Class 11 English · Original EZT practice
The Portrait of a Lady (Class 11): summary and reading practice
A remembered face is only the beginning of a portrait. Khushwant Singh builds his account through daily routines, changes of setting and small gestures. Practise explaining what those details suggest without claiming to know more than the narrator tells us.
6 original reading questions, 6 fresh self-check questions and 4 mixed questions, with model answers and reasons. These are not copied textbook exercises, an official chapter index or a full answer key. No affiliation with NCERT is claimed.
Official sources for topic and edition context, checked 17 October 2026:
A short summary for context
The narrator remembers his grandmother as old and bent, with one hand supporting her waist and the other holding her rosary. In the village, she readies him for school and accompanies him to the temple school. Moving to the city separates their daily routes. His English-school lessons are outside her knowledge and conflict with her expectations of education. Later, his own university room reduces their shared life further. She spends much of her time praying and spinning, with a lively pause to feed sparrows. He leaves to study abroad for five years; at the station she kisses his forehead. On his return she embraces him, and that evening departs from her prayer routine to sing with neighbouring women. The next morning she falls ill. Despite the doctor's reassuring view, she believes her end is near and turns to prayer. After her death, the family sees silent sparrows gathered near her body. They ignore the offered crumbs and leave when the body is carried away.
Original EZT paraphrase of the linked NCERT selection. Read the full account for its voice and detail.
Read, make a claim, support it, then revise.
Read the passage, then write your own answer. Choose an accurate detail and explain what it supports. Open the model only after attempting the question. Check whether you have confused an observation, a character's view and your interpretation.
Notice the limits of a remembered portrait
Reading approach: Separate the narrator's childhood impression from a literal fact about another person's life.
EZT practice question
A revision note says, "The grandmother never changed age for twenty years." Rewrite it as a careful literary observation, using the opening to explain your choice.
Show a model answer
- The opening presents the grandmother through the narrator's long familiarity with her old appearance.
- His difficulty imagining her as young reveals his perspective; it does not prove that she stopped ageing.
Answer: The narrator remembers her as so consistently old that he finds her youth hard to imagine. The apparent changelessness belongs to his remembered image, not to biology.
Check: A careful answer identifies whose impression is being described and avoids turning exaggeration into fact.
Watch for this: Do not treat an affectionate exaggeration as a medical claim.
Now try a fresh reading question
How can the narrator's difficulty imagining his grandfather with children support this reading of the opening?
Read a model response
It shows the same gap between an elderly image and a whole earlier life.
The grandfather's portrait makes him seem immensely old to the narrator. That response tells us about the viewer's imagination, not the grandfather's actual family history.
Choose details that do different jobs
Reading approach: Link a physical detail to a routine or action; avoid listing adjectives without explaining them.
EZT practice question
Build a two-sentence portrait using her hand at her waist and her preparation of the school things. What does each detail contribute?
Show a model answer
- The hand supporting her waist makes her stoop visible.
- Preparing the slate, ink-pot and pen shows practical care in a daily routine.
Answer: The hand at her waist makes the remembered body concrete, while the prepared school things show care through action. Together they make her more than a list of physical features.
Check: Both details are in the village passage; neither requires inventing a walking stick.
Watch for this: The text gives a hand at her waist, not a walking stick.
Now try a fresh reading question
Use the rosary and her patient response to sparrows on her body to add two different dimensions to a character sketch.
Read a model response
The rosary shows the place of prayer in her routine; not driving away the birds suggests gentleness toward them.
These are text-based inferences about habit and behaviour, not a claim that one detail explains her entire personality.
Read distance without inventing an argument
Reading approach: Compare what changes in a shared routine before claiming a change in affection.
EZT practice question
Explain the contrast between sharing a room in the city and no longer travelling to school together. Why do the two details belong in the same paragraph?
Show a model answer
- A shared room keeps them physically close at home.
- The motor bus and English school remove the journey and temple-school routine they once shared.
Answer: The contrast shows that physical nearness does not preserve every shared experience. Their daily companionship starts to thin even while they occupy the same room.
Check: The paragraph places room-sharing beside separate school travel; it does not describe a quarrel between them.
Watch for this: Do not invent continued shared meals or a deliberate decision to reject each other.
Now try a fresh reading question
At university the narrator gets a room of his own. What does the room change add to the earlier city-room contrast?
Read a model response
It gives a physical form to a distance already developing through different routines and education.
The separate room removes another everyday point of contact. It does not prove that affection has disappeared.
Attribute a character's view instead of endorsing it
Reading approach: Use phrases such as "she associates" when reporting a judgement the narrative assigns to a character.
EZT practice question
A draft says, "Music is unsuitable for respectable people." Explain why this misrepresents the passage, then replace it.
