The Namesake By Jhumpa Lahiri

 

The novel, 'The Namesake', by Jhumpa Lahiri, also a major motion picture in the same name by Monsoon Wedding fame Mira Nair is a very simple story, with an interesting subject the one all own - their name. This was 83rd of 2020.   The story depicts struggles of different generations, especially their ways of adapting to different culture and with one another.  

The story begins as Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, a young Bengali couple, leave Calcutta, India, and settle in Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ashoke is an engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Ashima struggles through language and cultural barriers as well as her own fears as she delivers her first child alone. Had the delivery taken place in Calcutta, she would have had the baby at home, surrounded by family. The delivery is successful, but the new parents learn they cannot leave the hospital before giving their son a legal name.

The traditional naming process in their families is to have an elder who will give the new baby a name, and the parents waited for the letter from Ashima's grandmother. The letter never arrives, and soon after, the grandmother dies. Ashoke suggests the name of Gogol, in honor of the famous Russian author Nikolai Gogol, to be the baby's pet name, and they use this name on the birth certificate. As a young man, Ashoke survived a train derailment with many fatalities. He had been reading a short story collection by Gogol just before the accident, and lying in the rubble of the accident he clutched a single page of the story "The Overcoat" in his hand. With many broken bones and no strength to move or call out, dropping the crumpled page is the only thing Ashoke can do to get the attention of medics looking for survivors. Though the pet name has deep significance for the baby's parents, it is never intended to be used by anyone other than family. They decide on Nikhil to be his good name. By the time he turns 14, he starts to hate the name. His father tries once to explain the significance of it, but he senses that Gogol is not old enough to understand. By the time he turns 14, he starts to hate the name. His father tries once to explain the significance of it, but he senses that Gogol is not old enough to understand. Gogol introduces Maxine to his parents. Ashima dismisses Maxine as something that Gogol will eventually get over. Shortly after this meeting, Ashoke dies of a heart attack while teaching in Ohio. Gogol travels to Ohio to gather his father's belongings and his father's ashes, and in attempting to sort out his emotions, Gogol gradually withdraws from Maxine, eventually breaking up with her. He begins to spend more time with his mother and sister, Sonia.

Later, Ashima suggests that Gogol contact Moushumi, the daughter of one of her friends, whom Gogol knew when they were children, and whose intended groom, Graham, broke up with her shortly before their wedding. Gogol is reluctant to meet with Moushumi because she is Bengali, but does so anyway, to please his mother.

Moushumi and Gogol are attracted to one another and eventually are married. But their marriage do not last long. Gogol is once again alone. He is nonetheless comforted by the fact that Ashoke, prior to his death, finally told his son why he had chosen that name for him. Gogol comes to accept his name and picks up a collection of the Russian author's stories -'The short stories of Nikolai Gogol', that his father had given him as a birthday present many years ago. On it was written 'For Gogol Ganguli', in red ballpoint ink, the letter rising gradually, optimistically, on the diagonal toward the upper right-hand corner of the page. " The man who gave you his name, form the man who gave you your name", 1982. Dostoyevsky once said, "We all came out of Gogol's overcot", his father had told him on his birthday then. 

In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforseen, unintended, one incident begetting another. It had started with his father's train wreck, paralyzing him at first, later inspiring him to move as far as possible, to make a new life, on the other side of the world. ...and then a series of them...They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.