Page 130 - DENG103_English - I

Unit 10: ‘‘Portrait of a Lady’’ Discussion on All Spheres of the Text and Questions

When the writer went to University, he was allotted a room for his staying. His grandmother Notes
spent time with her spinning wheel. From sunrise to sunset she sat by her wheel spinning and
reciting prayers. In the afternoon, she relaxed for a while to feed the sparrows. She was always
getting surrounded by sparrows that were perching on her legs and shoulders. Some even sat
on her head.
When the writer decided to go abroad for further studies and his grandmother would be
upset. But she came to leave him at the railway station but did not talk or show any emotion.
She was totally absorbed in prayer and her fingers were busy telling the beads of her rosary.
After five years, he came back home and was received at the station by his grandmother. She
did not look a day older. The author could feel her pulse as usual and her sparrows were with
her. That evening she was seen very happy spending time with the older women folk.
The next day morning she was found being ill. Doctor was called for and he told that the fever
was mild and she would be well within a short time. But she told others that her time had
come. She lay peacefully in bed praying and telling her beads. Next time she breathed her last.
Then the funeral arrangements and proceedings went on. The dead body of the grandmother
was covered with a red shroud. A crude stretcher was brought to take her to be cremated. By
that time, thousands of sparrows sat scattered on the floor. There was no chirruping. When
her corpse was taken, the sparrows flew away quietly. Here ends the portrait of a pious lady.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:

1. Khushwant Singh was born in 1915 in India.
2. Khushwant Singh’s grandmother was short, fat and slightly bent.
3. When Khushwant decided to go abroad for study then his grandmother was upset.

10.1 Grandmother Character in Singh’s Own Words

Meet Khushwant Singh’s grandmother, in his own words: ‘...short, fat and slightly bent... . Her
face was a crisscross of wrinkles running from everywhere to everywhere’. Quite irreverently,
he says: ...the thought of my grandmother being young and pretty was almost revolting.’ She
was his friend who woke him up while constantly muttering her prayers in the hopeless hope
that he would imbibe some of the religious verses (which he never did), dress him up for
school, get his school kit ready and then walk him to school. While he went through his
lessons, she went through her prayers in the temple adjoining the village school and then they
both walked back home.
But distances grew between the two close pals, once they moved to the city. Khushwant says:
‘That was the turning point in our relationship.’

He now went to school in a bus and she was horrified that the school taught him nothing of
religion when he told her of the western science he had studied. She now had no time for
words, ‘her lips moved in prayer, her mind moved in prayer,’ constantly, he says. She accepted
seclusion, and spent time feeding the sparrows, now her soulmates. Khushwant’s move to
England for further studies widened the distance.
She was there to see him off with a moist kiss which he cherished as perhaps her last touch.
But she is there when he returns after five years, looking ‘not a day older’. But she still had
not time for words.

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