1

Chapter 1- Introduction
Background of study
The present study aims to explore cultural alienation of Indian Diaspora in Jhumpa
Lahiris The Namesake. In the present era of transnational migration, the flow of the people
among the different countries, convergence of the heterogeneous cultural, creolization of
languages and hybridization of identities have broken the concept of fixity or absolute
territoriality. The intersection between the territorialisation and de-territorialisation creates
the third space or liminality where the cutting edge of translation and negotiation occurs.
Therefore, the concept of homeland and identity in this age of global migration form a
complex framework.
In the present novel The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri illumines the lives of immigrant
characters and their experience as second generation of Indian immigrants in America. In the
course of her narrative, Lahiri discovers alienated self in her characters. Why is the heroic,
triumphant, and even glorious episodes in the lives of Indian-American people, often marked
with material prosperity, remain unhappy? What are the causes behind their psychological
dilemma? Why are they spiritually orphaned and alienated?
Lahiris characters in the novel suffer, it is hypothesized, because immigrants life is
an existence torn apart in between two cultures; they belong to nowhere as they have already
left their original culture, and they find it hard to assimilate with foreign culture.
This research proposes to bring out instances of unsure and uncertain identity of
Bengali-Americans in the US. The protagonist Gogols life is marked by unhappiness and
anxiety. Similarly, he loses emotional attachment with his family members. Gogol Gangulys
case perhaps tells the pathetic case of immigrant Indians living abroad. To find out whether
Gogols case sufficiently represents the psychological and cultural dilemma of Indian
diaspora is the significance of this research.
Diasporic or expatriate writing occupies a place of great significance between
countries and cultures. Theories are generated and positions defined in order to construct new
identities which further negotiate boundaries that relate to different temporary and spatial

metaphors. This movement causes the dislocation and locations of cultures and individuals
harp upon memories.
Interestingly, the terms diaspora, exile, alienation, expatriation, are
synonymous and possess an ambiguous status of being both a refugee and an ambassador.
The two roles being different, the diasporic writers attempt at doing justice to both. As a
refugee, s/he seeks security and protection and as an ambassador projects his/her own culture
and helps enhance its comprehensibility. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin
define diaspora as the voluntary or forcible movement of peoples from their homelands into
new regions (68).
Migration takes place due to various reasons and in the Indian context the migratory
movements were governed by historical, political, economic reasons including higher
education, better prospect and marriage. However, the Indian community has shown greater
sense of adjustments, adaptability, mobility and accessibility. This living in-between
condition is very painful and marginalizing for the diasporas. There is yearning for home,
to go back to the lost origin and imaginary homelands (Rushdie9-21) are created from
the fragmentary and partial memories of the homelands. The sense of homelessness which
every immigrant suffers is genuine and intense, but in recent times it has been seen that this
concept has been minimized and made less intense through their social networking and
senses of solidarity. Bhiku Parekh states:
The Diaspora Indian is like the banyan tree, the traditional symbol of the
Indian way of life, he spreads out his roots in several soils, drawing
nourishment from one when the rest dry up. Far from being homeless, he has
several homes, and that is the only way he increasingly comes to feel at home
in the world (106).
In the past, the Indians were intellectually fed on the thoughts of Charles Dicknes, Scott and
the likes. Today, people all over the world are being nourished by the writings of the Indian
Diaspora namely V.S. Naipaul, Rushdie, Mistry, Vikram Seth, Mukherjee, Vassanji etc. The

European voyagers, travellers, traders and the orientalists rediscovered the cosmopolitan
culture of the Indian Diaspora; their literary contributions have greatly enriched the English
literature. They have been aiming at re-inventing India through the rhythms of ancient
legends, the cadences of mythology, the complexities of another civilization, cultural
assimilation and nostalgia. They dive deep into the realms of imaginations and the ocean of
memory to paint something quite different and distinct from their fellow novelists. The
writers of the Indian Diaspora write about India painting the vastness and complexities of the
home country which contains everything in multitudes-multiple truths, multiple crisis,
multiple realities and this diversity is portrayed for the world wide reading public.
Diaspora, is therefore, a scattering of the seed in the wind, the fruit of which are a new
creation and a fight to survive. Every diasporic movement holds a historical significance as it
carries within itself the kernel of the nations history. Diaspora is a journey towards selfrealization, self-recognition, self-knowledge and self-definition. There is an element of
creativity present in the diasporic writing and this creation stands as a compensation for the
many losses suffered.
This research on The Namesake explores cultural tension and transformation within
only two generation of immigrants, the cycle of parent-child relationships from childhood to
adolescence to adulthood, the role cultural heritage plays in romantic and familial
relationships, the effects of loss, the significance of a name, the foundation of a healthy or a
doomed marriage, and so on. It is remarkable what Lahiri can do with a basic story of a boy
who meets girl, boy and girl move to a new country, they have children and the children grow
up. She writes existence into meaning with an understated yet unmissable beauty.
The Namesake is a diasporic novel about cultural negotiations, an excavation of roots,
rootlessness, uprooting, re-rootings, tracking roots and routes to discover oneself at home in
many homes in the world, despite a single or dual citizenship, a passport of a particular
colour, a skin colour that cannot be changed easily like that of a chameleon.

Jhumpa Lahiris obsession with the theme of dislocation, displacement, alienation,

identity crisis is not the sole product of imagination but it is her reality in which she lives and
writes. Lahiri an Indian-American, clearly illustrates what it is to live an entire life in
America but still feels a bit out of place at times. Being born in a family of immigrants, Lahiri
from the childhood had experienced the conflicts experienced by an immigrant who
continuously struggles with her surroundings and herself in order to find her real identity in
the world, where she is given dual identities-Identity based on the roots (the country in which
his parents belong) and the place of her birth. The personal life of Jhumpa Lahiri is the very
prototype of diasporic culture. Having spent more than thirty years in the United States she
still feels a bit of an outsider. Though she has confessed that her days in India are a sort of
parenthesis in her life, but in fact, she is at heart an Indian which cannot be denied (54) . The
crafted beauty of short stories stays in Lahiris first novel The Namesake, where she
continuously develops further the themes of cultural alienation and loss of identity that the
immigrant faces in making a new home in a foreign country. The process of acculturation is
characterized by loneliness, nostalgia, homesickness, uncertainty, and a sort of
disconnectedness with the present that ultimately leads to a sense of alienation and isolation.
This research paper will demonstrate through the analysis of the Bengali womans alienation
as a cultural construct which is both complex and bi-directional. In The Namesake, the central
protagonist never transcends from her marginalized identity within the North American
cultural context.
Ashima was the only Indian in the hospital with three other American women in the
adjoining room. Ashima is terrified to raise a child in a country where she is related to no
one ,where she knows so little, where life seems so tentative and spare(6). She is always
nostalgic about her relatives in India. After Gogols birth she says to Ashoke, I am saying I
dont want to raise Gogol alone in this country. Its not right. I want to go back(33). Ashoke
feels guilty for bringing her to this alien land. But she is determined to bear the pain and to

give birth to the infant in an alien land for the sake of the child. Ashoke and Ashima, eager to
ensure that their son would imbibe and retain some essence of their Indian as well as Bengali
background, would make a point of driving into Cambridge when the Apu Trilogy plays
at the Orson Welles, or when there is a Kathakali dance performance or a sitar recital at
Memorial Hall send him to Bengali language and culture lessons... (65). Gogol himself,
like other children of Indian expatriates sitting through these lessons without interest,
wishing they could be at ballet or softball practice instead like typically American children,
hated attending them too (66). Gogol and Sonia prefer American culture than Indian for
the sake of Gogol and Sonia, 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. (64)
Gogol Gangulis choice of this American way of life over the Indian and the Bengali
had appeared to be quite natural for the greater part of the novel, at least to him. It is only
when his marriage with Moushumi fails and his father dies that Gogol returns home dutifully
to take care of his mother regularly, as much as possible. It is in these changed circumstances
where traditional Indian concepts of filial duty and responsibility are reasserted as values that
Gogol understands his true position in the world. Along with the legacy left by the father, he
finds a new love to cherish for the motherland far away. Not because the Americans had
rejected Gogol nor because he could not imbibe the American way of life but because he feels
that now since Ashima, a widow, is to spend half the year in Calcutta and half in the States
after selling off the house, he will find his home occupied by strangers henceforth, the new
buyers of their house. Now Gogol Ganguli loses the only fixed point, his home containing his
roots, he is able to understand the value of the homeland.
He wonders how his parents had done it, leaving their respective families behind,
seeing them so seldom, dwelling unconnected, in a perpetual state of expectation of longing.
All those trips to Calcutta hed once resented how could they have been enough?

Gogol knows now that his parents had lived their lives in America in spite of what was
missing, with a stamina he fears he does not possess himself (281). Gogol experienced a lot
of changes, as a second generation American immigrant. He has been assimilated to different
culture than he ethnically is. ...for most of his adult life he has never been more than a fourhour train ride away. And there was nothing, apart from his family, to draw him home, to
make this train journey, again and again (281-82). Roots, origin, family bonds induce
expatriate, immigrant non- resident Indians to return again and again to the point from where
they move away. At the end, through family, Gogol has come back to his roots, Indian
culture.
The novel begins with Ashima Ganguli, a Bengali woman who has recently moved to
Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, is about to give birth. She begins to have her
first contractions while cooking in the kitchen, and her husband, Ashoke, accompanies her to
the hospital in a taxi. When they get there, Ashoke leaves Ashima in the bed surrounded by
the nurses and waits with the other. In America, Ashima doesnt find anything normal-a
country where she is destined to spend her rest of life. Even in labours, she is terrified to
raise a child in the country where she knows no one and life seems so tentative and spare.(6)
The novel expresses anxiety, uneasiness and various psycho-sociological problems
such as nostalgia, rootlessness, alienation, schizophrenia expressed by Ashima, who at her
young age, after her marriage, has migrated to a country where she is related to no one(6).
The childs birth is a lonely celebration and the realization that his entry in the world is, so
alone and deprived lays the foundation of dilemma that small child has to experience
throughout his life. Ashimas struggle to adjust in a foreign country, to adapt herself to the
newly found environment is the struggle of every immigrant for the universal issue of
identity.
Being a Bengali woman, Ashima, doesnt express her feeling to anyone and tries to
make her husband happy. She keeps the disappointment to herself not wanting to offend

