Their American Life

One of the more poignant passages in The Namesake occurs in Chapter 3, which describes Ashima and Ashoke's adjustments to life in the college town just outside Boston where they live, and where they are raising their two children, Gogol and Sonia. It's a touching, beautiful evocation of the way immigrants become, to a degree, Americanized, yet retain much of their own culture, flavoring the rituals and customs of American life with something all their own. And it also describes the inevitable gulf I've mentioned before that is growing between these Bengalis and their American children.

Their garage, like every other, contains shovels and pruning shears and a shed. They purchase a barbecue for tandoori on the porch in summer. Each step, each acquisition, no matter how small, involves deliberation, consultation with Bengali friends. Was there a difference between a plastic rake and a metal one? Which was preferable, a live Christmas tree or an artificial one? They learn to roast turkeys, albeit rubbed with garlic and cumin and cayenne, at Thanksgiving, to nail a wreath to their door in December, to wrap woolen scarves around snowmen, to color boiled eggs violet and pink at Easter and hide them around the house. For the sake of Sonia and Gogol they celebrate, with progressively increasing fanfare, the birth of Christ, an event the children look forward to far more than the worship of Durga and Saraswati. During pujos, scheduled for convenience on two Saturdays a year, Gogol and Sonia are dragged to a high school or a Knights of Columbus hall overtaken by Bengalis, where they are required to throw marigold petals at a cardboard effigy of a goddess and eat bland vegetarian food. It can't compare to Christmas, when they hang stockings on the fireplace mantel, and set out cookies and milk for Santa Claus, and receive heaps of presents, and stay home from school....In the supermarket they let Gogol fill the cart with items that he and Sonia, but not they, consume: individually wrapped slices of cheese, mayonnaise, tuna fish, hot dogs.....At his [Gogol's] insistence, she [Ashima] concedes and makes him an American dinner once a week as a treat, Shake n' Bake chicken or Hamburger Helper prepared with ground lamb...

And this passage slays me:


When Gogol is in third grade, they send him to Bengali language and culture classes every other Saturday, held in the home of one of their friends. For when Ashima and Ashoke close their eyes it never fails to unsettle them, that their children sound just like Americans, conversing expertly in a language that still at times confounds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust.

Lahiri captures exactly how Ashima and Ashoke feel in their faltering steps to lead American lives, and yet expresses how much they will always feel Bengali. To must of us, purchasing a rake is a no-brainer. Not for Ashoke and Ashima: Each step, each acquisition, no matter how small, involves deliberation, consultation with Bengali friends. This is all new to them. Even one of the most trivial acts of suburban life is a small step into the unknown for them, and it's very telling that they will ask only Bengali friends what they should do. They don't trust their WASP friends enough to ask them about even such simple matters—if they have any WASP friends, that is.

And they adopt even some of the most bizarre North American customs: They learn...to nail a wreath to their door in December, to wrap woolen scarves around snowmen, to color boiled eggs violet and pink at Easter and hide them around the house... Can you imagine how surreal it must feel to a pair of Bengalis to be doing things like this? They're from a tropical climate, and now they're making snowmen—and putting clothes on them. And even native-born Americans should consider coloring eggs and hiding them strange, because let's face it, it's a weird thing to do.

And I love the emphasis on food in this passage, illustrating how profound a role food plays in expressing national identity. For example, the Gangulis give in to the American custom of roasting a turkey for Thanksgiving, but they add a Bengali twist—garlic, cumin and cayenne. I've never eaten a turkey roasted with garlic, cumin and cayenne, but it sounds delicious. Sadly for Ashima and Ashoke, their children have an unabashed preference for American food at its processed worst: individually wrapped slices of cheese, hot dogs, Hamburger Helper.

And then there's the tinge of sadness about this passage. Ashima and Ashoke try to maintain their culture in America, but in so many ways they're failing. Instead of the brightly-colored statues of Saraswati that are honored in the pujas (or pujos) back in Calcutta, the Gangulis have to make do with a cardboard cutout. I've read that in India children think the pujas for Saraswati and Durga are fun, maybe even the biggest event of the year, but Gogol and Sonia prefer Christmas. And most telling of all, Ashima and Ashoke feel the need to enroll Gogol in lessons in their native language:

when Ashima and Ashoke close their eyes it never fails to unsettle them, that their children sound just like Americans, conversing expertly in a language that still at times confounds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust.

In so many ways, their children are strangers to them.

The Namesake at Porter Square Books!

If you missed last week's meeting about The Namesake at SPL, there's another one at Porter Square Books this Wednesday, May 11. Author and retired English teacher Joan Sindell will lead a discussion of The Namesake beginning at 7 pm. Seating will be limited, and sometimes parking can be tight in Porter Square, so get there early.

We hope to see you there....

Coverage of the Kick-Off

Carrie Stanziola of The Somerville News wrote a great article on the first event of Somerville Reads 2011. Check it out.

How It Begins

For my second commentary on a passage from The Namesake, I'm choosing the very start of the book. As I mulled over various parts of the novel, I kept coming back to the first pages, because they're a great example of Lahiri's skill at narrative, characterization, setting.

On a sticky August evening [in 1968] 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. Ashima has been consuming this concoction throughout her pregnancy, a humble approximation of the snack sold for pennies on Calcutta sidewalks and on railway platforms throughout India, spilling from newspaper cones. Even now that there is barely space inside her, it is the one thing she craves.

