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 T H E P O T R A I T O F A L A DY
- Khushwant Singh

About the Author: Khushwant Singh was an Indian author, lawyer, diplomat, journalist and
politician. His experience in the 1947 Partition of India inspired him to write Train to
Pakistan in 1956, which became his most well- known novel.

THEME OF THE STORY

➢ The autobiographical account depicts the author’s bond with her

grandmother and the change in their relationship once they shift to a
new place.

IMPORTANT C HARACTER SKETC H

The Grandmother:

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 •  Old and wrinkled. 


• Short, fat and slightly bent. 


•  Wore a spotless white clothes and had one hand resting on her
waist supporting her stoop and 

the other hand telling beads of rosary. 


• Her white/silver hair scattered around her colourless or pale face. 


• Her lips constantly moved in an inaudible prayer. 


• S
he was beautiful according to the author and compared her aura
to that of the winter’s 

landscape in the mountains; peaceful and in a state of happiness
and satisfaction. 


•  While in village she like to feed the stray dogs and in the city she
used to feed the sparrows. 


SUMMARY

The author begins the story by describing his grandmother who is an

old wrinkled woman and has been pretty and young once. Then he
describes the portrait of his grandfather that hung above the
mantelpiece in the drawing room. He has a long white beard that

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covered his chest. He tells that her grandmother had been short, fat and
slightly bent and had criss- cross wrinkles running everywhere to
everywhere, she was always beautiful and roamed about the house in
spotless white clothes with one hand resting on her waist to balance her
stoop and other holding rosary. She had silver locks that were unkempt
on her pale face and her lips moved constantly in inaudible prayer. The
author had stayed with his grandmother since his parents went to live in
the city. Then he describes their daily routine that how she used to dress
him up for school while singing the prayers in a hope that even the
author would listen to it and get to know it by heart. She would get his
things ready for school. She gave him breakfast that was made up of a
stale chapatti with a little butter and sugar spread on it and packed the
rest of the stale chapattis to feed the stray village dogs. She went to
school with him because it was attached to the temple and then they
would go home together. Then came the turning point in their friendship
when they were called by his parents to live with them in the city.
Although they shared they shared the same room but his grandmother
would no longer accompany him to the school because now he went to
the English school where the school bus came to pick him up. They
would talk less and she did not like what they taught the author in the
school because there was no religious teaching. When the author went
to the University he was even a separate room and this common link of
their friendship was broken. Now she would feed the sparrows in the
afternoon that would sit on her legs, shoulders or even on her head, this
would be the happiest hour of the day for her. Then when the author
was going to abroad for his further studies, she went to leave him at the
railway station and kissed him on his forehead which was the last sign of
physical contact between them as the author remembers. After five years
when the author returned back she did not show any excitement or
happiness. That evening there was something unusual about her as she
did not pray and collected all he women from the neighbourhood, got a
drum and started to sing for the home – coming of warriors. Despite
their efforts to stop her from over exhausting herself she did not stop

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which made her ill the next morning. She said that her end was near
and that before the last chapter of her life she did not want to waste her
time talking to them. She took her beads and began to pray. Then all of
the sudden her lips stopped to move and with a peaceful look on her
colourless face she was dead. They lifted her and kept her inn the
veranda till the time they made arrangements for her funeral. Thousands
of sparrows sat around her body and even though author’s mother tried
to feed the the bed crumps but they did not eat and when they carried
her corpse away they all flew away quietly.

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