28. the NAMESAKE

Jhumpa Lahiri 2003

In a moving and informative story, Gogol Ganguli, born in Boston, narrates his struggles: foremost with his name Gogol, his Bengali parents Ashoke and Ashima, the balance between two cultures with its clashing traditions, his love interests and ultimately his heritage as it relates to his own place in this world.

"On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in a bowl. She adds salt, lemon juice, thin slices of green chili pepper, wishing there were mustard oil to pour into the mix."(1)

"You are still young. Free...Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late."(16)

"My grandfather always says that's what books are for...to travel without moving an inch."(16)

"When he looks back at the child, the eyes are open, staring up at him, unblinking, as dark as the hair on its head. The face is transformed; Ashoke has never seen a more perfect thing...As a father to his son...Being rescued from that shattered train had been the first miracle of his life. But here, now, reposing in his arms, weighing next to nothing but changing everything, is the second."(24)

"Pet names are never recorded officially, only uttered and remembered. Unlike good names, pet names are frequently meaningless, deliberately silly, ironic, even onomatopoetic."(26)

"But this isn't possible, Ashima and Ashoke think to themselves. This tradition doesn't exist for Bengalis, naming a son after father or grandfather, a daughter after mother or grandmother. This sign of respect in America and Europe, this symbol of heritage and lineage, would be ridiculed in India. Within Bengali families, individual names are sacred, inviolable. They are not meant to be inherited or shared."(28)

"For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy--a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect."(49)

"As a young boy Gogol doesn't mind his name. He recognizes pieces of himself in road signs: Go Left, Go Right, Go Slow."(66)

"...the only person who didn't take Gogol seriously, the only person who tormented him, the only person chronically aware of and afflicted by the embarrassment of his name, the only person who constantly questioned it and wished it were otherwise, was Gogol."(100)

"A bowl of small, round, red potatoes is passed around, and afterward a salad. They eat appreciatively, commenting on the tenderness of the meat, the freshness of the beans. His own mother would never have served so few dishes to a guest."(133)

"She has the gift of accepting her life; as he comes to know her, he realizes that she has never wished she were anyone other that herself, raised in any other place, in any other way. This, in his opinion, is the biggest difference between them, a thing far more foreign to him that the beautiful house she'd grown up in, her education at private schools."(138)

"How long do I have to remember it?"..."Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting. "Remember that you and I made this journey, that went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go."(187)

"He wonders how his parents had done it, leaving their respected families behind, seeing them so seldom, dwelling unconnected, in a perpetual state of expectation, of longing."(281)

"In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another."(286)

"The Short stories of Nikolai Gogol. "For Gogol Ganguli..."(288)