English (Core) · Ch 1 — The Portrait of a Lady
Summary of the Lesson
Summary of the Lesson
The author begins with a portrait of his grandmother as he had always known her: short, fat and slightly bent, her face a criss-cross of wrinkles, dressed in spotless white, one hand telling the beads of her rosary and her lips forever moving in silent prayer. He could not believe she had ever been young or pretty — the very idea seemed "almost revolting" — yet to him she was always beautiful, like a peaceful winter landscape in the mountains. His grandfather he knew only from a portrait above the mantelpiece, a man who looked "at least a hundred years old."
The village years
When his parents moved to the city, the boy was left with his grandmother, and the two were "good friends," constantly together. She woke him, bathed and dressed him, said her morning prayers aloud hoping he would learn them, prepared his wooden slate, ink-pot and pen, and gave him a breakfast of stale chapatti. She walked him to the village school, which was attached to the temple: while the children chanted the alphabet and prayers on the verandah, she sat inside reading the scriptures. On the way back she fed the village dogs the chapattis she carried.
The city years — the turning-point
When the parents were settled, they sent for the two, and this was "a turning-point in their friendship." Now the boy went to an English school by motor bus; his grandmother could no longer come with him. She could not help with his lessons and was distressed by what he learnt — English words, the law of gravity, Archimedes' Principle, that the earth was round — because there was no teaching about God or the scriptures. When he told her he was being given music lessons, she was very disturbed, for to her music had "lewd associations." She grew silent, spoke to him rarely, and took to feeding sparrows in the courtyard.
University and going abroad
At university he was given a room of his own and "the common link of friendship was snapped." She accepted her seclusion with resignation, spending the whole day at her spinning-wheel reciting prayers, relaxing only in the afternoon to feed the sparrows — her happiest half-hour, when hundreds of birds settled on her. When the author left to study abroad for five years, she showed no emotion at the station: she prayed, told her beads, and silently kissed his forehead.