Summary of The Portrait of a Lady – The story of The Portrait of a Lady is told by the author about his grandmother. The grandmother had a wrinkled, old face. Since the author’s childhood, he had seen her always in this way. He could not believe that she was a young, beautiful woman with a husband. She was short and fat with a slight bend. The author remembered seeing his grandfather in a portrait, an old man wearing a turban with a white beard on his chest. The author thought that his grandfather was not a man capable of having a wife or children but rather someone who would have many grandchildren. His grandmother would walk around the house wearing ‘Spotless White,’ her hand on her waist while counting beads from her rosary.
In the beginning, the author had a great relationship with his grandmother. She would wake him up to get him ready for the school day. She would pack his things for the day, and walk him to school each day. She would visit the temple attached to the school. She read the Scriptures every day. Together with other children, the author sat out on the verandah and sang morning prayers. The two used to walk back together, with dogs circling them and his grandmother carrying the stale chapatis to feed them.
The parents of the author, who had moved to the city for a new job, called them soon. When they arrived in the city, their relationship changed. They shared a room but their relationship grew apart. He began attending an English-medium school. She no longer accompanied her son to school and there are no more stray dogs that roam around them as they walk home. She would ask him what he learned and about his day. She couldn’t understand anything because it was all in a foreign language that she didn’t know. She did not approve of his new curriculum because she believed that it didn’t teach him anything about God or the Scriptures. They saw each other less.
He grew up and went to university. Their relationship soured when he got his own room. She stopped speaking to anyone and spent the day at her spinning wheels, reciting her prayers and moving beads on her rosary using one hand. She loved to feed sparrows on the verandah in the morning. Her daily routine was to break bread into small pieces and feed it to birds. Birds would perch on her legs, head and shoulders.
The author soon decided to continue his studies abroad. She went to the station to drop him off. She did not show sentimentality, but instead recited prayers continuously, losing her mind in them, and kissed her forehead. She was still the same five years later, when he came home. She picked him up at the train station and was just as she was five years earlier. She held him in her arms without saying a word. She used to still feed her sparrows.
She gathered the women in her neighbourhood and began singing. She was sick the next morning with a mild fever. The doctor told her that she had nothing to be concerned about, but she knew that the end was close.
She did not want to spend any more time with her family and instead spent her last moments reciting prayers on her bed. Her body was lifeless on the bed. They were preparing for her funeral when they noticed all the sparrows gathered in the verandah, mourning her.