Ashoke or worry her parents. She tries to adjust herself to the new surroundings and devises a
routine for herself in looking after Gogol, her son.
She accepts the American ways of living but Indianness in her is kept intact by
adhering to the Indian culture and rituals. The connection, the contact with Indian culture is
kept intact by following the rituals that are part of Indian culture. Ashoke and Ashima create a
mini-India for themselves by being in contact with Bengali-families living around. Ashimas
discomfort with the life represents the bewildering world of American immigrants who are
born in one country but spend their life either gracefully immersed or hopelessly drowning in
the culture of another people. The anxiety, the fear of losing ones identity in an entirely
foreign land, is passed on to the next generation too. Gogol who appears as the central
character in the novel is the classic example of this phenomenon. Gogol, too, not only inherits
his parents culture or looks, but also inherits the pain of being lost in an alien culture. Gogol
is unhappy with his name and hates it for lacking dignity or gravity. His name belongs to
neither Indian culture nor American, rather it is a Russian. He hates people telling that it
doesnt mean anything in Indian... He hates that his name is both absurd and obscure(76). It
is the children who have relationship problems. There is the cultural conflict and a
communication gap with their parents. Gogol hates his name, which is neither Indian nor
American, and eventually changes his name to Nikhil by a legal decree.
The title The Namesake, in fact, reflects the struggle of Gogol Ganguli with his unusual
name. The name that ultimately defines a persons individuality becomes a burden for him. It
does not give him an Indian identity but puts him in a dilemma, about his original identity.
Secondly, as a child of immigrants in America, he constantly has to fight with conflicts
arising due to his Indian roots.
Gogol, who hates his name, takes a decision to change to Nikhil. Gogol faces the crisis
of establishing his real identity. He finds it difficult to acknowledge that Gogol and Nikhil are
both a part of his own self and turn between this struggles. He feels as if he has cast himself
in a play the parts of twins, indistinguishable to the naked eyes, yet fundamentally different.

He is having twin sets of personality now- Gogol is the son of Indian parents who wants him
to live, behave and act according to Indian culture and values; Nikhil is the free liberated
person, who has left his past behind and has nothing to do with Gogol. It is as Nikhil that
Gogol forgets all the cultural restriction imposed on him by his parents, who even after
spending twenty years in America cannot bring themselves to refer to Pemberton Road as
home.(180)
Ashoke and Ashima can never reject their old cultural values and norms, and one can
sense the presence of deep rooted nostalgia in their behaviour, Gogol and Sonia, Ashima and
Ashokes son and daughter, view their multi-cultural life differently. After their annual
enforced visit to Calcutta, they yearn to go back to their western ways. Gogol as compared to
Sonia, is the one who feels a lifelong disconnectedness to his family and culture. Gogol
always tries to step on a river with a foot in two different boats. Each boat wants to pull him
in separate direction and he is always torn between the two.
He manages to have a dual existence with Indian and American cultural values. Gogol
represents the Indian part in him where as Nikhil is the embodiment of all the cultural values
that American has given to Gogol. Though he is born and brought up in America yet to
American he is still an Indian. And when he comes back to country of his roots, he is referred
to as an American. Lahiri has poignantly portrayed the pain of the next generation, who has
no land to be called as their own. They are living in a land, which they own by birth, but to
which they can never belong because of their roots.
Gogols experiences, his quandary can not only be limited to Indian Diaspora living in
America. This feeling of loss of identity and culture is not only prevalent in the Indian
Diaspora but also can be felt in the heart of those Indians who even though living in India,
find themselves disconnected from the land of their birth.
Throughout the novel The Namesake, through various characters, we get an
exhilarating and liberating view of the Diasporic situation often experienced by the
immigrants. Gogol wants to be liberated from his Indian backgrounds but after his fathers

death, the Indian values which he had inherited from him, makes him move closer to his
mother and his sister resulting in a strain with his relationship with his girlfriend Maxine. The
sudden death of his father makes him turn back towards his family and unknowingly he takes
the responsibility of an elder son, as he would have done if he had lived in India. He cannot
reject the Indian culture and even cannot fully accept the American values. He struggles
between these two cultures. He cannot reject the demands of tradition and cannot afford to
accommodate to the temptation offered by a new culture.
The Namesake vividly portrays what Lahiri had expressed herself and she never
allows her characters to sink under their tribulation, thus making The Namesake a subtle
medium to remind us that the pain of assimilation lasts not just generation; the children feel
it as much as the parents do (283).
Diaspora: cultural alienation
Diaspora is basically an experience of dislocation and re-location. Diaspora has
become a contemporary social trait and also, a literary theory. The growing incidence of the
Diaspora has given place to dislocation, disintegration, dispossession and disbelongingness.
The feeling of Diaspora, not only gradually disconnects the individual from his or her roots,
but also it polarises his/her existence, which straddles between nationality and exile. The
modern Indian Diaspora began in the latter half of the nineteenth century and counts for the
bigwigs like Salman Rushdie, and V. S. Naipaul. Stephen Gill is an Indian born Canadian
writer who has successfully portrayed the Diasporic consciousness of an immigrant who
came to Canada in search for greener pastures and in the process physically and culturally
alienates himself from his native place. His cultural affinity with India makes him alien in
Canada where he makes repeated attempts to transform his identity.
Diaspora, therefore is an emotional and psychological state of: strutting between two
geographical and cultural states, struggling regression and progression, dislocation and then,
relocation (91).
Diaspora relates to history and culture and this experience of inhabiting two history
specific and culture specific spaces yields to subtle tension of dislocation and alienation. The

10

strategy that accounts for such cultural shock of a migrant as that he tries to construct
multiple identities and develops a hybrid vision, which eventually becomes an ongoing
process for adaptation.
Salman Rushdie, in his essay, has brought out the agony and the ecstasy of being an
expatriate: Exiles or immigrants or expatriates are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge
to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt (28).
Regarding the immigrants' situation abroad, scholars like Rayaprol quotes Gupta and
Ferguson as follows: ... Remembered places have often served as symbolic anchors of
community for dispersed people. This has long been true of immigrants, who use memory of
place to construct imaginatively their new lived world (quoted in 10-11).
An immigrant draws on two distinct cultural modes and is caught between two sets of
ideologies- walking across two terrains, dwelling much on either side and in the attempt
disrupting long established epistemological notions. Said writes:
Culture is a concept that includes a refining and elevating element, each
societys reservoir of the best that has been known and thought, as Mathew
Arnold put it in the 1860s. Arnold believed that culture palliates, if it does not
altogether neutralize, the revenge of a modern, aggressive, mercantile and
brutalizing urban experience (18).
Against this concept of culture as a homogenization of the good, patriotic attributes of a
nation for the sake of exclusiveness and creation and preservation of an identity, Said
mentions multiculturalism and hybridity next in order to praise their permissiveness and
relatively liberal philosophies (xiv). In case of Jhumpa Lahiris character, a search for their
origin, finding a place or a nation that may be called ones own and belonging to either the
Indian subcontinent or the USA or in other words, making a choice between the concept of
cultural identity and multiculturalism seen to remain juxtaposed always.
Lahiri points out clearly in her conversation that though she lives in the USA and
visits Calcutta as well as India from time to time, she feels a sense of belonging here in the
ways I did not seem to belong in the United States (187) . An Indian national emigrates in

11

order to have better job prospects and excellent quality of life. For this purpose, he foregoes
his home, society and nationality. He finds lacunas in the so-called legal, social, economic
and political set ups of his country with a dire urge to succeed and obtain the much coveted
NRIs (non-resident Indians) status; he leaves behind his home and chooses exile. The
children of the immigrants are called "ABCD" - American Born Confused Desi (usually used
as something of an insult). This "in- between-ness" can leave them with uncertainty about
their own role in society - neither Indian nor American. As the NRIs may adopt foreign
culture, it may be a threat to our own Indian culture. Identity is lost as they are treated as
Indian on the foreign land and as foreigner on their motherland. Some find Indian tradition
and culture suffocating and look forward to a more liberal society where there are less or
absolutely no social /sexual. But, this new environment also brings them the cultural shock
and they are bewildered and uprooted at the indenture of their new adobe. Indians of almost
all Diasporas have sought to record the manner in which they have adopted to their
environment and how they have experienced both identification with and alienation from
their old and new homelands. Jhumpa Lahiri, in her interview, has said, The question of
identity is always a difficult one, but especially for those who are culturally displaced, as
immigrants are who grow up in two worlds simultaneously (37). Irrespective of its
traditional meaning in recent time is associated with colonial experience. When we examine
Ashcroft, Grifith and Tiffin, they believe, diaspora cant be separated from colonialism, as it
was this historical condition that led to the displacement of people across the world. Ashcroft
et al views Colonialism itself is a diasporic movement (69). Under colonialism the meaning
of diaspora has been extended to cover a range of different cultural and ethnic groups held
together by shared cultural or religious commitments and having some sense of exile from a
place or state of origin belonging.
Within cultural studies the term is used to describe the dynamic network of
communities without the stabilizing allusion to an original homeland or essential identity.

12

Diaspora has been used in the studies of race and ethnicity to describe a range of cultural
affiliation connecting the groups dispersed voluntarily or involuntarily across national
borders.
The term with the transformation of time has also been extended now to include the
descendents of diasporic movements generated by colonialism, which have developed their
own distinctive cultures, which both preserve and often extend and develop their original
cultures. Observing diaspora from this standpoint critic Thomas Blom Hansen views diaspora
as:
The term diaspora not only transmits a certain sense of shared destiny and
predicament, but also an inherent will to preservation and celebration of the
ancestral cultural and equally inherent impulse toward forging and
maintaining link with the old country (12).
To live in diaspora is to experience the trauma of exile, migration, displacement, rootlessness
and the life in minority group haunted by some sense of less, some urge to reclaim, to look
back. Likewise, in the novel too, Ashima finds these problems in relation to her identity
formation. As Rushdie in this regard says:
I have been in a minority group all my life a member of an Indian Muslim
family in Bombay, then Mohajir migrant family in Pakistan and now as a
British Asian...creating an Imaginary Homeland and willing to admit, though
imaginatively, that s/he belongs to it(4).
Among others Jhumpa Lahiri is famous as the acclaimed chronicler of the Bengaliimmigrant experience. The majority of her stories are about exile, about people living far
from home and moving to new world and The Namesake explores the ideas of isolation and
identity, not only personal but also cultural. When their cultural and ethnic identity is blurred
in a foreign land, their personal identity, signified strongly by their name also stands
vulnerable to change. The characters in both the works frequently encounter crisis of identity,
which is tied to inabilities to reconcile the American identity with their Indian identity.

