The Portrait of a Lady

Summary

The Portrait of a Lady summary is a real story of the Kushwant Singh’s grandmother. His grandmother was an old lady. The writer tells us the story of his childhood that he had spent with his grandmother. This poem is about the life of the writer with his grandmother. All the beautiful and emotional moments are present in this story. The story tells about the beautiful relationship he had with his grandmother.

The writer recalls his Grandmother as short, healthy and slightly bent. Her hairs were silver in colour and were scattered messily on her wrinkled face. She used to walk around the whole house in white clothes. She kept her one hand resting on her waist and the other hand was telling the beads of her rosary.

The writer thinks of her as not very pretty but constantly beautiful all the time. He compares her calm face with the winter landscape. During their lengthy stay in the village, Grandmother woke him up from the bed in the early morning and sent him to the school.

On their way back to the home she used to give the stale chapattis to the street dogs. A turning point in their beautiful relationship arrived when they went to live in a city. Now, the writer used to go to the city school by bus and studied subjects like English, Physics, mathematics and many more subjects those his grandmother could not understand at all.

His grandmother could no longer go to school with him to send him. She felt upset that there was no teaching about God and scriptures at the city school. Instead, he was given music lessons, but she said nothing.

When the writer went to a university, he got a separate room in his house. The common link of the relationship between the grandson and the grandmother was broken now. Grandmother rarely talked to anyone in the house now. She spent plenty of her time sitting beside her spinning wheel and reciting prayer. She started feeding the sparrow birds in the afternoon.

When the writer left for abroad for his further studies, his grandmother did not get disturbed at all. Rather, she saw him off at the airport. Seeing her grandmother at this old age, the writer was thinking that it might be his last meeting with his grandmother. But when he came back home after a duration of five years, his grandmother was there to welcome him back.

The next morning after the return of his grandson she got ill. Although the doctor told that it was a slight fever and would go away very soon, still she could foresee that her time to leave this world was near. She did not want to waste her time talking to someone.

She went to her bed praying and telling the beads till her lips stopped moving and the rosary fell down from her lifeless hand. To grieve her death, thousands of sparrows flew in and sat dispersed around her body. All the sparrows flew away without making any noise when the dead body of the old lady was carried away for the last rites.

In the portrait of a lady, the writer and his grandmother had a beautiful bond between them and loved each other a lot.

OR

Introduction: KhushwantSingh is an Indian novelist and lawyer. He studied at St.Stephen’s College, Delhi and King’s College, London. He joined the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in 1947. He was awarded with Padma Bhusan in 1974. This lesson ‘ The Portrait of a Lady’ is a biographical sketch describing the bond between a grandson and his grandmother.

Grandfather: He wore a big turban and loose fitting clothes. His long, white beard covered the best part of his chest and he looked at least a hundred years old. He looked as if he could only have lots and lots of grandchildren.

Grandmother: When the author was a child, his grandmother used to wake him up in the morning and got him ready for school. She would say her morning prayer in a monotonous (unchanging) sing-song way. When the author went to university studies and went abroad for his higher studies, she accepted he seclusion (isolation) with resignation. She was the embodiment of all good virtues. She was a responsible grandmother.

Her Happiest time: The happiest time of the day for grandmother was feeding the sparrows in the afternoon for half an hour. She was a deeply religious woman. She was affectionate and caring. She had perfect control over her emotions. She used to feed animals and birds. She was a lady of high principles with simple life.

The last few hours: Her lips stopped saying prayers and the rosary fell down from her lifeless finger. When she died, her dead body was covered with a shroud (cloth used to wrap a dead person) and kept in a room in the courtyard. Thousands of sparrows sat scattered on the floor. There was no chirruping. The author’s mother threw some bread for them. But the sparrows took no notice of the bread. When grandmother’s corpse was carried away, the sparrows flew away. Quietly. The sparrows could understand that grandmother had passed away.

Conclusion: We not only inherit health and wealth from our parents but also their greatness and achievements.

“Women are like pine.

Let them grow fine.”