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).