13

The Namesake is a documentary of immigrants lives who feel displaced and

homesick, floating in an anonymous island, far away from home. The vital question for them
is that of identity and their ongoing quest for it. In an interview released by Houghton Mifflin
Company Lahiri says that the novel is definitely about those who are culturally displaced or
those who grow up in two worlds simultaneously (17). Talking about the predicament of
immigrants Jhumpa Lahiri says: I think that for immigrants, the challenges of exile, the
loneliness, the constant sense of alienation, the knowledge of longing for a lost world, are
more explicit and distressing than for their children (34).
In Lahiri's novel The Namesake, the role of memory in a process of change is often
used by the writer in an effective way. It is through the eyes of the first generation settlers that
the second generation learns about the homeland. Cultural displacement involves the loss of
language, family ties and a support system. Lahiri stresses culture and its importance in
immigrant experience with a humanist outlook. Narrating the immigrant experience in
America, she consciously foregrounds the merits of native culture and the mysteries of
acquired culture probably experienced in the process of her own self- acculturation. The
Namesake explores the theme of transnational identity and trauma of cultural dislocation.
Being an Indian by ancestry, British by birth, American by immigration (Nayak: 206) and
her parents having the experience of the perplexing bicultural universe of Calcutta in India
and the United States (65). Lahiri mines the immigrants experience in a way superior to
Bharti Mukherjee and others observes Aditya Sinha (21).
For the second generation the question of identity is a complicated issue. At home
Indian culture and value system are adhered, while in public, the American code of conduct is
followed. All first generation settlers want their children to do well and get good jobs. The
American dream looms in their eyes and they want their children to exploit the situation and
derive maximum benefit for themselves, but they must follow the Indian moral and cultural
code at home. Ashima and Ashoke try hard to hold on to their Indian-ness, their culture

14

despite surrounded by the American culture all around. They go at the Kathakali dance
performance or a Sitar recital at memorial hall. When Gogol is in third grade, they send him
to Bengali language and culture lessons every other Saturday, held in the home of one of their
friends. But, Gogol, Sonia, and Moushumi want to chart their own lives. The second
generation immigrants are not attached to their cultural past, in fact; they find it easier to
accept America's hybrid culture. Both Gogol and Sonia grow in suburban New York and
choose American over their Bengali culture, which is not liked by their parents. Upon Gogol's
graduation the family goes on a trip to Calcutta, as they enter India:
There are endless names Gogol and Sonia must remember to say, not aunt this and uncle that
but terms far more specific: mashi and pishi, mama and maima, kaku and jethu, to signify
whether they are related on their mother's or father's side, by marriage or by blood (81).
Googol's shifting in with Maxine is an assertion of his independence, and his desire to
completely merge with the American culture. Gogol eventually marries Moushumi, but they
are not happy and so they part. Gogol is schizophrenic as he is split/tom between two nations,
India/ America, between two names, Indian/Russian, between two value systems,
traditions/conventions. Genetically he is tied up to his traditions and has unique self; racially
he is alien, and a second class citizen in America. He feels that his wife has a better status.
His complexes get reflected through Moushmi, who feels dissatisfied having married him.
Ashima, like many immigrant Bengali women is not culturally immunized by
Americas multi culture, is a strong follower of Indian culture and gives importance to family
and relationships. She does her best to perform the role of a homemaker and tries to uphold
the traditional values against the materialistic values of America. The fear of losing her
Bengali culture and of her childrens neglect of their original culture secretly torments her.
Through the existential struggle of Ashima, Lahiri presents the pang of a woman living in an
alien land, caused by a sense of isolation. She misses her homeland and this experience of
being neither in Calcutta nor in America nearly kills her. She is a true representative of
diasporic people living in similar hidden trauma. Like a traditional Indian wife in appearance

15

and in ideologies, her life revolves around her husband and children and she sacrifices all her
comforts for the sake of her family. She is true to her rule assigned to her as a daughter,
granddaughter, wife and a mother and emerges as a winner.
Although Ashima and Ashoke's experience in America is of vital importance, the novel
would not be complete if it didn't follow their son Gogol's life's journey. In the end, the
narrator is able to make a judgment about Gogol and how he lived that is very telling. "He
had spent years maintaining distance from his origins; his parent, in bridging that distance as
best they could. And yet, for all his aloofness toward his family in the past...he has never been
more than a four-hour train ride away"(281). It represents the approach Gogol had to his
heritage throughout the novel. Unlike his parents, Gogol goes out of his way to avoid his
Indian culture. For example, in Gogol's personal life, he dates white American women, while
befriending mostly Caucasian males. So far Gogol has never ever known about the word
ABCD that is American Born confused Deshi. One day he has to attend a panel discussion
about Indian novels written in English, as one of the presenters on panel was Amit his distant
cousin because his mother has asked him to do so. One sociologist on panel explains:
Teleologically speaking ABCDs are unable to answer the question, where are you
from? Here he realizes that it is he, who is being discussed because he borned in America
never thinks of India as a desh. He thinks of it as Americans do, as India. (118)
"Without people in the world to call him Gogol, no matter how long he himself lives, Gogol
Ganguli will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved ones, and so, cease to exit. Yet
the thought of this eventual demise provides no sense of victory, no solace. It provides no
solace at all" (289)
This quote represents one of the main ideas of the book: Gogol, as hard as he tried to
run away from his family and Indian culture, was bound by an invisible thread to India and its
customs. Despite the influence of pop culture, white girlfriends, and a name change, Gogol
couldn't escape.
Lahiris The Namesake is an example of the Contemporary immigrant narration which
doesnt place the idea of an American Drama at the centre of the story, but rather positions

16

the immigrant ethnic family within a community of cosmopolitan travellers. She chronicles
dislocation and social unease in a fresh manner. She blends the two cultures and creates inner
turmoil for many of her characters who struggle to balance the Western and Indian influence.

Chapter-2: Literature Review

Theoretical Review of Diaspora
The term Diaspora has been defined in deferent ways by the diasporic writers. R.
Radhakrishnas book Diasporic Mediation, defines diaspora as the space of hyphen that tries
to coordinate with the identity which is related to the place of origin with that of present
home. He writes, The diasporic location is the space of the hyphen that tries to coordinate
within an evolving relationship, the identity politics of ones place of origin with that of ones
present home (13).
Diaspora includes different groups such as political refugees, migrant workers, ethnic,
racial minorities and overseas communities. The diaspora has a collective memory of the
homeland as well as a collective commitment to the maintenance and prosperity of the
homeland. Safran noted that one of the characteristics of the diaspora is that they possess a
commitment to the maintenance and restoration of their homeland and to its safety and
prosperity; and continued relations with their homeland (21).
As Mishra states: All diasporas are unhappy, but every diaspora is unhappy in its
own way (17). Diasporas refer to people who do not feel comfortable with their nonhyphenated identities as indicated on their passports. Diasporas are people who would want
to explore the meaning of the hyphen, but perhaps not press the hyphen too far for fear that

17

this would lead to massive communal schizophrenia. They are precariously lodged within an
episteme of real or imagined displacements, self-imposed sense of exile; they are haunted by
spectres, by ghosts arising from within that encourage irredentist or separatist movements.
In all cases, the term diaspora carries a sense of displacement the population so
described finds itself for whatever reason separated from its national territory, and usually its
people who have a hope, or at least a desire, to return to their homeland at some point, if the
"homeland" still exists in any meaningful sense.
Some writers who have noted that diaspora may result in a loss of nostalgia for a
single home as people "re-root" in a series of meaningful displacements. In this sense,
individuals may have multiple homes throughout their diasporic life, with different reasons
for maintaining some form of attachment to each. Diasporic cultural development often
assumes a different course from that of the population in the original place of settlement.
Over time, remotely separated communities tend to vary in culture, traditions, language and
other factors. The last vestiges of cultural affiliation in a diaspora are often found in
community resistance to language change and in maintenance of traditional religious practice.
The word diaspora, therefore suggests a linkage asserted in the context of exile from
homeland, and a unity maintained in the varying circumstances confronting a scattered
population. Such a concept refers by extension to other dispersed people, such as those exiled
Americans who resettled across much of Europe and Asia from the eleventh century and
throughout regard to Jewish history, we must beware of making this history normative for our
understanding of the concept.
In postcolonial studies, however, the concept of diaspora often carries the antiessentialist freight as the concept of hybridity. For the writer like Stuart Hall, the notion of
culture as diasporic registers the fact that ideas essential unity based in blood or land are, at
best, fiction which people put to think of themselves as a single congregation: culture
identities are the points of identification, the unstable points of identification as sutures,
which are made, within the discourses of history and culture. In the theoretical context,

18

diaspora becomes a term of critical intervention against the essential categories used to
control and delimit peoples, including such nations as are employed by elites within diasporas
themselves.
In short, diaspora is taken to have the same kind of critical charge as hybridity, a
conjecture that exposes the formulation of identity as a positioning, or as a project,
repudiating the idea of a definite and stable home (Andrew Smith, 256). Thus, diaspora is a
position from where people desire definite and stable home.
The diasporic people can never be the first class people in the alien world. The
hyphen between them (Asian-American) always create we and other. Thus, the migrated
people feel themselves alienated and search for the identity.
Similarly, Leela Gandhis book Postcolonial Theory defines diaspors as trauma of
displacement either it is of Jewish of Africans. He writes, diaspora evokes the specific
traumas of human displacement whether of the Jews or of Africans Scattered in the service of
slavery and indenture. (131)
Regarding the diasporic experience, Adesh Pal says,
"The fIrst generation has strong attachment with the country of their origin.
From the second generation onwards ties with the homeland gradually get
replaced by those with the adopted country. Food, clothes, language, religion,
music, dance, myths, legends, customs of individual community etc. become
the markers of identity. These are retained, discarded or adopted differently at
different times and places" (16).
The Writers of Indian diaspora, as William Safran observes: "Continue to relate personally or
vicariously, to the homeland in one way or another, and their ethno-communal consciousness
and solidarity are importantly defined by the existence of such a relationship" (34). One of
the Major issues pertaining to the Indian Diaspora is how to preserve Indian cultural identity
successfully. For that the institution like British council or Alliance Francaise should be
appropriately adapted and emulated.
Diaspora has its complexities in terms of its types and degrees of displacements.
William Safran in Diasporas in modern societies: myths of homeland and return identifies

