A Photograph Questions and Answers, English NCERT Hornbill

Ans. The camera has captured the sweet memories when mother with her cousin Betty and Dolly went to the sea beach to spend their holidays.

Ans. The sea has not changed over the years. The poet’s mother is no more. This suggests that human life is transient (short-lived) as compared to the permanence of nature.

Ans. Mother would look at the photograph and laugh at fleeting moments that had long past. She becomes happy as well as sad to remember her good old childhood days that could not come back.
The poet looks at her mother’s photograph and relived the memories of her mother. She also becomes happy to see her mother’s laughter but felt pain on losing her.

Ans. This circumstance refers to the death of the poet’s mother. It is as real to the poet as was the moments of being clicked on the beach to her mother. Both had become memories of mother’s past and that of the poet’s past.

Ans. The poet’s mother is dead and this situation has made everybody and everything silents. When the poet looks at her mother’s photograph she also lost in her mother’s memories. The photograph is silent and the less of the poet’s mother makes the poet silent.

Ans. The first stanza depicts the childhood age of the poet’s mother when she was a pretty young girl.
The second stanza depicts the memory of the middle-aged mother who laughs at her own photograph.
The third stanza depicts the last stage of life when nothing is left except sadness and loneliness.

Ans. Alliteration, Transferred epithet, Synechdoche are the poetic devices used in ‘terribly transient feet’.