Chapter – 4

Diasporic Predicament of Identity

CHAPTER 4

A DIASPORIC PREDICAMENT OF IDENTITY CRISIS AND

In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive

without a sense of identity - Erik Erikson

The Namesake is Jhumpa Lahiri‟s first novel and it skillfully reflects the condition of the

Diaspora. It projects the diasporic themes of alienation and loss of identity related to

home, identity crisis, nostalgia, and isolation that the immigrants face in making a new

home in foreign country. She relates the diverse facets of diasporic experiences and

projects how the characters face double identity along with conflicting social identities as

a part of cultural adaptation which involves formation of cognitive and emotional links

with the new group. Lahiri‟s protagonists encompass their inconsistency of consciousness

between two selves, the native and the foreign. Every character faces identity crisis that

leads to uncertainty and confusion wherein their sense of identity becomes insecure,

typically due to a change in their expected aims or role in society. The quote with which

this chapter starts in fact inclines to the importance of sense of identity as it basically

affects the way an individual feels about their self and how they behave in challenging

situations. Loss of identity may lead to a fractured sense of self and constant

unhappiness. As a result the characters time and again feel the tug and pull of different

cultures, different traditions and different dreams. This makes them feel suspicious and

apprehensive towards the new culture in early years of settlement in a new country. Their

children, who represent the second generation immigrants, feel right to their local

country. They are part of two cultures but in point of fact, not to anyone. Lahiri explores
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these ideas of personal and cultural isolations and identities through these relationships.

The characters of The Namesake recurrently come into contact with the crisis of identity

which is associated with their inability to bring into agreement or harmony their

American identity with their Indian identity.

As an immigrant‟s daughter herself, Jhumpa Lahiri deals with the theme of the

novel, diasporic dilemma, through the main characters- Ashoke, Ashima, and Gogol. For

Ashoke, diasporic conflict isn‟t very deep-rooted and explicit but it is very apparent in

Ashima and Gogol. Sonia‟s character held in reserve and not essentially the central

tension of the novel. A study of the major characters and their diasporic identities

presented in this chapter, I believe, will give a comprehensible understanding of their

diasporic dilemmas and experiences such as alienation, cultural identity, name and

personal identity, relationship between parents and children and nostalgia. Jhumpa Lahiri

made the use of the Diasporic experience of her own and her parents in the novel as she is

born of Bengali parents and settled down in the US. She is influenced by the two cultures

and hence the novel gained global relevance.

Jhumpa Lahiri did not belong to the first generation immigrants, and hence, she

did not overtly face with the challenge or isolation of the exile and the yearning for a lost

world. But like many immigrant progeny, she felt intense stress to be loyal to the old

world assured in the new. She could effortlessly identify the feelings of the children of

immigrants of being neither one thing nor the other. She was torn apart between the

hyphenated identities of Indian- American. Hence Lahiri conveys the theme of alienation,

identity crisis, nostalgia through the effective use of the characterisation of Ashima and

Gogol her son, the development of their identity, the alienating experience of immigrants
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exposed to two cultures subsequently assimilating into America. The fact that immigrants

have lived in these countries for a long time has a significant share in the evolution of

cultural transformation process towards assimilation. Bülent Cercis Tanritanir notices:

Prior to be the story of a Bengali couple married and living together in a foreign

land, The Namesake is the story of agony, isolation, trauma, homesickness,

cultural clashes as well as identity crisis of an immigrant family. Lahiri‟s work is

not a mere story of a Bengali or Asian family facing cultural and psychological

troubles in a foreign country, but rather it is a microcosm via which the psycho-

socio conflicts are demystified that each emigrant might encounter. As a

disporian, she asserts that diasporic life has not such a utopian and serene image

as commonly assumed, if, nonetheless, to some extent could be, then it is also a

sort of agony, turmoil and misery, especially for those who are incapable of

assimilating or adapting to the norms of the host country. (103)

The novel opens with pregnant Ashima trying to make a spicy Bengali snack for which she

has an avid craving. Ashima lives in a small apartment, after married to Ashoke Ganguli,

who is an engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The alienation

of Ashima in the novel is so absolute that she experiences all the variants of the term-

isolation, loneliness, disaffection, social isolation, cultural rift and self-estrangement. She

seems withdrawn from the objective world. At one point she feels that giving birth is quite

a different event in India:

Ashima thinks it‟s strange that her child will be born in a place most people enter

either to suffer or to die […] In India, she thinks to herself, women go home to
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their parents to give birth, away from husbands and in-laws and household cares,

retreating briefly to childhood when the baby arrives. (TNS 4)

This alienation of being a foreigner is compared to “a sort of lifelong pregnancy.” She is

pregnant and to become mother in a foreign land is quite difficult for her. Lahiri

beautifully portrays the feelings of Ashima in the foreign land in these lines:

For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong

pregnancy a perpetual wait, a constant burden, continuous feeling out of sorts.

Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits

the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.

(TNS 49)

Lahiri, besides highlighting the physical component of expatriation connects the

psychological and emotional sense. Christine Gomez gives an insightful depiction of a

migrant‟s experience in an expatriate situation. He observes:

Expatriation is actually a complex state of mind and emotion, which includes

wistful longing for the past, often symbolized by the ancestral home, the pain of

exile and homelessness, the struggle to maintain the difference between oneself

and the new, unfriendly surroundings, an assumption of moral and cultural

superiority over the host country and a refusal to accept the identity forced on one

by the environment. The expatriate builds a cocoon around herself /himself as

refuse from cultural dilemmas and from the experienced hostility or

unfriendliness in the new counter. (72)

In diasporic writings, Nostalgia becomes a self-conscious means which reflects

stereotypical descriptions of life „back home‟. It is significant in creating a sense of home

and belonging for the diasporic protagonist. Ashima misses her favorite Indian food

during her pregnancy. She nostalgically tries to compensate for it on her own:

Ashima has been consuming this concoction throughout her pregnancy, a humble

approximation of the snack sold for pennies on Calcutta sidewalks and on railway

platforms throughout India, spilling from newspaper cones. (TN 1)

Ashima‟s life in America brings certain changes in her, but not with regard to her ethical

and cultural mores. While she learns to adapt in the United States, she sticks to her

cultural heritage:

Though Ashima continues to wear nothing but saris and sandals from Bata,

Ashoke, accustomed to wearing tailor made pants and shirts all his life, learns to

buy readymade… though he is now a tenured full professor, he stops wearing

jackets and ties to the university. (TNS 65)

Ashima is left all alone at home when Ashoke goes for the research project to Ohio and

her children study somewhere in the other towns. She misses her husband and children a

lot. Once again alone at home, Ashima remembers her parents‟ greeting cards sent to her

from India over the previous twenty-seven years. Whenever she is alone at home, she

nostalgically reads all letters of her parents:

She has saved her dead parents‟ letters on the top shelf of her closet, in a large

white purse she used to carry in the seventies until the strap broke. Once a year she

dumps the letters onto her bed and goes through them, devoting an entire day to
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her parents‟ words, allowing herself a good cry. She revisits their affection and

concern, conveyed weekly. Faithfully, across continents – all the bit of news that

had had nothing to do with her life in Cambridge but which had sustained her in

those days nevertheless. (TN 160-161)

It is a complete reflection of physical and emotional mood of migrants- a pathetic

depiction of nostalgia, apprehension, clumsiness experienced by Ashima, who at a young

age has migrated to a country where “she is related to no one.” At the beginning of the

novel, the diasporic concerns and issues of culture and identity are presented. Ashima

does not use her husband Ashoke‟s name openly. According to the Bengali Indian

culture, as she believes “it‟s not the type of thing Bengali wives do” (TNS 2). She still

carries a copy of the Bengali magazine Desh everywhere, which she has brought to read

on her ride to Boston. She reads nostalgically each of the short stories, poems and articles

a dozen times:

A tattered copy of Deshi magazine that she brought to read on her plane ride to

Boston and still cannot bring herself to throw away. The printed pages of Bengali

type, slightly rough to the touch, are a perpetual comfort to her. She read each of

the short stories and poems and articles a dozen times. (TN 6)

At the same time, motherliness for Ashima does not result in merely cheerfulness but also

the menace and anxiety of raising the child alone in country of strangers. Stating this kind

of a strange sense Indu B. C writes:

Cultural otherness, generational and cultural alienation from their ethnic

community leaves the Indian diasporic women trapped in a space between the
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culture of homeland and that of the host country. They lack security and

emotional support from their family and this isolation leads diasporic women who

are emotionally and economically dependent on their husbands to the problems

like depression, loss and nostalgia. (1)

Lahiri successfully evokes solitude in her diasporic characters and all these characters

connect themselves to the society they long for. Basically loneliness is a common factor

in all diasporic lives. Maneet Kaur notes this aspect of a loss and nostalgia as:

Due to displacement, Diaspora‟s quest for identity, a sense of inability to belong

becomes all the more difficult and desperate. The rootlessness, coupled with the

indifferent attitude of host culture, adds to sense of otherness and alienation.