19

six features of the diaspora namely dispersal, collective memory, alienation, respect and
longing for the homeland, a belief in its restoration, and a self-definition with this homeland
(Safran, 83-99). These six features amply point towards the complexities encountered in
dealing with the subject of diaspora. Diaspora is not a compartmentalised subject, singular in
nature. There are all kinds of dissimilarities inherent in this experience in terms of its ethnic,
regional and linguistic composition that result in a helpless state of the diasporic individual
hanging in between a space characterised by an irreconcilable gap between the desired and
acquired. The irreconcilability is also because the diasporic experience is not just confined to
movement from one country and culture to another but rather it is a crossing over numerous
precincts evolving from the implications of such a crossing.
The condition of exile involves the idea of a separation and distancing from either a
literal homeland or from a cultural and ethnic origin. Exile in everyday use invokes images of
individual political dissidents sent overseas or large groups of people banished to distant
lands, forming various diaspora. Critics like Andion Gurr draws the distinct between the idea
of exile, which implies involuntary constraints, and that of expatration, which implies a
voluntary act or state. In a sense, only the first generation of free settlers of colonial societies
could be regarded as expatriates rather than exiles. This sense of the idea of expatriation
needs to be revised for those born in the colonies. Exiles retain a sense of belonging to/for a
real or imagined homeland.
The situation of the increasingly large number of diasporic peoples throughout the
world further problematizes the idea of exile. Where is the place of home to be located for
such groups? has really become a crucial question to be concerned. Is home for them to be
located in the place of birth, or in the displaced cultural community into which the person is
born, or in the nation-state in which this diasporic community is located? The emergence of
new, ethnicities that cross the boundaries of diasporic groups different culture, geographical
and linguistic origin also problematizes these categories further.

20

As Edward w. Said stresses, exile can be both actual or metaphoric; voluntary or

involuntary. This last point is important because it indicates that a physical violence is not
the only force to cause exile, but subtler forms of compulsion can do the same as well. This
can be seen in the case of intellectual living in an alien country usually for personal or social
reasons such as for education or research or for economic prosperity. Earnest Hemingway and
f. W. Fitzgerald were not forced to live in France. Exile, according to Said, is also a
metaphorical condition (Representation 52-53). Exile, thus, is fundamentally tied to the
notion of the intellectual is the present world scenario. They need not to be totally cut off
from their origin.
Discussions on exile remain unfulfilled without nationalism. Nationalism is an
assertion of belonging in and to a place, a people, a heritage. It affirms the home created by a
community of language, culture, and customs, and by so doing, it fends off exile, fights to
prevent its ravages. According to Said, the interplay between nationalism and exile is like
Hegels dialectics of servant and master, opposites informing and constituting each other
(Reflections 176). However, all nationalisms in their early stages develop from a condition of
estrangement. Nationalism are about groups, but in a very acute sense exile is solitude
experienced outside the group: the deprivations felt at not being with others in the communal
habitation.
Exile is never the state of being satisfied, placid or secure. Exile, in the words of
Wallace Stevens, is a mind of winter in which the pathos of summer and autumn as much as
the potential of spring are nearby but unobtainable. And writing becomes the home, of course
though temporarily, for the exiles.
Most of the twentieth century novelists face this problem of identity crisis, and
forever try to express it in their writing. These writers including Jhumpa Lahiri expose the
self alienated from the mainstream cultural root, and narrate this trauma of dislocated and
exiled experience. The characters in their novels involves themselves in an endless search for

21

belonging and identity, which ends in more subtle frustration, anxiety and confusion, which
can aptly be illustrated in Jhumpa Lahiris The Namesake.
Cultural alienation is to devalue one's own culture and cultural identity. It is to
abandon one's own culture, cultural background and cultural identity. An alienated individual
thus invests little or no value to them. And instead, he values the new host culture he has
adapted as his own. In the level of societies, cultural alienation in a mass is manifested by a
weak sense of cultural identity, placing more value to other cultures while devaluing their
own. Salman Rushdie observation is that migrants straddles two cultures... fall between
two stools and they suffer a triple disruption comprising the loss of roots the linguistic and
also the social dislocation. (65)
Indians of almost all Diasporas have sought to record the manner in which they have
adopted to their environment and how they have experienced both identification with and
alienation from their old and new homelands. Jhumpa Lahiri has said, The question of
identity is always a difficult one, but especially for those who are culturally displaced, as
immigrants are who grow up in two worlds simultaneously. The rootlessness, coupled with
the indifferent attitude of host culture adds to sense of otherness and alienation. The question
of identity is a very difficult one it is related to unbelongingness and especially arises when a
person is culturally displaced and he cant co relate with any of the two worlds in which he is
living. Lahiri in this novel also presents that it is not only the Indian migrants who feel
dislocated in other countries and face cultural dilemmas, the immigrants from any cultures
dilemmas, the immigrants from any culture feel the same in the other dominant cultures.
Ashima and Ashoke Ganguly try to create a small Bengal clutching to their roots and culture
in America far from the land of their birth and struggling for an identity in the land of
opportunities and riches. At home and with friends they speak in Bengali and eat only
Bengali dishes with their hands. An atmosphere of home is tried to be built up for children
and themselves far from their real home. This sense of alienation from the western culture

22

and the land where they live creates a feeling of rootlessness among the children who can
neither co-relate with the place where they are born and bred nor to the place to which their
parents belong to and about which they are always being told about.
Lahiri stresses culture and its importance in immigrant experience with a humanist
outlook. Narrating the immigrant experience in America she consciously foregrounds the
merits of native culture and the mysteries of acquired culture probably experienced in the
process of her own self- acculturation. The loss of roots, language and social norms are the
three most important parts of the definition of what it is to be human being. For the second
generation the question of identity is a complicated issue. At home Indian 10c0ulture and
value system are adhered to, while in public the American code of conduct is followed. All
first generation settlers want their children to do well and get good jobs. The American dream
looms in their eyes and they want their children to exploit the situation and derive maximum
benefit for themselves, but they must follow the Indian moral and cultural code at home.
Cultural assimilation is the process by which a person or a group's language and/or
culture come to resemble those of another group. The term is used both to refer to both
individuals and groups, and in the latter case it can refer to either immigrant diasporas or
native residents that come to be culturally dominated by another society. Assimilation may
involve either a quick or gradual change depending on circumstances of the group. Full
assimilation occurs when new members of a society become indistinguishable from members
of the other group. Whether or not it is desirable for an immigrant group to assimilate is often
disputed by both members of the group and those of the dominant society.
Cultural assimilation can happen either spontaneously or forcibly. A culture can
spontaneously adopt a different culture or older and richer cultures forcibly integrate other
weak cultures. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various
ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. A new culture and new attitudes toward the
origin culture are obtained through contact and communication. Cultural changing is not

23

simply a one-way process. Assimilation assumes that relatively tenuous culture gets to be
united to one unified culture.
Textual and Methodological Review
The diasporic writers write on the theme of east west encounter in their own
individual manner. In fact, the diasporic writers are negotiating between home and host
countries .A hub of immigrants are migrating to the United States from around the world
.National borders are fought over and redrawn materially as well as textually, further
undermining any sense of a stable location. Writers create cultural products emerging from
evermore shifting ground we find our identity is at once plural and partial and sometimes
we feel that we straddle two culture...it is a fertile territory to occupy for the
writers.(Rushdie,15)
Lahiris works, especially The Namesake, has been criticized for their portrayal of the
characters from first and second generation Bengali-Americans. Exploration of themes of
exile, isolation and assimilation has been of particular research interest to various critics on
the works of Lahiri. In The Boston Globe, Robert Simmons describes The Namesake as
beautifully crafted story that reaffirm Lahiris status as one of this countrys most
accomplished and graceful young writers (26). He further comments: Though she is a
young writer, her work is confident and timeless, The Namesake is a fiction that will be read
deservingly for years to come (27).
It (exile) is the unbearable rift forced between a human being and a native place,
Edward Said writes in Reflections on Exile over the psychological dilemma caused by
immigrant status in a foreign land, an individual is condemned to live between a self and its
true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted (5). As a writer, Lahiri conveys her
feelings from the solitude of an outsider which overcomes her feeling of habitually being in
the culture of exile.
Shukla talks about the situation of South Asian diaspora in "Locations of South Asian
Diaspora": "the expression of South Asian diaspora produces a range of analytical dilemmas,

24

not least of which a kind of essentializing of character, identity, and inclination" (552).
Shukla deals with the real and imagined world of all people, especially migrant people.
Speaking to Issaac Chotiner on the issue of her characters often playing the life of
exile, Lahiri clarifies her stance:
It interests me to imagine characters shifting from one situation and location to
another for whatever the circumstances may be. In the first collection, the
characters were all moving for more or less the same reason (which was also
the reason my parents came to the United States): for opportunities or job. In
this collection there is a similar pattern of movement, but the reasons are more
personal somehow--they are reasons of family dynamics or death in the family
or things like that. In this book, I spent more time with characters who are not
immigrants themselves but the children of immigrants. (qtd. in Chontier, 307)
American society, in course of its earlier history, is shaped by the competing visions of
nativism and cosmopolitan liberation. The first defined the American identity in restrictive
fashion, and sought to curtail naturalization and immigration. The second, taking an
expansive view of American identity, pressed opposing politics. Sameer Dayal, in Diaspora
and Double Consciousness holds that it would be fatuous to suggest that all diasporics are
automatically in possession of double consciousnesses (22). Diaspora in the first world,
furthermore is not always an elective or volunteerist condition: the diasporic sensibility
presented in the fiction of Jhumpa Lahiri is very different from that in Tayeb Salihs in that
the cosmopolitan does not share the same cultural location as the refugee or the exile (22).
The Namesake is patterned after identity-politics in America which also differ from
those of the past in that the threat to an inclusive American identity comes from the creation
of new identities, and the unwillingness to surrender old identities. "They are dealing with the
reluctance of new immigrants to shed their old identities," Isaac Spencer reiterates, "in the
case of Lahiri it is the synthesis of new identities that is at issue, in response to the particular
circumstances that these groups face in contemporary American society" (559). The melting

