Skip to main content

‘The Namesake’ by Jhumpa Lahiri



                                                                   


                "The Namsake" is the story of an immigrant Bengali family living in the US – the Gangulies. Ashima Ganguly gives birth to a baby boy in 1968. Her husband Ashoke, had a scrape with death in a train accident 7 years earlier and believes that the book he was reading – The Overcoat by Nicolai Gogoll – was a lucky charm which saved him. They end up naming their son Gogol, the namesake of Nikolai Gogol. This odd name turns him into an introvert and he decides to change it to a more acceptable Nikhil. The book takes us through Gogol’s life as he grows up, attends an Ivy-League school, becomes a successful architect, falls in love with an American girl, breaks up with her, marries a Bengali girl and ends up with a divorce.

                  The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. 

                  As a desi in America and a vilayati in India, the perils of an American-born-Indian child is brought out beautifully in the situations where Gogol and his sister Sonali visit Calcutta. The way Gogol tries to distance himself from his family and his Bengali origins ought to make you angry, but Lahiri explains his emotions in such a detailed and vivid manner that you end up empathising with him. The difficulties that a traditional Indian house-wife faces in a foreign land, amidst new people, new language and new cultures is excellently portrayed through Ashima’s character.

                  Jhumpa Lahiri, through her lucid writing makes Gogol and his family come alive among us, as the family next door or far off relatives. She succeeds in painting a subtle canvas of life in “a string of accidents, events unforeseen and unintended”, making them fluid and accessible to the readers. Her eye for details makes the book picturesque for us to read.

                 'The Namesake’ undoubtedly becomes a MUST READ for every individual, irrespective of their nationality and cultural preference. ‘The Namesake’ beautifully enacts the lives of the Ganguly family across generations for us. The story is filled with simplicity and confusion of the family estranged from its roots.
Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The Purpose" by T.P.Kailasam

                Purpose, by T.P. Kailasam, is a short play dramatizing events that occurred in the Mahabharata involving Drona, Arjuna, and Eklavya. Drona is a skilled teacher, renown throughout the land for his wisdom and skill. Arjuna is a prince of a great kingdom. Eklavya is a tribal boy from a relatively far-away area. We study about Indian writing in English to Indian writer like  T.P.Kailasam . He was written at different and post colonial thinks in portrayed Ekalavya character. The Purpose by T. P. Kailasam is a drama in two acts. The story is based on Adiparva from ‘The Mahabharata”.  As we see that in the story how Kailasam given margin and criticize to Arjun and Dhrona Characters.  The story moves around Ekalavya and Arjun and their purpose behind learning archery. Both want to learn archery from the great Dronacharya.  But we see post colonial thinks in Ekalavya characters are center and periphery to Ajuna’s character. When the story goes that ancient time in
Post a Comment
Read more

"The Fakeer of Jungheera" by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio

                                                                      The Fakeer of Jungheera is a long poem by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio. He was poet, novelist and writer. Most of the work in found to Indian religious, culture, rule and regulation, rigidity, culture etc. His writing in see to voice of against to society. Something should be real and has society represented of cruel way. In this long poem,  “The Fakeer of Jungheera” in protagonist of the Fakeer poem is a robber Fakeer or a mendicant,  who belongs to some unidentified Muslim sect, while the heroine  the widow Nuleeni,  comes from an upper cast Bengali Hindu family. The Fakeer of Jungheera' Deroiz mixed the tantric, Hindu, Mythological, Islamic and Cristian tradition. He got the idea about writing the poem of spiritual love from Baital Pachisi. As the story goes, if King Vikram remains stead fast  in his love for his queen he can resurrect her and once more both can find happiness together. The dauntl
Post a Comment
Read more

A Baby Running Barefoot

                                          "A Baby Running Barefoot"                                                                                             D. H. Lawrence                                         In the poem "A baby running barefoot" by D.H. Lawrence uses imagery to describe how the baby is running around beautifully and barefooted.                                     The poem is spoken in the voice of a first person narrator who is watching a female baby run across the grass. The narrator uses similes and metaphors that describe the baby's feet by comparing them to aspects of the natural world such as butterflies, flowers, and water.                       In the first line the poet talks about the "Barefeet" of baby who runs across the grass. He then tells about her little white feet, nod like the flower, nod in the wind he beautifully had described. How a baby child runs across the grass out of innocence
1 comment
Read more