Brief summary of my mother at sixty six
Answers
The poet, Kamala Das also wrote by her pen-name of ‘Madhavikutty’. She was born in Kerala and is one of India’s first poets. Her subject – matter is basically related to her personality- beautiful, sensitive, bold and tormented. External factors do not reflect in her writings, her writings bring out her true inner feelings.
Her favorite poem is ‘composition’.
In the poem ‘My mother at sixty six’, she talks about her mother. This poem is based on mother-daughter relation and the poet shares her feelings for her mother.
My Mother at Sixty-Six
My Mother at Sixty-Six:
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 realized with pain
that she was as old as she
looked but soon
put that thought away, and
looked out at Young
Trees sprinting, the merry children spilling
out of their homes, but after the airport’s
security check, standing a few yards
away, I looked again at her, wan, pale
as a late winter’s moon and felt that old
familiar ache, my childhood’s fear,
but all I said was, see you soon, Amma,
all I did was smile and smile and smile.....
Summary
Firstly, when the poet is on her way to the cochin airport with her old mother sitting beside her, she looks at her closely and presents before us her image.
She compares her with a corpse. (similie is a figure of speech to show comparison between her mother’s face and a corpse.) As she looks at her mother’s pale and pallid face, she is struck with the horror and pain of losing her. The mother with the dozing face and open mouth is compared to a corpse. Here, the poet shows the typical love and affection which is present in a mother-daughter relation.
The poet is pained and shifts her attention outside the car in order to drive out the negative feelings. She changes her sad mood .The scene outside the window is of growing life and energy. The rapidly sprinting trees alongside the merrily playing children symbolize life, youth and vitality. The poet here is reminded of her own childhood when her mother had been young whereas now she is encircled with the fear of losing her and that has made her insecure.
She is at the airport to take a flight. It indicates departure and separation which creates melancholy. As she bids goodbye to her mother, the image of the old, wan, worn out mother in the twilight of years strikes her again. Here again a similie is used to compare her mother with a late winter’s moon whose light is obstacle by fog and mist As she looks old now, her personality is affected by it.
The poet is feeling the pain of separation, leaving her mother and going. Also, her childhood fear of losing her mother which she feels that earlier was temporary but now, could be forever as she could die of old age, is haunting her. She is so pained that it is natural for her to cry but keeping a brave front she hides her tears and smiles.
She bids farewell to her mother and keeping her hope of seeing her again alive, says “see you soon, Amma”. She hides her sorrow as she does not want to create a painful environment for her mother and conveys her that as she is enjoying her life similarly her mother should also be happy and enjoy her life.
(The poem revolves around the theme of advancing age and the fear that adheres to its loss and separation. It is a sentimental account of the mother’s approaching end through the eyes of the daughter. The seemingly short poem touches upon the theme of the filial bond between the mother and daughter smeared in the backdrop of nostalgia and fear. Nostalgia of the past (the time spent with the mother) and fear of the future without her.)
It is a short poem, without a full stop, the poem is like a long sentence, over flowing thought process. The poet uses the device of comparison and contrast, simile and repetition.
NEW / DIFFICULT WORDS
1) doze: a short, light sleep
2) ashen: very pale, like ash.
3) corpse: a dead body.
4) sprinting: here, shooting out of the ground.
5) spilling: here, to move out in great numbers.
6) wan: unnaturally pale, as from physical or emotional distress.
7) ache: pain.
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Answer:
'My mother at sixty-six' is a beautiful poem written by the popular Indian poet, Kamala Das, which describes a mother-daughter relationship along-with touching the topics of death and separation.
Explanation:
This poem consists of two parts.
The first part of the poem begins with these lines--"Driving from my parent's house to Cochin last Friday morning, I saw my mother beside me..."
The poet is talking about how she is on her journey, driving to the Cochin airport on a fine Friday morning, driving in a car while her mother is dozing off beside her. She takes a glance at her mother who is getting older as time passes. She sees her lovely mother sleeping peacefully with her mouth open. She describes the look of her mother's face as ashen, which is a simile showing her mother's face in comparison to that of a corpse. This is a representation of her face being weaker and wrinklier, and in some ways grayer due to old age. This realization makes her heart ache, as she sees her own mother's youth fading away and the truth of being separated seeping in. She not wanting to deal with the hurting thought any more, decides to distract herself and looks out of the window, to see 'young trees sprinting, merry children spilling out of their homes'. The poet uses this comparison to show the stark contrast between the inevitable old age and youth. As a person becomes old, his movements are slow whereas the youth is full of energy and swift in movement.
In the second part, the poet has arrived at the airport and is about to say goodbye to her mother. She is standing beyond the airport's security check, about to leave her mother and motherland. She looks at her mother one last time to look at the ill-looking face of her mother. She compares her mother's face to be pale like the late winter's moon, seemingly foggy and with holes, as she looks at her mother one last time, a long-buried childhood fear of separation from mother awakes again. But this time, she knows it to be certain, that her mother won't be there when she visits again. She was unable to say anything properly due to grief. Eventually, she renews her hope of seeing her mother again, and manages to say," ... see you soon Amma." She tries her best to suppress the sorrow hesitating to create a painful farewell, and as she moved on, she kept smiling.
The poems expresses the ideas of death, separation and old age in a bittersweet manner, the poem portrays that separation is inevitable and so is death, the final separation, instead of spending time grieving, we should make the most while that moment still exists. _________________________________________________________
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