In ‘An Old Woman’ the narrator presents a very common incident most tourists experience when they visit a historical shrine. Such tourist places are usually crowded out by beggars, vendors and tourist guides pestering tourists to give them alms or buy toys and trinkets or to hire them as guides respectively. The first four stanzas portray the old woman as ‘a burr’. The first stanza describes the narrator’s reaction. The sixth and seventh stanzas describe the narrator’s reaction and also signal a change in his attitude as well as his perspective towards old women.
The poem is a recollection of the narrator’s experience when he visited a historical place on the barren hills of Jejuri town, which houses the famous legendary ‘Horseshoe’ shrine for Khandoba, the presiding deity at Jejuri. The poet presents his experience dramatically helping the reader visualize it instantly. As soon as he had landed in the place, an old beggar woman grabbed hold of his sleeve and hobbled along with him, pestering him to give her a fifty paise coin in return for which she would guide him to the horseshoe shrine. Though he told her that he had already seen it, she persisted and did not let him go. At that moment, the poet’s previous experience of dealing with old women coupled with that incident makes the narrator express his annoyance and scorn for such old women saying that they are like ‘a burr’ which cannot be brushed off easily.
The narrator, then turned around to face her and send her away with a decisive look. Immediately, the old woman expressed her predicament stating that there was nothing else to do on those wretched hills except begging. Her statement shocked the narrator slightly. The old woman’s words triggered the moment of transformation in him. This made him look at her eyes sunk deep inside her face like two bullet holes and look right at the sky clearly through them. Her skin is wrinkled and cracks begin to appear around her eyes and spread beyond her skin. He feels that everything is falling apart. Everything is cracked and in ruins. The cracks spread beyond her skin to the hills and the sky. There is a catastrophe. The hills crack, the temples crack and the sky falls and shatters like a sheet of glass except for the “shatterproof crone who stands alone”. At this moment the poet realizes his own value. He has been reduced to a fifty paise coin in the hands of poverty. It is at this moment that the poet’s scorn for the old woman changes to respect.
