The Portrait of A Lady

The Portrait of A Lady – The author and his grandmother share a close, intimate bond. She is a deeply religious, kind, and old woman, with a wrinkled face and white clothes, who the author describes as an “expanse of pure white serenity”. She wakes him up, prepares him for school, and walks him to the attached temple, where she reads scriptures while he studies. On the way back, she feeds stale chapattis to the village dogs. The turning point in their relationship occurs when they move to the city. The author starts going to an English school in a motor bus, and the grandmother can no longer accompany him or help with his lessons. She is upset that the school teaches science and music instead of religious scriptures and moral values. This difference in outlook and the lack of shared routines creates a quiet emotional distance between them, though they still share the same room. She accepts her seclusion and finds solace in her spinning wheel and feeding sparrows in the afternoon.