THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY - BLOG 1

The Portrait of a Lady

-         Khushwant Singh

Good morning dear students. Let us thank god for this wonderful day. Today we are going to start a new chapter “The Portrait of a Lady”. Before we go deep into the lesson let us look at the learning objectives of this chapter.

The students will be able to

·         know the expressions used in the lesson and their usage.

·         appreciate the bond between the author and his grandmother

·         gain insight into the various phases of author’s life with his grandmother.

·         realize the importance of grandparents in a family.

·         know the worth of any relationship.

·         sympathize with the grandmother and her situations.

·         admire and appreciate the biography of grandmother .

·         admire the divine beauty of the grandmother.

The Portrait of a Lady

SUMMARY

·         The writer recalls his Grandmother as short, healthy, slightly bent

·         She had silver coloured hair

·         She used to walk around the whole house in white clothes

·         She used to tell the beads of her rosary.

·         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, plastered his wooden slate, organized his breakfast, 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 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.

·         When the writer went to a university 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 sparrow birds in the afternoon.

·         When the writer left for abroad for his further studies, his grandmother did not get disturbed at all.

·         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 he saw her celebrating his return.

·         The next morning after the return of his grandson she got ill.

·         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

·         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.

NOW READ THE CHAPTER WITH THE HELP OF GIVEN WORD MEANINGS

Word Meanings

WORD	MEANING
Mantelpiece	a structure of wood, marble, or stone above and around a fireplace.
the thought was almost revolting	it was very hard for the author to believe
Hobbled	walked in an awkward way
Rosary	a string of beads for keeping count of number of chants made of a religious prayer
Puckered	a face contract into wrinkles
an expanse of pure white serenity	refers to the calm, relaxed and peaceful
accepted her seclusion with resignation	the grandmother accepted a lonely life as she accepted the separation from her grandson without objection
A veritable bedlam of chirrupings	refers to the noise and confusion caused by the chirrupings of the sparrows
Veritable	use to describe something which is very interesting or unusual
Bedlam	Confusion
Frivolous	not having any serious purpose, light-hearted
Sagging	sinking downwards
Dilapidated	in a state of despair or ruin
the sagging skins of the dilapidated drum	The loose surface of the worn out drum
Pallor	an unhealthy pale appearance
Shroud	a piece of cloth used to wrap a dead person