The Portrait of Lady 🙏

❤😂

My Grend mother like everybody  grandmother's , was an old women She has been old and wrinlemd for the twenty years, that i had know her people said that she had once been  young and pretty and had even a husband .but that was hard to believe . My Grandmother's portrait hung above the mantelpiece in the drawing room.He wore a big turban  and losses fitting clothes .His long white board covered the best part of his chest and  he looked at least a husband year's old.He didn't look the sort of person who would have a wife or children .He looked as if he could only have lots and lots of grandmother .As for my grandmother being young and pretty the throught was almost revolting .she often told us of the game s she used to play as child.That seemed quite absurd and undignified on her part and we tested it like the fables of the prophets and used to tell is.  She had always been sort and  fat  and slightly bent , Her face was a criss cross of wrinkles running from everywhere to everywher  . No we were certain she had always been are we had  know her old , so terribly old that  she could not grow  older said  that at the same age for twenty years , she could never have been prettry but she was always beatiful she hobbled about the house in  spotless while with one hand resting in her waist to balance her stop and the other telling  the beads or her rosary , Her silver locks were scattere untridly  over her pale. puckered face and her lips constanily moved in inaudible prayer yes she was beatiful she was like the winter landscape peace and cintentment,

My grandmother's and i were good friends MY parents left me with her when they went to live in the city and we were constantly  together , She usef to wake me up in the morning and get me ready for school , she said her morning prayer in a monotonous sting song while she bathed ad dressed me in the hope  that i loverd her voice never bothered to learn it  Then she would fetch my wooden state which she had already washes and plastere with yello chalk , a tiny carthen ink pot and aa red pen the them all in a bundle and hand to me , After a breakfast of a thick state chapatti with a little butter and sugar apread on it we went to school , She carried several state chapatts with her for the villages dogs ,

 My Grandmother always went to school with me because the school was attaches to in the temple , The priest laught us the alphabet and the morning prayer ,

 WHile the children sat in rows  on other side of the verandah singing the alphabt of the prayer in a chrous , My grandmother sat inside readding tp the scriptures, when  we had both finished we would walk back together , This time the village dogs would meet us at the temple door , They followed us to our home growing and fighting with eatch other fir the chapattis we threw to them, 

When my parents were comfortably settled in the city they sent for us , That was a turing -pOINT IN OR FRIENDSHIP ALTHOUGH WE SHARED THE SAME ROOM , My grandmother no longer came in school with me , I used to go to an english school in a motor bus, There were no dogs in the  streets and she  took to feeding sparrows in the courrlyard or our  city house ,

As  the  years rolled by we saw less of each other, For some time she continued to wake me up and get me ready for school When i came back she would ask me what the teacher had, taught me, I  would tell her english words or and little things of western science and learning , the law of gravity , Arcchimedes principle the workd being round , Etc   This made her unhappy she could not help me with my lessons , She did not belive in the things they taught at the English school and was distressed that there was no teaching about God and the scrptures , One day i announced that we were being give music lessons , She was very disturbed to her music had lewd associations , it was the monopoly 

of harlots and begars and not meant for gentefolk  She said nothing but her silence meant disapproval , She rarely talked to me after that,

When i went up to unvirsity  i was given a room of my own , The common link of friendship was snapped,  Mygrandmother  accepted her aeclusion with resignation she rarely left her springing wheel to talk to anyone , From sunrise to sunset she by her wheel spinning and recltting prayers , while she sat in the verandah breaking the bread into little bits, hundreds of little birds collected round her creating a vertable bedlam of chirrupings  Some came and perched on her legs others on her sholders some , even sat on her head she smiled but never shooed them way, it used to be the happlest half hour of the day for  her, 

when i decided to go  abroad for futher studies , i was  sure my grandmother would be upset ,i would be away for five years and at her age one could never tell she came to leave me at the railway  station but  did not talk or show any emotion , Her lips moved in prayer her mind was lost in prayer , Her fingers were busy telling the beads or her rosary silently she kissed my forhead And when i left cherished the moist important as perhaps the last sign of physical contact between us , But that was not so After five years  i came back home and was met by her at the station , she didnot look a day older , 

She still had no time for words, and while she clasped me in her arms i could hear her recting her prayers, Even on the first day of my arrival her happiest moments were with her sparrows whom she fed longer and with frivoius rebuke , in the evening a change came over fr she did drum and collected the women of the neighbourhood got an oldfrum and started to sing , For several hours she thumped the sagging skins of the dilapidated drum ,

  i was very lots of love own  Grandmother ,