[Reader-list] THE NAMESAKE

[mihir pandya]

  Hi friends,
  In the summer of 2006, I enjoyed jhumpa lahiri’s novel ‘the namesake’ and after that gogol’s story always with me wherever I go. This review I wrote just after I finished the novel (in a raining august night in 2006) and after watching the meera nair’s version I thought that I should tell you my version. So this is not the movie review. This is the book review. Enjoy

  .....................     "i miss you nikhil"
  he nods
  "what about the New Year's Eve?" she says.
  “What about it?”
  “Do you still want to try to go to New Hampshire?” For they had talked of this, going away together, just the two of them, Maxine picking him up after Christmas, staying at the lake house. Maxine was going to teach him how to ski.
  “I don’t think so.”
  “It might do you good.” She says, tilting her head to one side. She glances around the room. “To get away from all this.”
  “I don’t want to get away.”
  This is the point where the change begins. Just after his father’s death. Death of “Gogol’s father”. And if we wish, we split the novel into two parts from here. As I call

  1st part- going away
  2nd part- coming home
  Ones you realize that “the namesake” is Gogol’s story, you go ahead with him. and this name ‘gogol’ has his own story. This is the main story and all other stories came together with this main story.
  To bring this “dual identity” to us, jhumpa lahiri creates a grand narrative. She used a tradition very common in Indian families, a different name in private sphere and public sphere. Ashok and ashima choose the name ‘Gogol’ for his son because Ashok had a special kinship with “Nikolai Gogol” (it has his own story). And in a dramatic sequence ‘Gogol’ became his official name.
  Gogol hates his name. Because there is no one here in America who has this name. And after some time he knows that also in Far East India, there is no one who has his namesake. This is a terrific symbol for a generation who is not like their Indian counterparts and not like their fellow county mates. They are unique in terms of culture. A transforming generation. But they want to be like their country mates.
  Googol changes his name because he wants his identity back. With name ‘gogol’ he has a feeling that he belongs to ‘nowhere’. Like ashima feels in the starting,
  “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 once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like the pregnancy, being a foreigner, ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.”
  And this same reaction takes moushumi (a character who has the same identity like googol has and in the novel she was ‘by-chance’ gogol’s wife) to France. And she finds her lost identity there. But googol never finds his lost identity and after running corners in America, finally ‘comes back’. He comes back to his father, after his death. And after some pages an unforgettable scene comes,
  “Will you remember this day, googol?” his father asked, turning back to look at him, his hands pressed like earmuffs to either side of his head.
  “How long do I have to remember it?”
  Over the rise and fall of the wind, he could hear his father’s laughter. He was standing there, waiting for gogol to catch up, putting out a hand as googol drew near.
  “Try to remember it always,” he said once googol 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 we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.”
  Jhumpa lahiri often not write her story in dialog. This is a difficult style of writing but she manages well. And when she uses dialog it is a hard-hitting effect as you just saw in the review before.
  ‘The namesake’ passed throw your eyes like a picture. If you want to see the ‘picture perfect’ scene, just go throw the 'gogol-Maxine' summer holiday scenes. Just Two bodies down on the lakeside and moonlight everywhere. I am still in a sad mood because they are not together, but now I know that ‘perfect ending’ is not always the best one. And see in the last pera, gogol (in first time in his life) reading ‘gogol’!"
   
  .........................
   
   
  your take on the movie or on the novel..?

       
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