The Portrait of a Lady Summary

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

Conclusion of The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady Class 11 Summary gives us a detailed picture of the relationship
between the author and his grandmother. True to its name, the story draws a character sketch
of the grandmother who stays the same over the years. Her thoughts, way of life and activities
do not seem to change. While the author seems to go through a lot of change owing to his
education in India and abroad, the grandmother just accepts the change. She continues living
a life of serenity and simplicity until her death. She does not talk much to the author in his
adult years and seems detached and emotionless to him at times. But this concept is
challenged by the flock of sparrows that mourn her death.

Summary
Advantages and Disadvantages of Watching Television
Watching television increases knowledge of the outside world, science, medicine and
different arts. It helps old people and patients to recreate. It assists in informal language
practice, improving vocabulary and practise listening. However, watching television for more
than six hours and staring on screens has a negative influence on students. It affects the
human brain and leads to poor concentration. Television makes life boring and nothing
feels exciting. People can feel depressed when they are unable to solve problems as quickly
as actors do. Television normalises violence which can make children violent.

Note making Example 6: Read the passage given below: (Question Paper CBSE, 2018)
Keeping cities clean is essential for keeping their residents healthy. Our health depends not
just on personal hygiene and nutrition, but critically also on how clean we keep our cities
and their surroundings. The spread of dengue and chikungunya are intimately linked to the
deteriorating state of public health conditions in our cities.
The good news is that waste management to keep cities clean is now getting attention
through the Swachh Bharat Mission. However, much of the attention begins and stops with
the brooms and the dustbins, extending at most to the collection and transportation of the
mixed waste to some distant or not so distant place, preferably out of sight.
The challenge of processing and treating the different streams of solid waste, and safe
disposal of the residuals in scientific landfills, has received much less attention in municipal
solid waste management than is expected from a health point of view.
One of the problems is that instead of focusing on waste management for health, we have
got sidetracked into ‘‘waste for energy’’. If only we were to begin by not mixing the
biodegradable component of solid waste (close to 60 percent of the total) in our cities with
the dry waste, and instead use this stream of waste for composting and producing a gas
called methane.
City compost from biodegradable waste provides an alternative to farmyard manure (like
cow-dung). It provides an opportunity to simultaneously clean up our cities and help
improve agricultural productivity and quality of the soil. Organic manure or compost plays a
very important role as a supplement to chemical fertilisers in enriching the nutrient-
deficient soils. City compost can be the new player in the field.
Benefits of compost on the farm are well-known. The water holding capacity of the soil
which uses compost helps with drought-proofing, and the requirement of less water per
crop is a welcome feature for a water-stressed future. By making the soil porous, use of
compost also makes roots stronger and resistant to pests and decay. Farmers using
compost, therefore, need less quantity of pesticides. There is also evidence to suggest that
horticulture crops grown with compost have better flavour, size, colour and shelf-life.
City compost has the additional advantage of being weed-free unlike farmyard manure
which brings with it the seeds of undigested grasses and requires a substantial additional
labour cost for weeding as the crops grow. City compost is also rich in organic carbon, and
our soils are short in this.
Farmers clearly recognize the value of city compost. If city waste was composted before
making it available to the farmers for applying to the soil, cities would be cleaned up and the
fields around them would be much more productive.
Quite apart from cleaning up the cities of biodegradable waste, this would be a major and
sustainable contribution to improving the health of our soil without further damage by
excessive chemical inputs. What a marvellous change from waste to health!
The good news is that some states are regularly laying plastic roads. Plastic roads will not
only withstand future monsoon damage but will also solve a city’s problem of disposing of
non-recyclable plastic. It is clear that if the mountains of waste from our cities were to be
recycled into road construction material, it would tackle the problem of managing waste
while freeing up scarce land.

(a) On the basis of your understanding of the above passage, make notes on it using
headings and sub- headings. Use recognisable abbreviations wherever necessary
(minimum four) and a format you consider suitable. Also supply an appropriate title
to it. (5)
(b) Write a summary of the passage in about 80 words. (3)
Solution 6:
Suggested Notes as per CBSE
Waste Management: Some Facts
1. Reasons for keeping cities clean
1.1 to keep the residents healthy
1.2 health depends on
1.2.1 personal cleanliness
1.2.2 cleanliness of city
2. Reasons for waste management
2.1 being promoted through SBM
2.2 to sensitize imp. of waste separation
3. Challenges of waste management
3.1 has received less attn.
3.2 no focus on WM for health
3.3 biodegradable being mixed with solid waste
4. Benefits of organic manure
4.1 supplement of chem. fertilisers.
4.2 drought-proofing
4.3 makes roots stronger
5. Benefits of city compost
5.1 weed-free
5.2 more productive fields
5.3 chemical inputs avoided
6. Benefits of plastic roads
6.1 withstand monsoon damage
6.2 free lands from dumping waste

Key to Abbreviations

Abbreviations Words

SBM Swachh Bharat Mission

imp. importance
 attn. attention

WM waste management

chem. chemicals

Summary
Waste Management: Some Facts
It is important to keep the cities clean to keep the residents healthy. Their health depends
on personal cleanliness and the cleanliness of the city. It is crucial to sensitise the
importance of waste separation. Waste management is promoted through Swachh Bharat
Mission. Waste management is given less attention and biodegradable waste is mixed with
solid waste. There is no focus on waste management for health. Organic manure acts as a
supplement to chemical fertilisers, makes roots stronger and leads to drought-proofing. City
compost is weed-free, avoids chemicals and leads to productive fields. Plastic rods are able
to withstand monsoon and dumping is avoided.