'The Portrait of a Lady' by Khushwant Singh

 ∆ About the author :

Khushwant Singh was born on 2 February 1915 in Pakistan, was an Indian author, lawyer, diplomat, journalist, and politician. After his experience in the 1947 Partition of India, he wrote  Train to Pakistan in 1956, which became his most well-known novel and he also wrote a history of the Sikhs and the company of women. He was awarded Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan.

∆  'The Portrait of a Lady' :

The author briefly describes how his grandmother used to look when he was a child. He describes her appearance to be typical of most grandmothers – she was an old, wrinkled woman. Although he had learned from people that his grandmother had been pretty in her younger days when she had a husband, he found it hard to believe. He then adds that he regarded his grandfather as someone who could not have a wife or children but could have only many grandchildren.

The author had seen his grandmother as an old lady since he was born. He found it against his nature to imagine his grandmother as a young woman – just like he could not believe her accounts of childhood when she used to play games. He could not come to terms with his grandmother being a pretty woman, but he always thought she was beautiful. He compares her to a winter landscape in the mountains – serenely white with her white outfits and silver hair. He found her to be the epitome of peace and contentment.

The author now tells us about the dynamics of his relationship with his grandmother over the years. As a child, his grandmother took care of him since his parents were in the city trying to earn a better life. His grandmother used to wake him up and prepare him for school. They used to go to the school together as it was attached to the temple. He attended classes while his grandmother read scriptures inside the temple. After school, his grandmother would feed stale chapattis to the village dogs, who would follow them home, fighting for the chapattis.

There came a turning point in the author’s life when his parents called him and his grandmother to the city where they had finally settled down. The author started attending an English school, and his grandmother no longer accompanied him to school. There were no dogs in the streets, so she fed sparrows. Their relationship began to change. She would ask him about his school, and he would tell her about the different concepts of western science and learning. The grandmother could not help him with these kinds of lessons at school. It made her unhappy. She became more disturbed to know that there were no lessons on God, and that music lessons were given at school. She became less friendly towards the author after learning this.

When the author went to the university, the friendship between him and his grandmother was broken. He stayed at the university, and his grandmother spent her days sitting at her spinning wheel, followed by afternoons when she would feed the sparrows. When the author decided to go abroad for further education, he expected his grandmother to be upset about it. But to his surprise, she was not. Instead, she accompanied him to the station to see him off and said goodbye with a silent prayer and a kiss on his forehead. He had imagined this to be his last physical meeting with his grandmother.

After five years, when the author returned, he found his grandmother looking the same as she used to years ago – not a day older. She welcomed him with a silent prayer and did not talk. Her happiest moment on the first day of his arrival was during the afternoon she spent with the sparrows. In the evening, she collected some women from the neighbourhood and sang songs about the homecoming of warriors. The author and his family persuaded her to stop, so she did not overstrain herself.

The next morning the author’s grandmother fell ill with a mild fever. While the doctor informed them that it would subside quickly, she was sure that her end was near. She expressed her desire to pray rather than talk to them since she was left with only a few hours of her life. Although the author and his family were reluctant, she paid them no heed. After some moments of praying, she passed away. The family mourned, and she was covered with a red shroud as was customary. Everyone went ahead to prepare for her funeral, and when they returned to her room to take her body away for cremation, they saw hundreds of sparrows scattered around her from her bedroom to the verandah.

Everyone felt sorry about the sparrows, and the author’s mother tried to feed some bread crumbs to the sparrows, but they did not seem to notice the food. When his grandmother was carried away, the sparrows flew away quietly.

Thank you…