“The old woman reduces the self-esteem of the speaker and makes him feel that he is nothing more than 'so much small change'.”
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Answer:
Arun Kolatkar’s poem, ‘An Old Woman’, begins with a commonplace experience, but ends in a revelation. At every tourist place, you will meet a self-appointed tourist guide like the old woman in the poem. They need the money and will pester you. They even promise to give you some service in lieu of the money you give them.
Generally, tourists give them something to get rid of them. But a few are firmer and refuse to be influenced by the persuasive attempts of the guides. But what is to be understood is that they do what they do because they have no other means of earning their livelihood. If they don’t do what they do, perhaps the only option left for them is to beg. The very fact that they don’t beg, but offer their services shows that somewhere deep within them there is some self-respect and hence treating them as burr is inappropriate. Though they are irritating, one should remember that it is the circumstance that has reduced them to this. Especially in the case of an old woman like the one found on the hills, what else would you expect them to do for their living? When the speaker realises that he has no answer for the question posed by the woman, “What else can an old woman do on hills as wretched as these?’, his perception of the old woman undergoes a sudden change. Her eyes which are like bullet holes become a sign of her suffering. The cracks on her face become symbolic of the cracks in a society which do not care for the old and the meek. That is why the speaker says that her cracks extend beyond her skin, and the hills, temples and the sky crack. In other words, everything around her indicates the cracks in the life of such helpless-people. Yet she stands shatterproof, continuing with life doggedly whereas many others would have cracked under the blows of poverty.
Suddenly the speaker has a new-found respect for the old woman. She becomes a sign of her heritage – the land from which she comes. It is people who dismiss her with a fifty paise coin or shoo her away without giving even that who become as cheap as the fifty paise coin or shoo her away without giving even that who become as cheap as the fifty paise coin. Kolatkar describes this transformation in a tourist by placing before the readers the tourist’s experience at a pilgrim centre.