Review: The Namesake

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is a story about a typical Bengali family, the Gangulies, and their life’s journey from Calcutta to the US. The protagonist of the story is Gogol/Nikhil Ganguli named after a Russian writer by his father in memory of a catastrophe years before. Gogol however struggles with the same identity crisis that most immigrants, especially Indian immigrants go through in the US. As a first generation Indian born in America, being true to your Indian traditions is something that Gogol learns the hard way.

In The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri takes a story that is extremely ordinary, boring even and transforms it through the power of words into a story that keeps you intrigued and makes you feel for the characters in the story. You feel for Ashok and Ashima, Gogol’s parents, as they try and make a life for themselves in the US. They are the typical hardworking parents who want to make life as easy as possible for their children. At the same time they want to hold on as much as possible to the Indian traditions that they have grown up with. They try desperately hard to get their children to imbibe these traditions but for children who have been born and brought up in the US, that’s easier said than done. Gogol and his sister Sonia are often on a different trip of their own, much to the dismay of their loving parents. What is endearing about the parents in this case is that they seem to get their children as well. It isn’t the typical angry parent vs rebellious kid story. Even though it disappoints them, they never quite express it to their children.

This story has more downs than ups in an emotional rollercoaster and hence can turn out to be a little too morose for some. But what works for the book is the way in which Jhumpa Lahiri is able to capture the Indian traditions beautifully and present it in a way that only very few can do. She is successfully able to make the reader root for the characters and I was in-fact at one point desperately hoping that a certain part of the story wasn’t true simply because I didn’t want the character to feel the pain that came along with it.

Despite being an incredibly good story it didn’t quite click with me all that much. I’m sure Indians living in the US would be able to relate to it much more. It may also be that the story dealt with some aspects of my life that I wasn’t quite ready to deal with at the moment. But that’s the beauty of literature. Everything always has a personal connect with you somewhere or the other. The level of that connection is what determines how much that book means to you. I would still recommend this book to everyone to read. If you’re an Indian living in the US then you should definitely give it a shot.

My Rating: 3/5