is a lawyer, critic and columnist. He is a prolific writer and historian. He is a man people
love to hate and may even agree “not a nice man to know”. Yet, you would love to read him
day after day to no end.

9.2 The Portrait of a Lady

A Khushwant Singh short story is not flamboyant but modest, restrained, well-crafted Perhaps
his greatest gift as a writer is a wonderful particularity of description London Magazine
Khushwant Singh first established his reputation as a writer through the short story. His
stories wry, poignant, erotic and, above all, human bear testimony to Khushwant Singh’s
remarkable range and his ability to create an unforgettable world. Spanning over half a century,
this volume contains all the short stories Khushwant Singh has ever written, including the
delightfully tongue-in-cheek The Maharani of Chootiapuram , written in 2008.
Khushwant’s stories enthrall [He has]an ability akin to that of Somerset Maugham the ability
to entertain intelligently India Today His stories are better than [those of] any Indian writing
in English Times of India The Collected Short Stories leaves the reader in a delightful, inebriated
trance Sunday Chronicle.

Notes The Portrait of a Lady is written in first person and is in biographical mode. It is
a perception of Khushwant Singh of his grandmother through his own eyes.

Khushwant Singh recalls his grandmother as an eternally old person. She was an extremely
religious person. It was difficult for him to believe that once she too was young and pretty like
other women. The stories about her childhood games were like fairytales to him. She was
short, fat and slightly stooped in stature.

Her silvery white hair used to scatter on her wrinkled face. Khushwant Singh remembers her
hobbling around the house in spotless white clothes with one hand resting on her waist to
balance her stoop and the other busy in telling the beads of her rosary. Her lips constantly
moved in inaudible prayers. Possibly she was not beautiful in worldly sense but she looked
extremely beautiful with the peacefulness, serenity and the contentment her countenance displayed.
Khushwant’s relationship with his grandmother went through several changes when he was
a small boy. In the first stage Khushwant lived in a village with her as his parents were
looking for the opportunity to settle down in the city. In village grandmother took care of all
the needs of the child.
She was quite active and agile. She woke him up in the morning, got him ready for the
school, plastered his wooden slate, prepared his breakfast and escorted him to the school.
They fed street dogs with stale chapaties on their way to school which was a great fun for

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 119