The Portrait of a Lady Summary In English

In ‘The Portrait of a Lady’, Khushwant Singh has given an account of his grandmother. He draws
a life-like portrait. She was very old. Her face was wrinkled. Her hair was white. It was hard to
believe that once she had been young and pretty. His grandfather’s picture hung above the
mantelpiece in the drawing room. He wore a big turban. His clothes were loose. He looked at
least a hundred years old. It was hard to believe that he had once a wife or children.
Khushwant Singh’s grandmother was a short lady. She was fat and slightly bent. She couldn’t
walk straight. She hobbled about the house. She had to keep one hand on her waist. It was to
balance her stoop. In the other she held a rosary. She was always telling the beads. Her lips
constantly moved in prayer. She put on white clothes. Her silver locks scattered over her pale
face. She looked like snowy mountains in winter. She was a picture of peace and contentment.
She was very old. Perhaps she could not have looked older. She looked the same for the last
twenty years.
Khushwant Singh and his grandmother were good friends. His parents went to city. They left him
with her in the village. She took good care of him. She used to wake him up in the morning. She
got him ready for the school. She said her morning prayer in sing-song manner. She hoped that
he would learn it by heart. He liked her voice but never bothered to learn it. Then she would
fetch his wooden slate. She had already washed it and plastered it with yellow chalk. She would
take an earthen inkpot and a reed-pen. She would tie them in a bundle and hand it to him. She
would given him a thick stale chapatti with little butter and sugar spread on it. It was his
breakfast. She carried several stale chapattis with her for the village dogs.
His grandmother always went to school with him. The school was attached to the temple. The
priest taught children the alphabet and the morning prayer. The children sat in two rows in the
verandah. They would sing the alphabet or the prayer in a chorus. The grandmother sat inside the
temple. She would read holy books. Then they would walk home together. The village dogs
would gather at the temple door. They threw chapattis to them. The dogs would growl and fight
with each other.
The narrator’s parents sent for them in the city. It was a turning-point in their friendship. They
shared the same room. But grandmother no longer went to school with him. The narrator used to
go to an English school in a motor bus. There were no dogs in the streets. So grandmother took
to feeding the sparrows.
Years rolled by. They saw less of each other. Sometimes she would ask him what the teacher had
taught him. She did not believe in the things they taught at the English school. She was unhappy.
She did not like English or Science. She felt sad that there was no teaching about God and the
scriptures at school. The narrator one day told her that they were being given music lessons. She
was disturbed. She thought music quite indecent. For her it was good only for prostitutes and
beggars. It was not meant for gentle folk.
The narrator went to university. He was given a room of his own. The common link of friendship
was broken. The grandmother accepted her loneliness quietly. She was always busy with her
spinning wheel and reciting prayers. She rarely talked to anyone. In the afternoon, she relaxed
for a while. Then she would feed the sparrows. She sat in the verandah. She broke the bread into
little bits. Then she would throw them to sparrows. Hundreds of sparrows came there. They
created a hell of noise. Some came and sat on her legs. Others would sit on her shoulders. Some
would sit even on her head. She smiled but never frightened them away. Feeding the sparrows
was the happiest half-hour of the day for her.
The narrator decided to go abroad for higher studies. He was to remain away for five years. The
grandmother was very old. She could die any moment. The narrator was worried. But the
grandmother was not upset. She showed no emotion. She came to the railway station to see him
off. Her lips moved in prayer. Her mind was lost in prayer. Her fingers were busy telling the
beads of her rosary. She kissed his forehead silently. The narrator thought that it was the last sign
of physical contact between them.
The narrator returned home after five years. His grandmother met him at the station. She did not
look a day older. She did not speak anything. She held him in her arms. She went on reciting her
prayers. In the afternoon she fed the sparrows as usual. In the evening a change came over her.
She didn’t pray. She collected the women of the neighbourhood. She got an old drum. She
continued thumping the old drum for several hours. She started singing. She sang of the home-
coming of warriors. They had to persuade her to stop. She might overstrain herself. It was for the
first time that she had forgotten to pray.
The next morning she fell ill. She had a mild fever. She told them that her end was near. She
realised that she had forgotten to pray. She didn’t want to talk. It would be waste of time. She
ignored their requests. She lay peacefully in bed. She was praying and telling beads. Then her
lips stopped moving. The rosary fell down from her lifeless fingers. Her face looked pale but
peaceful. She was dead. She was laid on the ground. She was covered with a red shawl.
Arrangements for her funeral were being made.
It was evening. The sun was setting. They brought a wooden stretcher. They stopped half-way in
the courtyard. Thousands of sparrows sat near her dead body. They did not chirrup. Everyone felt
sorry for the birds. The narrator’s mother brought some bread. She broke it into little crumbs.
She threw these crumbs to the sparrows. The birds took no notice of them. Then they carried her
dead body outside. The sparrows flew away quietly. The crumbs of bread still remained lying
there in the courtyard. Evidently, the sparrows had come to mourn the death of the grandmother.
 if We Can All Be Together Summary

In July 1976, the narrator, a 37 year-old businessman, his wife Mary, six year old son, Jonathan
and seven year old daughter, Suzanne set sail from Plymouth, England. They wished to go round
the world on a long sea journey as Captain James Cook had done 200 years earlier. They started
in 23 metre, 30 ton wooden-hulled boat named Wavewalker.
