English (Core) · Ch 9 — My Mother at Sixty-Six
About the Poet and the Poem
About the Poet and the Poem
Kamala Das was one of the most distinctive voices of modern Indian poetry written in English. She wrote in both English and, under a pen name, in her mother tongue Malayalam, and she became known for a candid, deeply personal style. Rather than hiding behind formal grandeur, she wrote openly about private feeling — love, longing, the female self, family bonds and the passage of time — in a plain, conversational manner that feels close to ordinary speech. Her honesty about inner emotional life, especially a woman's inner life, gave her work an intimacy that readers found both fresh and moving. This poem, prescribed in the CBSE Class 12 English NCERT syllabus, is a fine example of that confessional manner: it takes a small, everyday moment and lets it open into a large, painful truth.
Notice these words
- sprinting — a short, fast race; running
- wan — pale, colourless
The occasion of the poem
The poem grows out of a very ordinary situation that most people will recognise. The poet has been visiting her parents' home, and she is being driven from there to the Cochin airport to catch a flight back. Her elderly mother is travelling with her in the car, sitting beside her. During the drive the poet glances at her mother, who has dozed off with her mouth slightly open, and is struck by how old and worn her mother has become.
The whole poem is triggered by a single, quiet glance at a sleeping face. Nothing dramatic 'happens' in terms of plot — the power comes entirely from the poet's inner reaction to what she sees.
What the poet feels
Looking at her mother's pale, ashen, sleeping face, the poet is suddenly and painfully aware that her mother is ageing and that death, one day, will take her away. The sleeping face, drained of colour, momentarily resembles a lifeless one, and this frightens the poet. The fear is not new; it reaches back to a childhood terror of losing her mother, an anxiety that any child feels but usually keeps buried. Now, seeing the visible signs of old age, that buried fear surfaces again.
The poem also captures a very human contradiction. Even as this dread grips her, the poet tries to push it away — she deliberately turns her attention outside the car to look at signs of life and youth, and at the airport she hides her sorrow behind a cheerful smile so as not to distress her mother. In other words, the poem is about the ache of watching a loved parent grow old, and about the brave, loving effort to conceal that ache.
Why the poem matters
'My Mother at Sixty-six' speaks to a universal experience: the moment a grown child realises that a parent is mortal and that the roles of protector and protected may one day reverse. Its strength lies in its restraint — the emotion is enormous, but the language is quiet and simple, and the feeling is conveyed through a few sharp images rather than through open weeping. This makes the poem an example of how great emotion can be handled with control and understatement, which is one of the reasons it is so widely studied and admired in Class 12 English.