The Portrait of a Lady
by
Khushwant Singh
(Summary)
Born in 1915 in pre-Partition Punjab,
Khushwant Singh, perhaps India’s most widely read and controversial writer, has
been witness to most of the major events in modern Indian history—from Independence
and Partition to the Emergency and Operation Blue Star—and has known many of
the figures who have shaped it. He records his professional triumphs and
failures as a lawyer, journalist, writer and Member of Parliament; the comforts
and disappointments in his marriage of over sixty years; his first, awkward
sexual encounter; his phobia of ghosts and his fascination with death; the
friends who betrayed him, and also those whom he failed. He has a way of observing
other people and telling a story that is almost unmatched.
The Portrait of a Lady deals with an
account of the author’s old grandmother. She was very old and wrinkled. She was
fat, short and bent. She moved about the house with her rosary in her hand. She
was always dressed in white. Her hair was white. Her lips always moved in
prayer.
She would wake up the author and
prepare him for school. She went with him to school. The school was attached to
the temple. While children learnt alphabet, she sat inside and read religious
books. After school they came back together. She gave bread to village 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 on a school 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 prayers of god. She started feeding the sparrows
in the afternoon.
The author then left for England for
further studies. She did not feel upset. She went to the station to see him
off. At the time of parting, she kissed the author. 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 5 years, his
grandmother was there to welcome him back and he saw her celebrate his return.
In the evening she did not pray. She
brought a drum. She called women from her neighbourhood. She sang songs to
celebrate the return of her grandson. 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. She died peacefully. Her death affected even the sparrows. They did
not chirp. They ignored the crumbs thrown to them. All the sparrows flew away
without making any noise when the dead body of the old lady was carried away
for the last rites.
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