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My Mother At Sixty-Six
What does the poetess, Kamala Das, want to convey through her poem ‘My Mother At Sixty-six’ ?
Or
Write down the ideas contained in the poem ‘My Mother At Sixty-six.’
Kamala Das is one of India’s foremost poets who captures subtleties of human relationship in this poem. She is going to the Cochin Airport in a car alongwith her mother. She is sixty-six. She is dozing with her mouth open. Her pale and ashen face is like a corpse. She looks as if she were lost in her own thoughts of ageing. The poetess paints her wan face like the late winter’s moon that starts decaying and losing its brightness. At that time she feels her old. Familiar ache of childhood with it the life starts and with ageing it ends.
On the other side, the poetess wants to do away with the thought of her mother. So he looks outside and sees the young trees sprinting and the children spilling out of their homes. All these activities represent continuity of life as well as the inevitable life circle. The presence of mother also suggests the unavoidable existence of an element of feminism in our life.
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Why did the poetess look outside her car?
How does the poetess describe the outside world? What does it signify?
What type of contracts one can realise in the poem “My Mother At Sixty-six?”
What does the poetess notice after the security check?
What has been the poetess’s childhood fear?
Or
What was the old familiar ache. That the poet felt when she left for the air port?
In the above lines ‘I’ stands for:
The narrator conducted herself than by:
The continuous smile of the poetess is an attempt:
TANZA - 1
Driving from my pare nt’s home to
Cochin last Friday morning,
I saw my mother, beside me
doze, open mouthed, her face ashen like that of a corpse.
Questions:
(i) Name the poem and the poet of these lines.
(ii) Where was the narrator going and when?
(iii) What did the narrator see beside her?
(iv) Who is ‘I’ in the above lines?
(v) How did her face look like?
STANZA-2
and realised with pain
that she thought away, and looked but soon
put that thought away, and looked out at young
trees sprinting, the merry children spilling out of their homes,
Questions:
(i) What did the poetess realise?
(ii) How did the poetess put away that thought?
(iii) What did she look out?
(iv) Trace the word in the stanza that means ‘Jovial’.
(v) What do the children and trees signify?
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