25

pot thesis that extols the assimilative power of American society with respect to the old
identities misses the mark In Lahiri's narrative. Spencer's observation applies with particular
force to Indian-Americans, for whom the construction of a new identity is most advanced:
The patterns of segregation and identity-construction that are visible in Lahiri's work differ
from those that occurred in the past. There are indications of a self-segregation currently
developing on the heels of the re-segregation that followed the massive upheavals of
integration. The segregation of the Indians also represent a new phenomenon in that it is
accompanied by the development of an aggressive youthful ghetto culture competing for
primacy with assimilating tendencies of the Blank middle classes. (564)
This, Lahiri's work, in turn, is linked to the sharpening class divisions of American
society between a class of white Americans who repudiate re-distributive taxation, and a
swelling class of poor American, the Indians immigrants, who have, in recent years, by
successfully beguiled by the conflict of social liberalism and social conservation into ignoring
the tendency for the concentration of wealth that works so profoundly to their disadvantage.
Oliver Munday writes in "American Children" that America is still a place where the
rest of the world comes to reinvent itself, accepting with excitement and anxiety the necessity
of leaving behind the constrictions and comforts of distant customs, and that it is the
underlying theme of Jhumpa Lahiri's sensitive narrative. Lahiri, who is of Bengali descent
but was born in London, raised in Rhode Island and today makes her home in Brooklyn,
shows that the place to which one feels the strongest attachment is necessarily the country
he/she is tied to by blood or birth,: it's the place that allows you to become yourself. "The
eight stories in this splendid volume expand upon Lahiri's epigraph, a metaphysical passage
from The Custom-House by Nathaniel Hawthorne,"(328). Oliver Munday writes in
"American Children" which suggests that transplanting people into new soil makes them
sentimental and more anxious. Munday quotes Hawthorne: "human fortunes may be
improved, Hawthorne argues, if men and women 'strike their roots into unaccustomed earth"
(345). It's an apt, rich metaphor for the transformations Lahiri oversees in these pages, in

26

which two generations of Bengali immigrants to America the newcomers and their
hyphenated children struggle to build normal, secure lives. But Lahiri does not so much
accept Hawthorne's notion as test it, a Munday interrogates: "is it true that transplanting
strengthens the plant? Or can such experiments produce mixed outcomes?" (346).
David Kipen observed:
Theme-wise, The Namesake marks no special advance over Interpreter of
Maladies. It's a novel about an immigrant family's imperfect assimilation into
America.... A certain sameness begins to creep in midway through the bookexplicable, if not completely excusable, as its picaresque hero's compulsion to
trace the same neurotic patterns over and over. In many ways, the ordinary
nature of The Namesake's narrative distances it from other ethnic novels,
which tend, as Mark McGurl has recently argued, to combine "the routine
operations of modernist autopoetics with a rhetorical performance of cultural
group membership pre-eminently, though by no means exclusively, marked as
ethnic" (117).
By auto poetics," McGurl refers to the reflexivity found in the experimentation of highly
esteemed contemporary fiction; this reflexivity is not so much a radical break from
modernism as it is the "continuing interest of literary forms as objects of a certain kind of
professional research" (111).
After all, The Namesake is another diasporic novel about cultural negotiations, an
excavation of roots, rootlessness, uprooting, re-rootings, tracking roots and routes to discover
oneself at home in many homes in the world, despite a single or dual citizenship, a passport
of a particular colour, a skin colour that cannot be changed easily like that of a chameleon.
Lahiris book could have been a brilliant device, introducing Bengalis and their
culture to the world through the citing of a few timeless classics and grand narratives of
Bengali culture. Strangely, Jhumpa does not mention a single Bengali author or for that
matter a single Indian author in The Namesake. If Ashoke had read to his children a Bengali
book as a bedtime book of tales or had even read translated sections of Niharranjan Rays

27

path breaking book of Bengali social history-Bangalir Itihas Adi Parva (History of the
Bengali people ancient period), then Gogol and Sonali-Sonia would have been able to bridge
the two cultures at least intellectually, if not emotionally.
As Brati Biswas had quoted from Jhumpa Lahiris internet-interview in which Lahiri
discusses her own experience and points out its significance in the larger context of the rest of
such expatriate Indians. She says:
In fact, it is still very hard to think of myself as an American. For immigrants
the challenges of exile, the loneliness, the constant sense of alienation, the
knowledge of and longing for a lost world, are more explicit and distressing
than for their children. On the other hand, the problem for the children of
immigrants, those with strong ties to their country of origin, is that they feel
neither one thing nor the other. The feeling that there was no single place to
which I fully belonged bothered me growing up. It bothers me less now. (1878)
This seems to be the story of not only Jhumpa Lahiris life, but also of Gogol alias Nikhil
Ganguli in The Namesake. In her first novel, Lahiri continues to relocate her characters from
Calcutta to Boston and for Gogol, the representative of the next generation, from these places
to New York and in the midst of the sophisticated white urban population in the USA.
To a question in an internet interview, regarding Lahiri as a child of immigrants in
America and the conflicts she felt while growing up, she says,
It was always a question of allegiance of choice. I wanted to please my parents
and meet their expectations. I also wanted to meet the expectations of my
American peers, and the expectations I placed on myself to fit into American
society. She adds that its a classic case of divided identity, but depending on
the degree to which the immigrants in question are willing to assimilate, the
conflict is more or less pronounced (157).

28

Her parents were fearful and suspicious of America and American culture when she was
growing up. Maintaining ties with India, and preserving the Indian tradition in America,
meant a lot to them.
The kaleidoscopic quality of the world geography, its conditional elasticity and
flexibility, leave the contemporary subject at a loss, on shaky ground and struggling to find
his or her bearings in a world where new territorialities have emerged at the crossroads
between the actual and the virtual (Kral 75). Franois Kral concludes his Shaky Ground
and New Territorialities in Brick Lane by Monica Ali and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
with the above sentence, emphasizing that the hardships that the characters in The Namesake
undergo regarding their displacement are the result of their psychological struggle with their
identity as first or second generation migrants. He argues that displacement is an in-between
situation where the displaced belong nowhere. This journey of belonging starts from one
place or culture and is substituted with the virtual other while the virtual former still has its
impact and shadow. Trapped between the two, the displaced want emancipation, searching
everywhere for other alternatives which eventually end nowhere. Kral claims that The
Namesake invites us to envisage the long-term consequences of the virtual
everywhereness . . . which may well result in a tragic nowhereness (75).
The Namesake suggests bondage, started and symbolized in a name. The protagonist
of the novel, Gogol Ganguli, is never really relieved of his name and namesake. According to
Victor Brombert, ...by implication one is never totally free of an overcoat, there is no such
thing as a pristine and authentic identity which might then be covered by a free choice of
cultural, personal attire, habits, norms (qtd. in Heinze 197-98).
Despite all the description of Gogols troubles with his true identity and displacement
during his life, there is a hidden desire of freedom in him. His self suffers from its cultural
captivity which is caused by his parents roots, and not finding solace in his American side is
related to his instinctual desire for freedom and emancipation from the identity-related
captivity. To be identified as a pure American subject does not save him from his

29

psychological captivity, neither does his symbolic return to his supposed identity associated
with his parents life- roots in India at the end of the novel. Seeing this matter from such an
angle would reveal opposite aspects to the theme of displacement which is commonly
regarded as abject. Just like the desire for a fixed identity in human beings, there is a parallel
opposition in their nature to escape boundaries caused by fixed identities. A fixed identity is
as much restrictive as the lack of it. All human phenomena have their own opposites just like
the self and the other. For Gogol, the family represents India and outside is America but
in fact it is the family that is outside for him. Identities are made in, and by, cultures. Both
these interrelated phenomena are changeable and not fixed. According to Charles Altieri, the
effort to construct identity gets transformed into a celebration of participating in multiple
identities, and sophisticated theory provides a self-congratulatory alternative to the kind of
cultural work that requires aligning the self with specific roles and fealties (qtd. in Heinze
199).
Accordingly, it is rather difficult and even impossible to draw the demographics of a
fixed identity.
As Natalie Friedman, in her Hybrids to Tourists would say, the novel challenges the
stereotypes of the disenfranchised immigrant who remains in one place (208). It is clear that
many immigrant born children neither see this golden door (203) as their new home, yet
they also arent comfortable or familiar enough to call India their motherland. Gogol was
brought up as an American. As Friedman clearly states in her rhetoric wandering, she presents
a clear view of what Gogol is experiencing.
[..] Despite their disillusionment, these older immigrant characters [] leave
their adopted home to return to their native lands []In The Namesake,
Gogol, the child of immigrants, does not feel dislocated, because he is at home
in America. Nevertheless, the constant flux of travel in his life and the
unsettled feeling that accompanies his parents immigration creates, out of
necessity, a desire to travel, to discover a place from which to leave and to

30

which to return. For the immigrant generation, the return is always to India
[] America, for them, is not entirely a new adopted home, and India is never
completely forsaken. (Hybrids to Tourists, 94)
This manner of thinking shows that although many of the immigrant children were raised
here, many would still like a better understanding and a sense of understanding of who they
are. A great example of this in the novel was when Gogols father died from a massive heart
attack. Gogol regrets never learning the deeper meanings of Indian rituals, especially those
from a mans point of view, and he now has to go back home to face his family whom he has
neglected and shunned for most of his adolescence. When his father dies, he is reminded of
how strongly his roots in the Indian culture stood, beginning with his fathers elaborate
mourning period (180).
It is then followed with his separation with his long-time girlfriend, an American who
insists he get away from the all of this (182). Many would find it understandable to
withdraw from the sadness and abandon the signs of a significant death, but in the Indian
culture a death is somewhat a celebration of the life the person has led.
There is, however, the lack of studies based on the reasons of exile and the
circumstances that compel an individual Bengali-Indian live a life as culturally and therefore
psychologically alienated diasporas in Jhumpa Lahiris The Namesake, which is the issue of
this research.