"On a sticky August evening..." Lahiri puts us there immediately. Everyone knows what a "sticky August evening" feels like. And when she tells us it's two weeks before her due date, we feel tension. We know something's going to happen. And the snack Ashima makes isn't just about the odd cravings of pregnancy: Rice Krispies, Planters peanuts, chili peppers.... It's the best substitute she can devise for a common Indian snack food, and it's emblematic of her life. She's adapting to living in America as best she can, but India is where she wants to be. She can barely take in food anymore, but she still wants this snack. She literally hungers for India. On this very first page, Lahiri establishes the conflict and yearning that's at the heart of Ahsima's adult life.

Then Lahiri takes us further into the discomfort of the August night—and of pregnancy:

She wipes sweat from her face with the free end of her sari. Her swollen feet ache against gray speckled linoleum. Her pelvis aches from the baby's weight...a curious warmth floods her abdomen, followed by a tightening so severe, she doubles over, gasping without sound, dropping the onion with a thud on the floor....

The reader empathizes with Ashima now, especially if the reader is a woman who's ever had a baby. The reader knows what Ashima is feeling in her own body. And as if Lahiri hasn't done enough to grab the reader, she ratchets everything up a notch by taking the reader into Ahsima's very alien consciousness—alien at any rate to non-Bengali readers:

She calls out to her husband, Ashoke...[but] she doesn't say his name. Ashima never thinks of her husband's name when she thinks of her husband, even though she knows perfectly well what it is. She has adopted his surname, but refuses, for propriety's sake, to utter his first. It's not the type of thing Bengali wives do. Like a kiss or a caress in a Hindi movie, a husband's name is something intimate and therefore unspoken, cleverly patched over. And so, instead of saying Ashoke's name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as, "Are you listening to me?"

The baby Ashima is about to have is going to be born in Massachusetts. He or she will be an American. This kid will watch The Muppet Show and Schoolhouse Rock, listen to Fleetwood Mac and eat Snicker's bars. And this is his mother, a woman whose culture doesn't allow her to say her husband's name, who will never stop longing for a country on the other side of the world.

Generation gap doesn't begin to describe the gulf waiting to open between this child and his parents.

The Namesake: The Movie

Join us tonight at the Main Library, 79 Highland Ave., at 6:30 for a screening of The Namesake, the 2006 screen adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's award-winning novel.

Kal Penn (of House and the Harold and Kumar movies) plays the title role, Gogol Ganguli.

The film appeared on several critics' lists of top films of the year, incuding the top ten lists of The Christian Science Monitor's Peter Rainer, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Carrie Rickey, and USA Today's Claudia Puig.

Join Us Tonight

At 7 p.m. at the Central Library, Tufts English professor Neil Miller will lead a group discussion of The Namesake. Miller is the award-winning author of six books, including Sex-Crime Panic and Banned in Boston: The Watch and Ward Society's Crusade Against Books, Burlesque, and the Social Evil.

The Namesake is a wonderful book that evokes strong reactions from readers, so it's sure to be a great talk!

Like Anyone Else, Only More So

From time to time during the next month I will be posting passages from The Namesake that illustrate what a wonderful book this is. In the fifth chapter, Gogol Ganguli, the thoroughly American son of the still very Bengali Ashima and Ashoke, is about to begin college. And for this new phase of his life he wants a new name. He's always hated being called "Gogol," and his father Ashoke has never fully explained the importance of the name. In addition to being his favorite writer, Ashoke credits Gogol with saving his life. Back in India long before Gogol's birth, Ashoke had been traveling to see his grandparents when his train derailed. The rescue team might never have found Ashoke, his pelvis and right leg broken, trapped inside the overturned car, unable to speak, had he not raised his hand just enough that they could see it holding a page of Gogol's story "The Overcoat," which he had been reading at the moment of the crash. Like a white flag of distress, the page caught the eye of the rescuers and they pulled him out.

Young Gogol knows nothing of this. He just knows he wants a name that's comparatively normal. Trying to explain to his parents why he wants a new name, he says, "Nobody takes me seriously." "Who does not take you seriously?" his father asks.

"People," he said, lying to his parents. For his father had a point; 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.

I love this passage because it illustrates not just the angst of being a teenager, but the irony of human self-consciousness. So many of us walk around troubled by something about ourselves, that we agonize over and wish we could change, not realizing that most people probably don't notice it. Gogol hates his name and is conflicted about being Bengali. But if he were just another WASP, he would simply find something else about himself to hate, to be conflicted about, because that's who teenagers are. That's who people are. Gogol's position on the border of two cultures simply magnifies the angst and self-consciousness we all feel at times.

Just a Reminder

Tomorrow is the kickoff event for this year's Somerville Reads. It starts at 2 pm at the East Branch (115 Broadway). We hope you can join us!

Somerville Reads Kickoff!

Join us at the East Branch this Saturday at 2 p.m. for the start of Somerville Reads! From 2 to 5 you can listen to Bollywood music and enjoy a performance by the Somerville High School Nepali Dance Troupe. You'll also be able to get a henna tattoo custom-designed by local artist Manisha Trevedi (example at left) and contribute to an "immigration quilt" telling the stories of the people of Somerville. Refreshments will be served.

It's free and everyone's welcome!

If...

...you haven't started reading The Namesake yet, what are you waiting for? We still have plenty of copies at the library on a display rack in front of the reference desk. If you're hesitant, Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review should whet your appetite.