The first part of their planned three-year, 105,000 kilometre journey passed pleasantly. They
sailed down the west coast of Africa to Cape Town. They took on two crewmen-Larry Vigil, an
American and Herb Seigler, a Swiss to help them cross the rough southern Indian Ocean.
On their second day out of Cape Town, they faced extremely strong winds, which blew
continuously for next few weeks. Waves rose up to 15 metres. On December 25, they were 3500
kilometres east of Cape Town. Though the weather was very bad, they enjoyed Christmas and
New Year’s Day.
The weather changed for the worse. On January 2, there were mighty waves. They were sailing
at eight knots. They slowed down the boat by dropping the small sail and fastened mooring rope
in a loop across the hind part of the boat. Then they attached lifelines, put on water proof clothes
and life jackets and waited for the storm. The first sign of the imminent disaster came as
portentous silence. The wind dropped and the sky immediately grew dark. Then came a growing
roar and a very huge wave. A tremendous explosion shook the deck. The narrator’s head struck
on the wheel and he flew over the side of the boat into water. He was sinking below the waves.
He accepted his coming death.
Suddenly his head appeared out of water. A few metres away Wavewalker was about to turn over
in water. Then a wave threw her upright. Succeeding waves threw the narrator around the deck
like a rag doll. His left ribs cracked. His mouth was filled with blood and broken teeth. He,
somehow, found the wheel and lined up the stern for the next wave. There was
water .everywhere on the ship, but he could not leave his place in order to investigate the
situation. Suddenly his wife, Mary, opened the door in the deck and shouted that they were
sinking as the decks were broken.
The narrator asked her to take the wheel. Then he moved quickly to the door. Larry and Herb
were pumping water out of the ship. The wooden beams had broken. The whole starboard side
had bulged inwards. Clothes, crockery, charts, tins and toys moved around noisily in water. He
crawled into the children’s cabin. Sue had got a big bump on her head. He had no time to attend
to her.
He found a hammer, screws and canvas and started repair work. He managed to stretch canvas
and secure water proof hatch covers across the gaping holes. Most of the water was now being
deflected over the side. Then the hand pumps started to block up with debris. The electric pump
had a short circuit. Water level rose up dangerously. He found that their two spare hand pumps
had been pulled away by currents along with the forestay sail, the jib, the dinghies and the main
anchor. He searched another electric pump, connected it to an outpipe and water was pumped out
throughout night. They got no replies from their Mayday calls. Sue’s head had swollen
alarmingly. She had two enormous black eyes and a deep cut on her arm.
On the morning of January 3, the pumps had reduced the amount of water on board. Each of
them took rest for two hours turn by turn. They had survived for 15 hours since the wave hit the
Wavewalker, but she was not strong enough to take them to Australia. He checked the charts. He
calculated that there were two small islands a few hundred kilometres to the east. He hoped to
reach Le Amsterdam, a French scientific base. On January 4, after 36 hours of continuous
pumping, they reached the last few centimetres of water. Now they had to keep pace with the
water still coming in. Mary found some corned beef and cracker biscuits.
They ate their first meal in almost two days. Their relief was short lived. At 4 pm black clouds
began building up. Within an hour, the wind was back to 40 knots. The seas were getting higher.
Throughout the night, the weather became worse. By dawn on January 5, their situation was
extremely dangerous. The narrator went in to comfort the children. Jon asked if they were going
to die. The narrator tried to assure him that they could make it. Then Jon said. “We aren’t afraid
of dying if we can all be together.” The narrator could find no words to respond. He determined
to fight the sea. To protect the weak starboards side, he decided to stop the ship with the
undamaged port-hull facing the on coming waves. He used an improvised sea anchor of heavy
nylon rope and two 22 litre plastic barrels of paraffin. More water rushed in through the broken
planks in the evening.
On the morning of January 6, the wind became less severe. The narrator got a reading on the
sextant. He made quick calculations. She came in and gave him a card she had made. She had
drawn caricatures of Mary and the narrator. It also had a message expressing love and thanks. At
2 p.m., after checking calculations, the narrator asked Larry to steer a course of 185 degrees. He
could then expect to see an island at about 5 p.m. Then he went below, climbed on his bunk and
dozed off. He woke up at 6 p.m. Jon entered and asked if he could embrace his Daddy. She was
right behind him. They called him the best daddy in the whole world and the best captain. They
informed him that they had found the island.
The narrator rushed on deck. He saw the outline of the island of Ile Amsterdam. That night they
anchored offshore. The next morning all 28 inhabitants of the island cheered them and helped
them ashore. After reaching the land, the narrator thought of Larry and Herbie. They had been
cheerful under direst stress, Mary had stayed at the wheel for those crucial hours. Then he
thought of his seven year old girl, who did not want them to worry about her head injury and of
the six-year old boy who was not afraid to die…