Chapter III: Diaspora and Cultural Alienation in The Namesake

American and Indian Culture in The Namesake

31

In the The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri takes the Ganguli family from their traditionbound life in Calcutta through their transformation into Americans. The Namesake negotiates
the interstitial space between two locations, cultures and two generations. The culture,
practices in India and America look different and in many senses it creates paradoxical
situation. The Bengali woman doesnt call her husband with his name. When Ashima calls
out for her husband from the bathroom, she doesn't use his name since "it's not the type of
thing Bengali wives do" (2). Their husbands' names are considered too intimate to be used
but it is nothing to do in American culture. Lahiri has depicted the middle class society of
Ashima's father before her marriage in Calcutta. Besides very few exceptions, the male is the
head of the family in most Indian societies. In the novel Ashoke's father does all the talking
when they come to see Ashima. Ashoke is too shy even to raise his eyes to her. In a society
that has evolved with values of respect and submission to the wishes of elders, it is usual for
Ashoke and Ashima, later in the novel, to avert their gaze when Maxine, their son's girlfriend runs her hand through Gogol's hair. Since a woman in an Indian society takes care of
the children and the house, it is appropriate for Ashima's mother to brag her daughter's
accomplishments. She says, "She is fond of cooking, and she can knit extremely well" (7).
Lihiris characters, mainly first generation of immigrants, especially the women try to
continue the Indian tradition wearing saris, cooking food at home, and teaching their customs
to their children. They live in a different society and perceive themselves differently. In this
connection, Lahiri deals elaborately with the Bengali custom of giving two names to a child
bhalonam (good name or formal name) and daknam (pet name). The former is to be used in
the public space: Every pet name is paired with a good name, a bhalonam, for identification
in the outside world. Consequently, good names appear on envelopes, on diplomas, in
telephone directories, and in all other public places (26).
The latter is used in the family space and in the association of close friends and associates.
Pet names are persistent remnants of childhood these are the names by which they are

32

known in their respective families, the names by which they are adored and scolded and
missed and loved (26). In the diasporic space the affection and love associated with the
daknam is hankered after by the first generation Indian Americans because the larger family
in the Indian sense is not available.
Ashima experiences that "Americans, in spite of their public declarations of
affections, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their hand-holding on the street
and lying on top of each other on the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy" (29).
Ashima's love of family influences her to create a close-knit web of immigrant friends. This
group practices Indian custom, speaks the Bengali language, and, in many respects, becomes
a substitute family for the vast collection of relatives back in India. But for Ashima, the close
relations between the immigrants become an excuse to avoid the customs of American life.
For Ashima and Ashoke, the question of disregarding their elder's wishes is impossible
whereas the situation reverses after a few years when their children follow the American
tradition. Ashima is reluctant to learn to drive, she insists on wearing Indian clothing and
eating Indian food, and for many years she lives without American friends. To a large degree,
her life is consumed by recreating Indian culture in America.
The Indian immigrants involved in The Namesake, have an internal dialogue and/or
opposition between their ethnic culture and the culture of the country in which they abide:
America. For the children of the immigrants who were born in America, the site of the
confusion is their household or parental home in America where the Indian culture and
customs still exist even if in a diluted form. As Natalie Friedman writes about the children of
the immigrants in her From Hybrids to Tourists: Children of Immigrants in Jhumpa Lahiris
The Namesake, they can only define home as the place where their two cultures merge-the
literal and metaphysical location is in their parents house. . . Their behaviour is akin to that
of tourists in their home countries (115).
Moreover, American culture, which is a blend of different cultures, and being

33

American adds to the confusion of the characters in the story. The clash happens inside,
having the other interchangeably replaced sometimes by the Indian and sometimes by the
American side of their identities. Realization of, and coming into terms with their new and
unique identities as cosmopolites take time, as reflected in the character of Ashima, and
sometimes it never occurs, as in the character of Gogol.
The main and primary reason for Ashimas displacement in the American society is
the distinction between two very different cultures: America and India. Culturally, they have
crucial differences. While women and men seem to be equally independent in America, there
are certain cultural peculiarities in the Indian perspective as to the role of the sexes in society.
Ashima is the most spiritual and Indian figure of the family. Where there is a reminder of
India and Indian customs, Ashima is at the heart of the matter. She establishes numerous
parties with the invited Indian families in America--the circle of which grow larger each
year--to maintain the Indian customs and create a surrogate India in America. Describing the
Indian family culture, Alfonso-Forero writes:
The distinction between the material and the spiritual in the domain of culture
is essential to how nationalism attempts to resolve the womens question. . . .
The division between ghar-the home, an inherently spiritual and female spaceand bahir- the outside world, which is inherently male and dominated by
material pursuits - determines not only the division of labor in terms of how
the Indian home is run, but more importantly it positions women as the
guardians and propagators of Indian culture. In this manner Indian nationalism
elevates the condition of the middle-class woman to a godess-like status. . .
(853-4)
It is inside the house that India should be preserved, for the outside is inevitably America.
This is what Ashima is trying to do all the time: to preserve her familys Indian identity
against the appeal to assimilate (Forero 854). But she gives birth to children who are fated
to be Americans, so she must adapt to the American mainstream. It is time for her as the

34

spiritual and domestic leader of the household, to make concessions having Christmas
ceremonies, Roasted Turkey on Thanksgiving and cooking American food once a week for
the children (64). The children in the parties lead their own American adolescent ways,
watching TV or eating American fast food instead of sitting with parents and socializing with
them, or eating Indian traditional food. Even Gogol is allowed to have separate,
characteristically American and Indian birthday parties (72).
Many ways that the Indian culture was displayed to contrast the American culture was
the way food was presented. When Gogol introduced his girlfriend to his parents, his
girlfriend brought a basket of food that Gogol knows his parents will never open or enjoy
(146). His mother has prepared a hearty and heavy meal fit for a party, while his girlfriends
mother serves only a small amount of food, starting with an appetizer and ending with wine.
Gogols mother fusses over his girlfriend, hovering to see if she is eating and if there is still
food on her plate. Contrary to that, the girlfriends mother did not pay attention to Gogols
comfort throughout their first dinner together.
The way the characters were dressed in the novel presented an opposite view of two
very different ways of life. When Gogol met his girlfriends parents for the first time, they
were dressed in something casual Lydia, wearing a yellow sleeveless dress (131). Yet
something that seemed to say expensive. Gogols mother however, when she met his
girlfriend, was nervous, dressed in a one of her better saris, wearing lipstick, perfume and
obviously showing signs of nervousness (146).
Gogol, the second generation immigrant experiences American culture more than
Indian. He wants to be seen as American, while Ashima, even in America continues to
experience her life as in India by wearing sari, cooking food for family, looking after children
etc.
Acculturation vs. Assimilation in The Namesake
Acculturation is the exchange of cultural features that results when groups come into
continuous firsthand contact; the original cultural patterns of either or both groups may be

35

altered, but the groups remain distinct. On the other hand, assimilation is when immigrants
have integrated themselves into a new country.
Jhumpa Lahiri, in The Namesake, presents many examples that how Gangulis family
acculturate and assimilate to Americans. While Ashima was pregnant, she tells Ashok to
return back to India as she is terrified to raise her child in America.
Ashima really did not like the American culture. She always misses her country and
her relatives that are in India. All the people she interacted with in America were all Indians.
Even while Ashima and Ashoke were in America, Ashima dresses the Indian way. Two weeks
before Ashimas due date, she is combining rice krispies and planters peanuts and chopped
red onions in a bowl. Then Ashima adds salt, lemon juice, thin slices of green chilli pepper,
wishing there were mustard oil to pour into the mix. This is the only one thing Ashima craves
at this time. She is always reminded of the words of her elders who told her not to eat beef
or wear skirts or cut off her hair or forget her family (37). But the second generation does
not abide to these rules and lives a life of their own. The novel in a way portrays the problems
of acculturation and assimilation faced by the first as well as the second generation
immigrants.
After the baby boy being born, Ashima and Ashoke have not given the boy a name.
As they learn, in America a baby cannot be released from the hospital without a birth
certificate and a birth certificate needs a name. By Ashima and Ashoke knowing that
information, they finally come up with the name Gogol that is neither Indian nor American,
but Russian. The vacuum in the lives of Indian women has been reflected by Lahiri in the
titles homesick and bewildered, which she has used for wives, who passed their time
singing songs, discussing recipes, films, and politics. On the occasion of Gogols annaprasan
-his rice ceremony, Ashima is unable to control her emotions: Ashimas eyes fill with tears as
Gogols mouth eagerly invites the spoon. She cant help wishing her own brothers were here
to feed him, her own parents to bless him with their hands on his head (40).

36

Gogol as the main character is a typical example of acculturation. Gogol is an

American born, but an Indian by identity. He is raised in America thereby making him more
acquaints with the American culture and life style. At the age four, Gogol has already been
taught to eat on his own with his fingers, and not to let the food stain the skin of his palm.
Ashima then gives birth to a beautiful baby girl named Sonia. Gogol and his sister- who was
five years older than him, considered themselves Americans as they were born in this land.
They looked forward more to Christmas celebrations, than to the worship of Durga and
Saraswati. But Ashima and Ashoke tried their best to make them acquainted with the Bengali
culture. In third grade, they sent Gogol to Bengali language and culture lessons every other
Saturday. As Gogol and Sonia get older, Ashima and Ashoke let Gogol and Sonia fill the
shopping cart with items that they want to eat. In the grocery store, Gogol and Sonia pick up
individually wrapped slices of cheese, mayonnaise, tuna fish, and hot dogs. For Gogols
lunches, Ashima and Ashoke make Gogol sandwiches with bologna or roast beef. As a treat
Ashima makes Gogol an American dinner once a week such as Shake n Bake chicken or
Hamburger Helper that she uses to prepare with ground lamb. Gogols fourteenth birthday
party, Gogol for the first time in his life says no to the frosted cake, the box of harlequin ice
cream, the hot dogs in buns, the balloons and streamers taped to the walls. Gogol turns down
all the American foods that he was used to eating and instead Ashima makes lamb curry with
potatoes, luchis, thick channa dal with swollen brown raisins, pineapple chutney, and
sandeshes molded out of saffron-tinted ricotta cheese.
In The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri illustrates the assimilation of Gogol as a second
generation American immigrant, where Gogol faces the assimilation of becoming an
American. Throughout the novel, Gogol has been struggling with his name. From
kindergarten to college, Gogol has questioned the reason why he was called Nikhil when he
was child, to the reason why he was called Gogol when he was in college. Having a Russian

37

name, Gogol often encounters questions from people around him, asking the reason of his
name. Gogol was not given an Indian name from his Indian family or an American name
from the fact that he was born in America. To emphasize, how hard an individual tries to
assimilate into a different culture, he is still bonded to his roots as the person he ethnically
is (173). If that is about the political and historical origins of the naming of the place and
city of Gogols origin, then Gogols rather dismissive and radical about choosing ones own
personal name in the concluding section of the novel is significant Theres no such thing as a
perfect name. I think human beings should be allowed to name themselves when they turn
eighteen...until then, pronouns (245). The novel in a way portrays the problems of
acculturation and assimilation faced by the first as well as the second generation immigrants.
When the Ganguli family took the eight month trip to Calcutta, Gogol did not really
want to go because it was boring to him. When Gogol visited India with his parents, which
was because of the death of his grandmother, everything was new to him in the sense that he
was experiencing different types of food and cultures. The Gangulies only go to India on rare
occasions. While on the plane, Ashima and Ashoke have met another Bengali family. Ashima
exchanges addresses with the family. Before the plane lands a final meal is served, an
omelette topped with a slice of grilled tomato. Gogol really enjoys this meal because this was
the last American meal that he will be able to eat in eight months. Gogol really did not like
going back to India to visit his relatives. Gogol found it difficult to get accustomed to the
Indian food, culture, and the way his Indian family live. Gogol and Sonia found it difficult
even to communicate with other people in India. Gogol and Sonias father, Ashoke, was very
accustomed to his Indian culture and was also familiar with the American culture. Ashoke
knew both the two cultures unlike Ashima. Ashima always wanted Gogol and Sonia to learn
and to be well accustomed to Indian culture than American culture. After returning home,
Gogol and Sonia are sitting down watching MTV.

