Namesake Reflection
“Namesake” by Jumba Lahiri is a detailed short story that compares cultures and traditions. There are several hidden meaning in this story and they all describe about how unique one culture is, how difficult it is to integrate into another one and how immigrants often feel lost. In this story an Indian man named Ashoke and his wife named Ashime move to the USA and start a family. Their first child is a boy named Gogol, the naming process was deeply described in the book because often it is a very important part of one’s culture. For example the Indian culture of naming a child is for their grandparents to choose but because Gogol was born early and Ashime’s grandmother had died from a stroke a few days before Gogol’s birth they needed to name the child themselves which was an extremely hard and unnatural for them. Later it is stated that the letter did send but because it hadn't arrived to the mother, Ashime is left without closure and feels depressed that the Gogol will never be as good as the name chosen for him by her Grandmother. Later Ashoke finds a Bengali name that he believes is the perfect fit for Gogol. Ashime agrees that the name is good but still feels like there is a whole in her heart for the name her Grandmother choose, “She told him she liked it well enough, though later, alone, she'd wept, thinking of her grandmother, who had died earlier in the year, and of the letter, forever hovering somewhere between India and America, containing the good name she'd chosen for Gogol. Ashima still dreams of the letter at times, discovering it after all these years in the mailbox on Pemberton Road, opening it up only to find it blank.”.
The book reveals even more struggle for Gogol’s into integration the American culture while still retaining his Indian roots. Lahiri demonstrates this in many ways, one of them is when Ashoke chooses a different name for Gogol to use in school, a Bengali name, even though at the time Gogol is just at the time he still shows signs of struggle choosing between the Bengali tradition and the American tradition. He states that he wants to keep his name and is confused about what is wrong with it, Gogol shows confusion about how his parents state that Gogol isn’t a bad name but at the same time want him to change it. At this time he isn’t sure whether to choose American culture by choosing Gogol or changing it to Nikhil. “But Gogol doesn't want a new name. He can't understand why he has to answer to anything else. "Why do I have to have a new name?" he asks his parents, tears springing to his eyes. It would be one thing if his parents were to call him Nikhil, too. But they tell him that the new name will be used only by the teachers and children at school. He is afraid to be Nikhil, someone he doesn't know.” He is afraid that by changing he will become someone else entirely and does not want to change and can not understand why his parents want him to. He also shows confusion when he goes to India for eight months and sees his family’s cultures and practices but when returning to the USA sees totally different traditions that he has grown up with, he feels confused about which culture he belongs to because he feels more part and comfortable in the American culture but his parents and ethnicity makes him wonder if he should be part of the Indian culture.
The book shows the difference between cultures and the hardship of adapting to these cultures in a number of different ways. It teaches us what people have to go through when integrating into a new culture. These tugs and pulls from the different culture cause people to feel lost about their identity and who they are. In the story Gogol isn’t sure what culture he is part of and is lost because he doesn’t feel like he is part of the Indian culture while his parents feel confused as to whether they should integrate into the american culture and if they do will they lose their Indian roots.
