My Mother at Sixty-Six by Kamala Das

Extract Questions

Q1 Driving from my parent’s

home to Cochin last Friday

morning, I saw my mother,

beside me,

doze, open mouthed, her face

ashen like that

of a corpse and realised with pain

Answer the following.

(a) The poet was driving from her parents’ home to Cochin. (True/False)

(b) The poet was dozing beside her mother, open-mouthed. (True/False)

(c) On which day did the incident of the poem take place?

(d) What colour, according to the poet, describes the colour of a corpse?

Ans :

(a) True (b) False (c) Friday morning (d) ashen

Q2. ...I saw my mother,

beside me,

doze, open mouthed, her face

ashen like that

of a corpse and realised with pain…

Answer the following.

(a) The poet saw her mother sitting beside her, open mouthed. (True/False)

(b) Her mother’s face looked ashen, as her mother was a corpse. (True/False)

(c) The poet’s mother was sitting beside her and ____________ .

(d) Seeing her mother beside her, brought home to the poet a painful ____________ .

Ans :

(a) False (b) False (c) dozing (d) realisation

Q3. …I looked again at her, wan, pale

as a late winter’s moon and felt that old

familiar ache, my childhood’s fear.

Answer the following.

(a) When the poet looked at her mother she looked wan and pale. (True/False)

(b) What kind of ache rose in the poet’s mind due to a childish fear?

(c) The poet’s mother’s face looked pale as the ____________ moon.

(d) The reference to a fear is traced to the poet’s ____________ .

Ans :

(a) True (b) Childish (c) winter’s (d) childhood

Q4. What is the kind of pain and ache that the poet feels?

                                                            Or

What kind of pain does Kamala Das feel in ‘My Mother at Sixty-six’?

Ans : Whenever the poet looks at the colourless and pale face of her mother, her old familiar pain surfaces realising that her mother was ageing and would die soon.

Q5. Why are the young trees described as ‘sprinting’?

Ans : The young trees are described as “sprinting” because when we look at them from a moving car, they seem to be running fast in the opposite direction.

Q6. Why has the poet brought in the image of the merry children ‘spilling out of these home’?

Ans : The image of the merry children ‘spilling out of their home’ suggests the idea of youth and beauty in contrast to the ashen-like pale wan face of the ageing mother of the poet. This image emphasises the fact that the old mother has lost vitality, energy, charm, beauty and youth.

Q7. Why has the mother been compared to the late winter’s moon?

Or

Why does Kamala Das compare her mother to a pale winter’s moon?

Ans : The mother has been compared to the late winter’s moon as she is very old and her face is ashen, pale and withered. She looks very dull and lifeless like the late winter’s moon.

Q8. What do the parting words of the poet and her smile signify?

Ans : The parting words express the poet’s optimism. These words console the mother that she would soon visit her again. She smiles to conceal her fear and pain of separation from her mother and gives her ageing mother an assurance of survival.

Q9. What were the poet’s feelings at the airport? How did she hide them?

Ans : The poet was full of pain and fear of being separated from her ageing mother. The fear of losing her mother gripped her. But she bade her mother goodbye with a smile to give her hope of survival and meeting again.

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