The Namesake Part 1 (Chapters 1-4)

Hello friends. Today I shall be discussing chapters 1-4 of Jhumpa Lahiri’s “the namesake”. I myself am from the land of the Bengal, so this story has so far been kind of cringey, but interesting nonetheless. The first thing I’d like to comment on is when Ashima is in the hospital. One of the other patients is about to go into labour, and her spouse says ‘I love you’. It is then said that these were “Words Ashima has neither heard nor expects to hear from her own husband; this is not how they are (pg.3)”. In my family, we don’t really say I love you. Now, this used to bother me a lot when I was little, but now I have accepted that many Asian parents are just not used to verbally expressing their emotions. Instead, my parents always make it their duty to force feed me during dinner, and sporadically barge into my room.

My parents expressing their love for me through actions.

So far throughout the book, Gogol has expressed his discontent with his name as he believes it to interfere with his sense of identity. In the text it says “...no one he knows in the world , in Russia or India or America or anywhere, shares his name (pg.78)”. My aunt, whom I am not very close to, named me. I’m not even related to her by blood and she received the honour of naming me. I was upset at my parents for a very long time when they told me this. Anyways, my name is originally Arabic, so it should be pronounced with a sharp ‘h’ in the middle. The Bengali language doesn’t have this sound, so instead all my family calls me “Mayreen”. At school people seem to enjoy omitting the letter ‘h’ as well , so my name at school has permanently turned into “Marine”. For my whole life, I have had no idea how I should be truly introducing myself (and still really don’t). So seems like Gogol and I are going through the same type of existential crisis.

The meaning of my name is “loving nature”. When I was younger I interpreted this as being some recycling-nature lovin’ human being, so I set out on this quest to be the most environmentally friendly person I could be. I started watching National Geographic everyday, forcing myself to forego bug spray, and drinking water from streams. I found this all to be quite exhausting, and further consultation with my parents showed that wasn’t really the true meaning of my name.

One thing I don’t quite understand is the lack of detail there is in Gogol’s family trip to India. They stayed there for 8 months, and the book summarized it in 5 pages. With Gogol being Indian-American, I would have liked for the author to express further how he felt being back in India. Being an immigrant, I know that I will never truly belong in either Bangladesh or Canada, and that I have to find myself within a hyphenated identity. I’m sure there will be more on this later in the book, but I think Lahiri missed an opportunity.

Here is a cool song that the crew of Hamilton produced. I'm sure these were similar feelings Gogol's family felt upon immigrating to America. Enjoy!

Works Cited

Singh, Lily. Shut up and Eat. Digital image. Giphy. Web. 25 Sept. 2017.

The Hamilton Mixtape: Immigrants (We Get The Job Done). Dir. Tomás

Whitmore. 28 June 2017. Web. 25 Sept. 2017.

Zoolander. Who Am I. Digital image. Giphy. Web. 25 Sept. 2017.