38

Gogol grows up in America, and despite his parents efforts to keep him "Indianized",
he starts behaving like his American friends and doing the same things that they do. For
example, his parents did not know about him secretly smoking pot with his friends, or him
going to late night parties. Despite all of that, he still gets good grades, and gets into Yale
University (Joshi, Aditya, 68). As Gogol gets older, he meets a white American girl named
Ruth, Gogol college sweetheart. After breaking up with Ruth, Gogol meets his first real
love, Maxine, another white American girl who he deeply loved. Due to the break up,
because of emotional complications, Gogol then meets Moushumi. After the break up with
Maxine, Ashima talks to Gogol into being with Moushumi. Because of the shared
background and culture, Moushumi and Gogol get together as a couple and then eventually
get married. However, their marriage breaks up when Moushumi starts having a sexual affair
with her old love interest, a French man named Dimitri. Gogol and Moushumi realize that a
shared culture is not always enough to keep two people together (The Namesake). Gogol
married Moushumi to make Ashima happy because she wants him to be with a woman of his
culture.
In conclusion, Gogol and Sonia has assimilated to the American culture because, they
spend most of their lives in America, which makes them know little about their homeland.
But when Gogol and Sonia grew up, especially Gogol knew that he must learn the custom
and traditions of his homeland, while Ashima and Ashoke were trying to maintain part of
their heritage. The fact that the Gangulis life in America never makes them change or
assimilate to the American life style. Given examples to Gogol of Bengali men they know
who, have married Americans, where the marriages ended in divorce, Ashima and Ashoke
want Gogol to marry an Indian woman. Both Ashima and Ashoke grew up in India, and they
were well accustomed to the Indian culture and traditions. They only came to America to seek
greener pasture. Ashima and Ashoke never believed in Christianity. She forced her children
into learning Hindi, because that was what she and Ashoke believed in. Therefore, the parents

39

never assimilated to the American culture, but Gogol and Sonia did at the beginning. But at
the end they too, come back to their Indian culture.
Cultural Alienation: Cultural Clash- American vs. Indian
Jhumpa Lahiri in The Namesake, deals with the tribulations of the immigrants in an
alien land, the yearnings of exile and the emotional bafflement of cross cultural dilemmas.
The novel continues to develop further the theme of cultural alienation. She tries to
incarcerate the experiences and cultural dilemmas of 30 year struggle of Ganguli family, for
their integration and assimilation into alien. Lahirs protagonists are the continental
immigrants but they endure cultural introspection. They have their conflict of consciousness
between two selves- the native and the foreign. They have their journey towards home and
identity, being recognized as unsettling race through alienation, cultural conflict and hybrid
culture.
Jhumpa Lahiri portrays immigrant experience and the clash of cultures. The conflicts
portrayed in the novel bring great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first
generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours and wrenching love-affairs.
With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and
expectations bestowed upon us by our parents but also the means by which we slowly,
sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.
The Namesake has depicted the trauma of the lack of cultural belonging and hopeless
efforts of the characters to establish their own belonging. Such a situation of identity crisis
and frustration results from the rootlesssness and dislocation. The story is about individuals
stranded by foreign countries and confronted with alien cultures. The story depicts the cultural
change in the lives of characters, and their attempts to be assimilated with the new cultures are
thwarted, they get confused, frustrated and dislocated.

The conflict between Indian-like and American-like personalities experiences the

lives differently, and ultimately they feel cultural dislocation. The spectator of home or past
continues to haunt that displaced personality and the present becomes a victim of, what is

40

not there [past] (Gounelas 681) dislocates them fully. Feeling it Ashima in the novel tries to
teach Bengali language to Gogol and even makes him to go Kathakali dance classes, but
Gogol having second generation immigrate shows no interest to them.
The Namesake shows how these immigrants make efforts to preserve their home
culture in their new homes. The first generation immigrants train their children in Bengali
language literature and history at home and through special Bengali Classes and expose them
to their own family lineage, religious custom, rites, beliefs, food tastes, habit and
mannerisms. They also groom them to cope with the way of life in America. Lahiri shows
that the immigrants in their enthusiasm to stick to their own cultural belief and customs,
gradually imbibe the cultural ways of the host country too. Ashima teaches Gogol to
memorize a four line children poem by Tagore, names of deities (54) at the same time when
she goes to sleep in the afternoon she switches the television to channel -2 and tells Gogol to
watch sesame street and The Electronic Company, in order to keep up with the English he
uses at nursery school (54). Though, initially Ashoke did not like the celebration of
Christmas and thanksgiving but as Gogol recalls that ...it was for him, for Sonia (his
younger sister) that his parents had gone to the trouble of learning these customs (286).
Their own children groomed to be bilingual and bicultural face cultural dilemmas and
displacement more though forced to sit in pujas and other religious ceremonies along with the
children of other Bengali families. Gogol and Sonia, like them, relish American and
continental food more than the syrupy Bengali dishes and enjoy the celebration of the
Christmas.
Ashima feels upset and homesick and sulks alone in her apartment. She feels spatially
and emotionally dislocated from the comfortable home. Home is a mystic of desire in the
immigrants imagination. Most of the time she remains lost in the memories of her home
thinking of the activities going there by calculating the Indians time on her hands which is
ten and a half hours ahead in Calcutta. She spends her time on re-reading Bengali Short

41

Stories, poems and article from the Bengali magazines, she has brought with her. She keeps
her ears trained, between the hours of twelve and two, for the sound of the postmans
footsteps on the porch ,followed by the soft click of the mail slot in the door (36), waiting
for her parents letters which she keeps collecting in her white bag and re-reads them often.
Ashima never frees herself from Indian cultural. She prepares different Bengali foods, dress
up in Indian style, and love to read Indian magazine and listen Bollywood songs.
After the birth of her son Gogol, she wants to go back to Calcutta and raise her child
there in the company of the caring and loving ones but decides to stay back for Ashokes sake
and brings up the baby in the Bengali ways so to put him to sleep, she sings him the
Bengali songs her mother had sung to her (35). She keeps all her emotional hazards and
disappoints to herself and not intending to worry her parents. She presents in her letter a good
picture of the domestic facilities and cleanliness here. In one sense,Ashima is a first
generation immigrants and she does her best to stay pure or not mixed by cultivating her
norms and values in new foreign land. The vacuum in the lives of Indian women have been
reflected by Lahiri in the titles homesick and bewildered, which she has used for wives,
who passed their time singing songs, discussing recipes, films, and politics. On the occasion
of Gogols annaprasan--his rice ceremony, Ashima is unable to control her emotions:
Ashimas eyes fill with tears as Gogols mouth eagerly invites the spoon. She cant help
wishing her own brother were here to feed him, her own parents to bless him with their hands
on his head(40).
Lahiri depicts the loneliness and isolation in the lives of foreigners in the critical
situations. Even when one loses someone who is very close to him, one is unable to show
ones sentiments to others in the closing years of his life. When Ashimas father passed away,
They leave for India six days later, (46) with no hope of meeting him again. Lahiri feels
that the world narrows down for the foreigners, as they are unable to think or do anything

42

beyond it. It was not Ashima alone, who felt nostalgic about India, but so many other Indian
women who forced their husbands to return to their own homeland:
For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong
pregnancy-- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of
sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been
ordinary life, only to discover that previous life has vanished, replaced by
something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a
foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from
strangers, the same combination of pity and respect (49-50).
Like Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, Gogol and Sonia struggle to respect their culture, while
adapting to American society. Gogol had changed with the new culture in New York, and
isolation had come into his life. Though he got support of his parents, he had become
detached from them. It seemed that now he had no sentiments for them:
after four years in New Haven he didnt want to move back to
Massachusetts, to the one city in America his parents know. He didnt want to
attend his fathers almamater, and live in an apartment in Central Square as
his parents once had, and revisit the streets about which his parents speak
nostalgically. He didnt want to go home on the weekends, to go with them to
pujos and Bengali parties, to remain unquestionably in their world (126).
Gogol finds quite comfortable to get incorporated into the lives of Ratliffs family than his
own. He is enraptured by Maxines pale green-gray eyes, and finds interest in talking to her
parents Gerald and Lydia. He is too much influenced by their brand of hospitality, so much
that he loses his own identity He forgets his own country, his own culture, and his own
parents. He prefers to live in New York, a place which his parents do not know well (126).
Quickly, simultaneously, he falls in love with Maxine, the house, and Gerald and
Lydias manner of living, for to know her and love her is to know and love all of these things.
He loves the mess that surrounds Maxine.He learns to love the food she and her parents
eat.He learns that one does not grate Parmesan cheese over pasta dishes containing

43

seafood. He learns not to put wooden spoons in the dishwasher.The nights he spends there,
he learns to wake up earlier than he is used to.He learns to anticipate, every evening the
sound of a cork emerging from a fresh bottle of wine (137).
In contrast to Maxine, who shows all respect to her parents tastes and ways of life,
Gogol feels no exasperation for his own parents, no sense of obligation. He could imagine the
differences in Maxines parents way of living, and his own. He could find only a dozen of
guests invited to dinner at Maxines house. Whereas at his parents parties, he could see no
fewer than thirty people invited, where his parents behaved more like caterers in their own
home, watchful and waiting until most of the guests plates were stacked by the sink. Though
he knew that there was a wide difference in culture of his parents and Maxines parents, he
could not remain uninfluenced by the foreign culture.
He struggles to reconcile his dual culture. On one hand, he is fascinated with the free
and happy lifestyles of his American girlfriend, Maxine. On the other hand he feels a sense of
obligation towards his parents. Like that of every immigrant child Gogols real challenge is to
secure an identity in the midst of differences influenced by US lifestyle. Gogol tries to
distance himself from his parents and adopt an American identity. He spends his night with
Maxine, sleeping under the same roof as her parents, a thing Ashima refuses to admit her
Bengali friends (166).
Gogols immersion into his girlfriends life is an indication of a second generation
immigrants childs realization that an identity far from their own cultural roots is a necessity
to live happily in the multicultural United States. It is Gogols ability to understand the
difference between the lives of his parents and Maxines that prompts him to desire Maximes
lifestyle. He is surprised to find the warm welcome from Maxines parents. Gogol finds a
sense of freedom and independence even in the dinner table at Maxines house A bowl of
small, round, roasted red potatoes is passed around and afterward a salad. They eat
appreciatively, commenting on the tenderness of the meat, the freshness of the beans. His
own mother would never have served so few dishes to a guest (133).