Show a model answer
- The passage describes the grandmother's associations with music, not an objective rule about music or social worth.
- Her reaction helps the reader understand the gap between her expectations and the city school.
Answer: The grandmother associates music with people she looks down on and silently disapproves of the lessons. Reporting that view does not require the reader or EZT to endorse it.
Check: The replacement names the person holding the view and connects it to the school scene.
Watch for this: Do not repeat demeaning social labels as if they are the lesson's own advice.
Now try a fresh reading question
How can you explain her distress at the missing scriptures without declaring either kind of education worthless?
Read a model response
Her expectations of education include religious teaching, while the city school offers different subjects. That mismatch helps explain her distress.
This compares the values shown in the passage without judging all traditional or modern education from one family's experience.
Set a gesture beside a change of routine
Reading approach: A small gesture and an unusual action can reveal feeling without a direct speech about it.
EZT practice question
Compare the farewell kiss with the evening of drumming and singing after the narrator returns. What can the contrast suggest, and what can it not prove?
Show a model answer
- At departure, prayer and silence accompany a kiss on his forehead.
- After his return, she gathers women and sings homecoming songs instead of following her usual evening prayer routine.
Answer: The kiss suggests affection within a restrained farewell; the later celebration allows a reading of more outwardly expressed joy. The contrast cannot prove that she felt nothing at departure or tell us every private thought.
Check: The answer distinguishes recorded actions from an interpretation of emotion.
Watch for this: Silence is not proof of indifference, and the scene is not a transcript of her mind.
Now try a fresh reading question
Why does the narrator's memory of the moist kiss matter more than simply saying, "She said goodbye"?
Read a model response
It gives the farewell a physical detail that he carries away as a possible last contact.
The remembered sensation makes his uncertainty and attachment specific without needing an invented speech.
Track sound before naming a theme
Reading approach: Compare an earlier scene with the ending, then mark the difference between observation and interpretation.
EZT practice question
Set the noisy daily feeding scene beside the silent gathering after her death. Explain how the contrast changes the mood without treating it as scientific proof of bird mourning.
Show a model answer
- During feeding, the birds crowd around her with much noise and movement.
- At the end, the narrator reports silence, ignored crumbs and their quiet departure.
Answer: The shift from lively noise to silence makes the loss felt through a familiar daily scene transformed. It invites a reading of the birds as sharing the household's grief, but the narrative does not establish a biological explanation for their behaviour.
Check: The answer keeps the reported behaviour separate from the literary effect it creates.
Watch for this: Do not claim the birds knew the cause of death or describe an unreported supernatural event.
Now try a fresh reading question
Why is the final mention of crumbs swept away more effective than adding an explanation of what every bird felt?
Read a model response
The unused crumbs leave an ordinary, concrete sign that the feeding routine has ended.
The detail preserves the quiet ending and its emotional effect rather than replacing it with unsupported access to the birds' thoughts.
Try a mixed set
Write your own explanation before opening each model response.
1. A character sketch calls her "only a lonely old woman". Add a qualification using one activity and one relationship.
Show answer and reason
She also sustains a daily life of spinning and prayer and a relationship with the sparrows she feeds.
The word "only" erases actions and connections that the account takes time to describe.
2. Can a model answer state that missing one evening of prayer caused her death?
Show answer and reason
No.
The narrative places the celebration, her belief about approaching death and the later death in sequence. It does not establish medical causation.
3. Suggest a reason why a prose account can be called a portrait even without being a painted image.
Show answer and reason
Selected details, habits and remembered scenes create an impression of a person.
The title can be read as a comparison between a verbal account and an artist's selection of features, not a claim that this is a complete biography.
4. Revise "The narrator knows exactly what his grandmother thinks throughout."
Show answer and reason
The narrator describes her actions and sometimes interprets her silence, but his account does not give complete access to her private thoughts.
This distinction supports careful reading of the farewell, the school disagreement and the final illness.
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Questions about this practice page
- Who wrote this account?
- Khushwant Singh wrote The Portrait of a Lady. It is the opening prose selection in the linked NCERT Hornbill source.
- Does every answer need the same interpretation?
- No. State your interpretation, point to an accurate detail and explain the connection. A model answer is one supported approach, not the only possible wording.
- Is this a full summary or exercise answer key?
- The short summary gives context for our selected reading questions. It is not a replacement for the story or a complete textbook exercise key.
- Can I call the sparrows' behaviour mourning?
- You can discuss mourning as a literary interpretation of the scene. Distinguish that reading from a verified claim about what the birds knew or felt.
- Are there fixed marks or guaranteed exam questions here?
- No. Follow your school's instructions for task type and length. This page makes no claims about question frequency or guaranteed marks.