Did Gogol Find the One?

              I really hope that Gogol and Moushumi end up together because he has the opportunity to marry the only person that will ever understand his struggle in choosing between Indian culture and American culture. Moushumi and Gogol grew up together, were dragged to all the same extended Bengali family events and introduced as cousins. They have both strayed from their Indian heritage and do not continue to follow many of the Bengali traditions (much to their parent’s dismay). Although Gogol “[talks] to the driver in Bengali” he does not eat Indian food every night, and neither does Moushumi (Lahiri 200). This is why Moushumi cooks Italian food for Nikhil when he first visits her apartment even though “[her] mother is appalled that [she’s] not making [him] Indian food” (Lahiri 209). Now, after going on a couple dates with Moushumi, Gogol cannot stop thinking about her and remembering little things about her when she was a girl. They both are able to reminisce about the other person from old Bengali events and realize that they could have been close so long ago. Although they were both reserved going into their first “blind date” because their mothers set it up, they cannot help by falling in love. I really hope that she ends up being the one he marries because they share the same childhood, a rebellious adolescence, and have now met back up. They are both looking to settle down (or maybe just their mothers think they are) and they are going to find the cliché person they feel like they’ve know their entire lives in each other, because they kind of have. 

Carefree

       After reading chapters 5 and 6 of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, I am skeptical of the authenticity of Gogol’s relationship with Maxine. I wonder if the only reason that he is with her is because he strives to go against the life his parents had planned for him. Part of the reason that he falls in love with Maxine, her family, and her lifestyle is because his parents could never participate in her world. He recognizes that “his immersion in Maxine’s family is a betrayal of his own” because his parents don’t know Maxine exists, they would never care about their dinner debates, would never approve of them drinking bottle after bottle of wine every night, sleeping in the same bed, or being intimate at all privately or publicly for that matter (141). But he continues to live there, sleep there, and eat there as if in some sort of fairytale.

            Maxine and Nikhil float around this grand and expensive house with no responsibilities. I cannot get over how strange it that Nikhil and Maxine are living together, but under her parents roof. They never have to pay rent, make or buy dinner, wine, or desert. It almost seems like they are just mooching off of Maxine’s family wealth. When they are left alone in the house, Nikhil finally feels as if they are a couple living together, but all they do is “stray to lower stories, making love on countless pieces of furniture, and wander[ing] naked from room to room” (142). They are acting like hormonal teenagers who are left alone for the first time. Everything about their relationship is carefree and easy because they do not have anything to worry about. I just hope that once they finally have some responsibility that they are able to continue to go about their relationship with such ease. I believe that because his life is so easy, so wonderful, and so different from his life on Pemberton Road, is why it is the only time in his life that “he [has felt] free” (158).

Common Ground

           Through Gogol, Ashima and Ashoke’s son in The Namesake, I have learned the Begali traditions that come with motherhood. The mother’s whole family takes large roles in the first years of a child’s life. Mothers and grandmothers serve as midwives because pregnant women traditionally return to their parents home to have their children. I wish that this tradition was a part of our culture. There is something beautiful about bringing a child into the world in your childhood home and “[retreat] briefly to childhood when the baby comes” (Lahiri 4). Begali people have pet names used between family and friends and then a more intimate name. They do not repeat names like we do in US and British culture; they create a new name for every child so that each name is unique to its owner. Often mothers do not choose their children’s names, grandmothers will name their grandsons. After the baby matures and is able to eat whole food, brothers hold their nephews as they enter the world of consumption. He also holds the baby while chooses objects that might predict his future. While there are cultural differences between the United States and India, we still overlap on common ground.

In both of these vastly different cultures, women see their children as perfect miracles that their bodies have been able to create. The process of brining new life into the world might be painful, but both cultures believe pain has no memory. In reading this novel I have learned about Begali culture as Ashima and Ashoke reminisce about their lives back in India like they are in some sort of incomplete dream, hoping to wakeup one day and return home.