44

Insisting someone empty the plate or requesting to eat more, which is a common
practise in Indian in Indian culture, is something that irritates Gogol. It is this freedom and
individualism that instigate a desire for us way of life in Gogol. Though Gogol makes a
conscious effort to be different from his parents and he wants to be different from his parents
and he wants to live in a world free from the Bengali culture, adjective, and history but being
a sensitive child he experiences the cultural dilemma and identity crisis on a number of
occasion.
The way Gogol treats his language in the novel also displays a sort of detachment and
dislike for his culture. When his mother talks to him in Bengali, he pretends not to hear and
results in ignoring her he waves and drives off, pretending not to hear (150). He also hates
how his mother is always trying to talk to him, and is trying to be a part of his life. In his life,
Gogol seems way too preoccupied to be bothered by his parents continuous nagging and his
mothers phone calls.
Gogol like a typical Indian- American makes conscious effort to be different from his
parents. He wants to live in a world free from the Bengali culture from the traditions that lay
him down to a country and culture. He does not want to be an outsider. He feels he is an
American and he wants to distance himself from everything which is Indian or Bengali. He
has seen throughout his life how the natives treat his parents and with distrust and contempt.
The parents are embarrassed and segregated by the hosts. Gogol wants to keep away from
such circumstances in his own life and to achieve a sense of belongingness and he is ready
to disown what is his own and assimilate into a culture that he wants to make his own.
For the second generation the question of identity is a complicated issue. At home
Indian culture and value system are adhered to, while in public the American code of conduct
is followed. This becomes doubly problematic. Added to this is the fact that Ashoke, Ashima
and all first generation settlers want their children to do well and get good jobs. The
American dream looms in their eyes and they want their children to exploit the situation and
derive the maximum benefit for themselves, but they must follow the Indian moral and

45

cultural code at home. However, Gogol, Sonia, as well Moushumi want to chart out their
own lives. Gogols shifting in with Maxine is an assertion of his independence, and his desire
to completely merge with the American culture. Gogol eventually marries Moushumi, but
they are not happy and so they part. Ashoke dies, and Ashima decides to sell the house on
Pemberton Road. Hence forth she would spend six months in India and six months in the
states. True to the meaning of her name, she will be without borders, without a home of her
own, a resident everywhere and nowhere. (276)
Lahiris characters live in between straddling two worlds, making their identity
different rather than their natural identity; children are isolated from their parents; as Gogol is
isolated from his parents and people are isolated from the communities in which they live.
The dynamics of relationship, cultural differences, immigration and adjustment paralyze the
communicative ability of the characters. Her immigrant characters are neither at home in the
culture they left, nor in one they have arrived in. Lahiri believes that perfect assimilation is
ultimately impossible as it may not be a question of psychic geography. Indian Americans are
burdened with a fragmented sense of identity constantly pulled in opposite directions. So the
immigrants are exiled who straddle two countries, two cultures and belong to neither. Lahiris
stories show the diasporic struggle to keep hold of culture as characters create new lives in
foreign cultures.
In the novel, though Gogol wants to be liberated from his Indian backgrounds but
after his father's sudden death, the Indian values which he had inherited, from him, makes
him move closer to his mother and his sister resulting in a strain with his relationship with his
girlfriend Maxine. The sudden death of his father makes him turn back towards his family
and unknowingly he donned the responsibility of an elder son, as he would have done if he
had lived in India. Gogol's quest for identity is a never -ending search; he cannot reject the
Indian culture and cannot even fully accept the American values. This turns out to be on
going, draining and difficult process for him. He cannot reject the demands of tradition and

46

cannot afford to accommodate to the temptations offered by a new culture. He belongs to

postmodern world which is defined as "the age of refuge" and modern man as "the new
nomad" not being able to put down roots anywhere.
Lahiri depicts the desolation in the lives of Indians who settle abroad. She has
depicted the lives of those who dwell abroad, leaving their respective family behind, and
remains in a perpetual state of expectation and longing. Gogol realizes how his parents had
lived their lives in America, in spite of what was missing. And making few trips to Calcutta
would not have been enough for them to stay out of those perpetual fears, same way, Gogol
had spent years maintaining distances from his parents. Just like a bird who returns to ones
nest, Lahiri feels that finally one returns to ones own country.
Though Ashoke and Ashima have a large circle of Bengali migrants as their friends;
the sense of alienation can be felt in them. Gogol and Sonia, American born and educated,
want to be accepted as Americans. However, they feel alienated both from their parents and
from their American friends who consider them as outsiders. The insider-outsider feeling is
prevalent in all migrants. It is through the eyes of the first generation settlers that the second
generation learns about their homeland. The idea of home is central to all human beings in
every culture. Having sampled the pleasures and pains of the world, one longs to return to
ones home. Ashoke and Ashimas body language and demeanour change, the minute they
are in India. They are more confident and assertive. It is true that every time one returns one
comes back to a different home, because times change and so do people, but nevertheless it is
a home where ones roots are anchored.
We can see that while portraying the theme of cultural alienation and dislocations of
the migrants, Lahiri does not remain confined to the dislocations of migrants in foreign lands
alone. She presents dislocation as a permanent human condition in which everyone is
dislocated in this world. People may have a home in the native land, builds a home in a
new land adapting to new cultures; ultimately he/she has no home. The author constructs

47

and brings alive the pictures of the unknown world that is as much a land of opportunities as
it is of conflict and confusion.
Conclusion
To sum up, the novel is a comparative study of two cultures, namely America and India.
The lifestyle, milieu, landscape, facilities, thinking and rituals of two countries have been
compared. Most of the cross cultural relationships do not last for a long time in this novel.
The second generation of Indian immigrants has been torn between two cultures, and
civilization. Lahiris dexterity as a fiction writer is praiseworthy while depicting the diasporic
experiences of second generation Indian immigrants to America.
Cultural change creates problems for every individual. In The Namesake Jhumpa
Lahiri, the diasporic community especially the first generation and second generation people
faced frequent cultural dilemmas. Even though the diasporic community stays in a new land
for a long period, they cannot break away from their culture. They tend to follow their natural
traditions. Her characters believe that for immigrants, the challenge of exile, the lonliness, the
constant sense of alienation, the knowledge of and longing for a lost world are more explicit
and distressing than children. Question of identity is always a difficult one, and especially for
those who are culturally displaced. The novel also shows how the immigrants face cultural
dilemmas in the foreign system. Lahiri also shows that all immigrants carve their own
routes in the course of time and its not necessary that they should settle in the country of
their own origin.
. The novel deals with the clashes between the two different worlds that Ganguli
family simultaneously inhabits. The world of Bengali immigrants who struggle to integrate
into main stream North American culture while maintaining the customs of their homeland,
and the world of America into which the Ganguli's try to integrate. Lahiri stresses the fact that
for diasporic people 'home' is a very fluid concept which changes its meaning along with the
prevailing mindset of the person. As a diasporic text, in the parent child relationship we find
the generation harbouring essence of dislocation and the other ftnding itself rootless. Lahiri

48

sends a crystal-clear message to the third-world people who are quite keen on entering into
the ftrst-world with strong aspirations for a better future without realizing that this
displacement to the ftrst-world demands greater adaptability in terms of both climate and
culture.
The first generations story was about adaptation and learning, acculturating, and also
discovering new things about themselves. The second generation found itself presented with
two conflicting realities and cultures and sets of expectation. The struggle exists at a
formative level and theres a sense of helplessness and even desperation
The book gives a dimension into the life of next generation Indian kids growing up in
western culture. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along path, strewn with
conflicting loyalties and heart wrenching love affairs that lead him back to the old ways of his
parents.
Lahiri with penetrating insight reveals not only the defining power of names and
expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly
sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The first generations story is about
adaptation and learning, acculturating, and also discovering new things about themselves.
The second generation find itself presented with two conflicting realities and cultures and sets
of expectation. The struggle exists at a formative level and theres a sense of helplessness and
even desperation.
It is strange and alien to the people who move into the land of other. They are
entrapped in the complications of cross cultural assimilation because of fear and insecurity.
Gogol finds himself an outsider in the US because he cannot assimilate western culture by
heart and establishes his earlier ties with his original culture. Experiencing the cultural
turmoil and fear, he is dislocated from India. The nostalgia of his root culture makes him
more painful and experiences different ups and down in his life.
In The Namesake, when the first generation people try to settle in a new place, they
find several changes in the society. As a result, they are disassociated from their family,
society and culture and live in isolation. They dont have anybody to share their feelings,

49

exchange pain and their sorrows in a new land which pushes them in ultimate trouble of life.
They find themselves alienated. They experience that they are further abandoned culturally
and geographically.
Finally, it can be said that The Namesake is the expression of cultural alienation of
Indian Diaspora. The characters are from different cultural and geographical background.
Their entrance to strange land and cultures bring more disappointment and confusions to
them. In such situation, they cannot reclaim their lost identity and root culture or origin.
Rather, they fail to fit in the alien culture.

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