Summary

Situation: The poet, Kamala Das, is driving to the airport with her ageing mother. She glances at her mother, who is dozing beside her, and is struck by the mother's frail, pale face — “ashen like a corpse”. The sight triggers a deep, painful awareness of her mother's mortality. At the airport, during the security check, the poet sees her mother again from a distance, looking wan and small. She feels the old childhood fear of losing her mother, but she hides her anguish behind a smile and says goodbye, saying “See you soon, Amma.”

Central idea: The poem captures the universal, painful realisation that a parent is growing old and will eventually die. It contrasts the poet's present grief with the vitality of youth and nature, and explores the tension between acknowledging mortality and the need to remain cheerful in a farewell moment.

Key poetic devices:

• Simile: “her face ashen like that of a corpse” — compares the mother's pale complexion to a dead body, directly conveying frailty and the nearness of death.
• Simile: “as a late winter's moon” — compares the mother's wan, diminished appearance to the pale, weak moon at the end of winter, suggesting fading life.
• Personification: “trees sprinting, the merry children spilling out of their homes” — nature and youth are given human energy, creating a sharp contrast with the mother's stillness and decay.
• Metaphor: The entire drive and airport scene is a metaphor for the journey of life and the inevitable parting of death.
• Repetition: “smile and smile and smile” — the repeated word emphasises the effort and pain behind the forced cheerfulness, masking the poet's inner sorrow. …