Chapter 1 – A Photograph Questions and Answers: NCERT Solutions for Class 11 English (Hornbill Poem)

Question 1.
What does the word ‘cardboard’ denote in the poem? Why has this word been used?

Answer:
The word “cardboard” in the poem refers to the photograph. It is just a piece of paper a memory as the poet’s mother is dead and gone. It signifies the transience of life and what remains is an insignificant piece of paper.

Question 2.
What has the camera captured?

Answer:
The camera has captured the scene when the poet’s mother and her two female cousins, Betty and Dolly, went paddling. They were holding the poet’s mother’s hands. The elder of the three was about twelve years. The three of them stood smiling as the wind tousled their hair.

Question 3.
What has not changed over the years? Does this suggest something to you?

Answer:
The sea has not changed over the years. It remains the same through generations. On the contrary, life is transient. The mother has now been dead for years. Human life is transitory and this transience is contrasted with the permanence of nature.

Question 4.
The poet’s mother laughed at the snapshot. What did this laugh indicate?

Answer:
The mother laughed at the fleeting moments that had long passed. She relived the memories when they were dressed as children and taken out. She laughed as she recalled the happy memories.

Question 5.
What is the meaning of the line “Both wry with the laboured ease of loss.”

Answer:
The poet’s mother had been out on a beach holiday, years back and felt nostalgic about it, similar to what the poet felt when she relived the memories of her dead mother. The memories, in each case, were beautiful, but painful to recall as time slipped away, so easily.

Question 6.
What does “this circumstance” refer to?

Answer:
“This circumstance” is the death of the mother. This fact is as true and as real as the one that her mother had experienced, on the beach. Both the situations are now a memory of the past. The first is a memory of the mother’s past and the second of the poet’s past.

Question 7.
The three stanzas depict three different phases. What are they?

Answer:
The first stanza is the poet’s description of the photograph that had been captured from her mother’s childhood. The second stanza deals with recollections. The mother’s recollection of her childhood just as the poet recalls her mother who is now dead. The third stanza philosophises death and the transience of life.
A Photograph Extra Questions and Answers

Question 1.
Who have been captured by the camera on the cardboard photograph ?

Answer:
The cardboard photograph shows three figures—two cousins and the poet’s mother.

Question 2.
Where were the three photographed ? By whom ?

Answer:
The photograph was taken when the three had gone with the poet’s uncle to a beach. It was their sea holiday, and the camera was clicked by the uncle.

Question 3.
The face of the poet’s mother was sweet and glowing. Why ?

Answer:
The mother looked sweet or charming for two reasons. She was young and still issueless.

Question 4.
What does the poet mean by ‘terribly transient feet’ ?

Answer:
The human body is perishable and fast changing. The sea waves washed the feet of the three women which lost their smoothness and glow with the passage of time.

Question 5.
Explain : “The sea holiday was her past, mine is her laughter.”

Answer:
The mother was amused to see her photograph after a gap of thirty years. Her pleasure trip had become a thing of the past. For the poet, her laughter became history after her death.

Question 6.
Its silence silences. Elaborate.

Answer:
The period of several years after mother’s death proved so colourless and smooth that the poet bps nothing to say about it. The silence of time silenced the poet also.

Question 7.
Sum up the main features of the poem ‘A Photograph’ in about 80 words.

Answer:
A Photograph speaks about the melancholy mood of the poet. A photograph of his late mother recreates the image of her mother from the past. It shows her mother when she was young, sweet and lively. Some two decades later the mother sees that photograph and laughs aloud. Time passed. In the third phase, the mother too is dead and gone. The poet is left with her memory which also is fading.