The Portrait of a Lady : Khushwant Singh

The story 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 villagegrandmother 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 them. She helped him in his lessons also .It was her domain and she was the queen of her kingdom. In this period she was the sole unchallenged guardian, mentor and creator of the child Khushwant.
The turning point came in their relationship when they came to city to stay with Khushwant’s parents. In city Khushwant joined an English School and started to go to school in a motor bus. Here the role of his grandmother in his bringing up was curtailed a little bit. Now she could not accompany him to the school. Despite taking lot of interest in his studies she could not help him in his lessons because he was learning English, law of gravity, Archimedes’ principle and many more such things which she could not understand and this made her unhappy. She found herself at loss. One more thing which disturbed her a lot was that the kids were not learning about God and scriptures in the school instead they were given music lessons which was not an honorable thing in her opinion. To her music was not meant for gentlefolk. It was meant for beggars and prostitutes only. She highly disapproved this and as she could not change it she was dismayed and withdrew herself to some extent. Perhaps she had realized that in the makeover of the child her role was finished and this very thought saddened her most.
After finishing school Khushwant went to university. He was given a separate room. The common link of their friendship was snapped. His grandmother confined herself to a self imposed seclusion. She
spent most of her time in reciting prayers and by sitting beside her spinning wheel. She rarely talked to anyone. The only recreation for her was in the afternoon when she relaxed for a while to feed the sparrows. A kind hearted person, in village she used to feed street dogs, here in city she focused on birds and they too became very friendly with her. This was the phase when she found herself totally isolated and aloof but she braved this isolation with grace and dignity.
Khushwant’s grandmother was a strong person. Whatever she went through in her heart she always restrained herself from demonstrating her emotions. He recalls that when he went abroad for further studies his grandmother was there to see him off on railway station quite calm busy telling the beads of her rosary and reciting prayers as always. When he came back after five years he found her more and more religious and more and more self contained. She spent still more time in prayers and spinning the wheel. Feeding the birds was her only happy pastime. But just the day before her death for the first time she broke this routine and gave up her prayers. That day she sang the songs of the home coming of the warriors on a withered drum along with the ladies of neighborhood in order to celebrate her grandson’s return from abroad. Next morning she got ill. Although the doctor said it was a mild fever and would go away she could foresee that her end was near. She was upset that she omitted her prayers just before the final departure from the world. She did not want to waste any more time talking to anybody. She lay peacefully in bed praying and telling the beads till her lips stopped moving and rosary fell from her lifeless fingers. To mourn her death thousands of sparrows flew in and sat scattered around her body in utter silence.They even ignored the breadcrumbs thrown for them by Khushwant’s mother. They only flew away after the corpse was carried away for last rites.
So this was the charismatic grandmother of Khushwant Singh.

26 comments:

  1. this is copy pasted from the net!!

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. what really matters is that it it's helpful!

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    3. saale terko mil rahi hai naa.to padh le nahi to patli gali pakad ke nikal jaa.saala baat karta hai.

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  2. So what....at least the has been devoted for others.....

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  3. buy oswalguides oswal.printers@gmail.com

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  4. its an nice story...and an lesson for others!!!

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    Replies
    1. wrong english... It should be - a lesson.. not an..

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    2. ha saale tughse English seekhlenge

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  5. This helps me very much for my tommorows exam

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  6. it has helpd me 1 day befre my units.... thnks alot....

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  7. this is going to help me in my unit test........tnx.....:)

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  8. thanx man this is going to help me for my tomorrows exams......BEST OF LUCK FOR YOUR EXAMS

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  9. perfect.....very easy to understand..thanxxx...
    this will really very helpful in my xamination..

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  10. the whole story is repeated in different words, where are 'notes'

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    1. that is what's known as a "summary" isn't it? for ISC general English this is a perfect answer, "notes" are not required! =]

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    2. it is required. for isc scoring better marks we need to give critcal analysis, references,,,thus notes..!

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  11. can i get short notes on dis please...!!

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  12. Replies
    1. in the description of the granny, "Her face was a criss-cross of wrinkles". "Grandmother accepted her seclusion with resignation". "she rarely left her spinning-wheel". She "sang of the home-coming warriors". she decided that since she had "omitted to pray" "before the close of the first chapter of her life", she decided not to talk to anyone...hope it helps =]

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  13. okay this was really helpful..thank you so so much =]

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  14. This summary is just what ISC pupils requires to study. ISC does NOT recommend short answers, in fact what they want you to do is just LEARN the story well enough so that you can just repeat it in the exams. It even applies for the drama section. Writing in Shakespearean English(for the drama section) is ALSO accepted.

    ISC corrects the papers on basis of perfect words, or "keywords", that is, if you are able to reproduce the exact word from the text, you get a point. ISC gives you full credit if you can include ALL the keywords required for a particular answer.

    [PS: I had followed this mantra and I had scored 92%]


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    Replies
    1. wow! thats really cool..
      i'll follow that thanks! :)

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    2. i too will follow ur comment/.

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  15. "They fed street dogs with stale chapaties on their way to school which was a great fun for them"- This is not probably correct, because if i am not wrong, the grandmother and the author fed the street dogs while returning from school, not on their way to the school!

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