Summary of The Portrait of a Lady

The summary of The Portrait of a Lady is a true story about the author’s grandmother. Kushwant Singh is the name of the person who wrote it. Old lady was his grandmother. The author tells us about his childhood and how he spent a lot of time with his grandmother. Over time, the author has talked about his relationship with his grandmother. He thinks about what she did every day and how she changed as a person over time. He talks about how she looks, which helps the reader get an idea of what she looks like.

The Portrait of a Lady summary in English

This poem’s summary will tell you about the writer’s life with his grandmother. This summary shows all the beautiful and sad parts of the story. The summary will tell you about how great the writer’s relationship with his grandmother was.

The author remembers his grandmother as being short, healthy, and a little crooked. Her hair was silver, and it was all over her wrinkled face in a messy way. She used to wear white clothes everywhere in the house. She put one hand on her waist and used the other to move the beads on her rosary.
The author doesn’t think she’s very pretty, but she’s always beautiful. He says that her calm face is like a winter scene. During their long time in the village, Grandmother got him out of bed early in the morning, put glue on his wooden slate, made sure he had breakfast, and sent him to school. The school was linked to the temple. She stayed inside and read holy books while the kids learned the alphabet.

On the way back home, she would feed the street dogs the stale chapattis. When they moved to a city, their relationship took a turn for the better. Even though they shared a room, they started to become less close to each other. Now, the writer used to take a school bus to school in the city, where he learned things like English, physics, maths and many other things that his grandmother had no idea about.

His grandmother couldn’t send him to school anymore because she couldn’t go with him. She was upset that the city school didn’t teach anything about God or the Bible. Instead, he was taught music, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t like music at all. She said it was only good for prostitutes and people who begged. It wasn’t meant for a gentleman.

The writer got a separate room in his house when he went to college. The grandson and the grandmother could no longer talk to each other like they used to. Grandma didn’t talk to many people in the house anymore. The writer’s grandmother took her loneliness quietly. She was always busy with her spinning wheel and her prayers, and she didn’t talk to anyone very often. In the afternoon, she took a break. Her daily routine was to cut up pieces of bread and give them to the birds. The birds would sit on her legs, head, and even shoulders.

When the writer went to study abroad, his grandmother did not care at all that he was leaving. She went to the train station to say goodbye, but she didn’t say anything and just kissed him on the head. Her lips moved as she prayed, her mind was filled with prayers, and her fingers were busy saying the story of the beads on her rosary. When the writer saw how old his grandmother was, he thought it might be his last time to see her. But when he went away for five years, his grandmother was waiting for him when he got back. She was happy to see him again.

The next morning, after his grandson came back, she got sick. Even though the doctor said it was just a mild fever that would go away soon, she could tell that her time was coming to leave this world. She didn’t want to waste her time talking to someone. She was busy telling the story of each bead on her rosary with her fingers.
She went to bed and prayed and told the beads until her lips stopped moving and the rosary fell from her dead hand. After she died, her red shawl-wrapped body was found on the floor. To show how sad they were about her death, thousands of sparrows flew in and sat all over her body. When the dead body of the old lady was taken away for the last rites, all the sparrows flew away without making a sound.

Conclusion of The Portrait of a Lady

To sum up, the writer and his grandmother loved each other very much and had a beautiful relationship, as shown in the portrait of a lady summary. The story shows how a grandson and his grandmother can have a wonderful relationship.