Book Review The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

chillibreeze writer — Nishi Viswanathan

Would you enjoy pages and pages of mundane stuff describing day-to-day situations with a sense of melancholy? Probably not. However, Jhumpa Lahiri manages to sustain your interest in even the tiniest details of her first novel, The Namesake.

As you begin reading the book, you sense it is something special, something different. But as you flip through a few pages, you realize it is not too different from the numerous “Indian immigrant experience” novels churned out by expatriate Indian authors. The same cleverly masked American disdain for anything remotely Indian, the same description of ‘America’ as seen by Indians right off the boat, the same confusion faced by the so-called “ABCDs” or American Born Confused Desis, and the same stereotypical depictions of their lives, a mosaic of Indian values and American upbringing.

It is tough to point out the exact thing that sets The Namesake apart from hundreds of novels of the same genre. Perhaps it is the narration, perhaps it is the matter-of-fact tone, perhaps it is the vivid characterization or perhaps it is the story itself about an American-Indian who is so unhappy with his given name that it threatens to cloud his entire existence.

Around this central theme, the story unravels, beginning with Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, a Bengali couple living their, or rather Ashok’s, American dream in Boston. Due to a strange set of circumstances, the couple names their first-born ‘Gogol’. So Gogol it is for the boy till he decides to change it to Nikhil when he is old enough to. Lahiri still refers to him as Gogol till the very end. The name honors the legendary Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, whose book almost saved Ashoke’s life years ago in an unfortunate incident. When Gogol hears about this incident from his father, it is too late. He already hates his name too much for it to be of any significance to him. He now has the additional burden of hating himself for hating his name.

Like every American kid, Gogol eventually moves away from home. He does not hate his parents. Far from it. He is very devoted to them. But the things they say do not interest him and their Indian way of life means nothing to him. He detests the way they hold on to Indian traditions and functions that are of no importance to his American mind. He hates it when his parents whisk them off to Calcutta , a place the couple still consider home, for months together, disrupting his entire schedule. In spite of his yearly sojourns to Calcutta, he does not feel bound to India as they are.

Unfortunately, his parents fail to understand him too, though they do try to give him the best of both worlds by religiously celebrating every American and Indian holiday. But the host of Bengali acquaintances he meets at these gatherings tends to put him off and distances him further.

Sadly, there is hardly any genuine emotion depicted in the parent-child relationship and this makes the book seem a little unreal. There are a few poignant moments that involve Ashoke and Gogol, but beyond that the feelings seem to be lost in the humdrum of daily lives. None of the characters have much to grieve about in their comfortable lives, but it seems as if the environment is one of cheerlessness and permanent mourning. Ashima, for one is a perpetually depressed character who goes through the motions of life without any enthusiasm. Is she sad because she misses her country? Is she sad because her relationship with her husband is not what she hoped it would be? Does the family never do fun things together? Lahiri never tells us.

Like his American friends, Gogol drinks, smokes pot and has more than one romantic relationship and is able to dissociate himself from the memories of his girlfriends, albeit with great difficulty. What strikes the reader is the monotony of his life even when it is full of ups and downs. Later you realize that the monotony is not in his life, but in his mind. It is the way Gogol perceives things that make him what he is and shapes the story of his life. An atypical hero, he goes about his life without a sense of purpose, going where fate leads him. Gogol never thinks to do otherwise. He does take a few drastic steps in his life, but they are motivated more by his rebellious streak against his upbringing rather than a genuine desire to swim against the current. His unfortunate choice in marriage stems from an instinctive desire to cling to his Indian roots.

A couple of hundred pages, two failed relationships and a marriage later, Gogol is able to finally come to terms with his name and his roots. The reader is taken on a turbulent journey of his life and then dropped off at the point where things start to look a little less bleak, a little more hopeful.

Is Gogol’s life a prototype? Do all Indian immigrant children face the same predicaments? Do they all go through a similar reckless phase in their lives, sleeping with every random girl they meet just because it is forbidden? Do their American values clash with their Indian culture, so much that they almost end up being zombies like Gogol? Do they all feel the same indifference towards their parents? Are their relationships ill fated just because they have two conflicting cultures deeply embedded in them? Do they all struggle hard to hide their Indian side from their American peers? Does every Indian-American experience, in Lahiri’s own words, “an intense desire to be at once loyal to the old world and yet fluent in the new”?

Finally, which way of life or thinking does Lahiri advocate for a “successful” immigrant experience? If you are looking for the answers to these questions, you will not find them here. Lahiri’s book is less of an insightful study and more of an autobiographical description of the Indian immigrant experience and how it can sometimes go awry. Lahiri’s essays and interviews suggest that she herself is a victim of the “humiliating”, her own adjective, process of immigration.

But like Gogol, Lahiri, says she herself has now reached the stage in her life where she thinks that bicultural upbringing is a rich, albeit imperfect thing. Yet, by her own admission a part of her yearns to be completely American. Call it a contradiction of sorts. Just like every other contradiction in Gogol’s life.

The Namesake is about this perpetual dilemma faced by immigrants as they struggle to maintain their identities while trying to shake them off at the same time. It is about the series of distressing choices they are forced to make every day as they try hard to avoid being misfits in a foreign land. The Namesake might not be the most authentic portrayal of the Indian-American experience, but even with its one-dimensional approach, it manages to make a profound impact.

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—About our writer:

Nishi says, “Live life by the day.” Born in Hyderabad, brought up in Mumbai, settled in Bangalore after a brief stint in the US, Dr. Roopa Nishi Viswanathan is a doctor-turned-biotechnologist-turned writer. Nishi loves reading anything and everything, travel, watching movies with her husband, exotic food, .....let’s simply say she loves living.

Book Review The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

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