Diaspora‟s sense of loss becomes tragic when they think of returning to their

homeland. The homes to which they want to return undergoes complete

transformation and turns out to be a romantic illusion. If seen metaphysically,

human beings turn out to be eternal exiles. Man does not have a permanent home

anywhere. It is this displacement which gives diasporic writing its peculiar

qualities of loss and nostalgia. (136)

The child‟s birth was a lonely celebration for Ashima as she feels “unaccompanied and

deprived” (TN 25). Ashima‟s effort to find her feet in a foreign country and

understanding a new culture is the struggle of every immigrant to expose their self-

identity in an alien land. Besides, the emotional state of dislocation and alienation is

found in all activities and actions the characters perform. Ashima was raised in a

traditional manner in a Bengali family and has a strong connection with her culture. This
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makes it difficult for her to raise a child in an alien land because it involves process of

promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of

a child from infancy to adulthood. It is a well-known fact that parenting refers to the

aspects of raising a child apart from the biological bond. Ashima starts to feel worried

within her American environs as she goes into labor room in the hospital and is forced to

put on a hospital gown. Bengali woman consider showing their legs publically as

improper and the fact that the gown Ashima must wear only reaches above her knees is

very dismaying. “She is asked to remove her Murshidabad silk sari in favor of a flowered

cotton gown that, to her mild embarrassment, only reaches her knees.” (TN 2) Through

this example it is clear that Ashima is embarrassed and feels alienated in her surroundings

in America. Ashima‟s pregnancy in the new space results in her the transcultural

predicament, as she realizes the intensity of the loss of the family and community

support, “Without a single grandparent or parent or uncle or aunt at her side, the baby‟s

birth, like most everything else in America, feels somehow haphazard, only half

true.” (TN 25). She spends her time on re-reading Bengali short stories, poems and

articles from the Bengali magazines, she has brought with her. She “keeps her ear trained,

between the hours of twelve and two, for the sound of the postman‟s footsteps on the

porch, followed by the soft click of the mail slot in the door” (TN 36). Ashima‟s exile in

a foreign land provides a sense of homelessness and displacement. Nigel Rapport, a

Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St. Andrews

opines:

Displacement is identifying with modem alienation, anomie, homelessness, and

depaysment, individual powerlessness and lack of control [...] Displacement, seen

as a phenomenon of modem social relations, as socially driven, is something

which increasingly happens to people-something done to them; it is not something

self-motivated which an individual might be consciously and creatively

responsible for determining and effecting. (124)

At the same time, Ashima and Ashoke feel disconnected from the families they left

behind in India. For sure they have their children with them in America but the network

of their extended family is thousands of miles away. They have no coordination from the

loved ones and this makes their life difficult:

In some senses, Ashoke and Ashima live the lives of the extremely aged, those for

whom everyone they once knew and loved is lost, those who survive and are

consoled by memory alone. Even those family members who continue to live

seem dead somehow, always invisible, impossible to touch. (TN 63)

Most of the diaspora community maintains their distinct identity in abiding by their

tradition in their host country. The inspiration behind is to construct a sense of

community, culture and nationality in a country where they see themselves as different.

The very fact that all belong to one country is reason for them to relate and form their

own ethnic group and community. Ashoke and Ashima celebrate all the Bengali festivals

and observe all religious rituals and rites with the ethnic community. In Bengali class,

Gogol is taught to “read and write his ancestral alphabet, which begins at the back of his

throat with an unaspirated K and marches steadily across the roof of his mouth, ending

with elusive vowels that hover outside his lips” (TNS 65) The first generation diasporas

accommodate and adjust to create space and identity in a foreign country on special
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occasions, holidays and specific events and these events provide perfect venue to

introduce some of their culture-specific uniqueness to new friends while still embracing

the new. The Gangulis preserve some traditions in America, including the annaprasa:

The occasion: Gogol‟s annaprasan, his rice ceremony. There is no baptism for

Bengali babies, no ritualistic naming in the eyes of God. Instead, the first formal

ceremony of their lives centers on the consumption of solid food. (TN 38)

The daily life of immigrants in an alien culture demands them to adjust with the existing

circumstances:

They have learned that schools at America will ignore parents‟ instructions and

resister a child under his pet name. The only way to avoid such confusion, they

have concluded, is to do away with the pet name altogether, as many of their

Bengali friends have already done. (TN 61-62)

As Gogol grew up, Ashoke and Ashima‟s sphere of Bengali associates and friends also

increased. As immigrants, Ashima and Ashoke create their own hybrid culture, a blend of

American and Bengali elements. They struggle to maintain certain Indian traditions,

while adapting to American customs, such as Christmas, for the sake of their children:

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. (TNS 64)

As ideal parents, Ashok and Ashima gradually make some progression as to their process

of adopting the cultural traits or social patterns of the host country i.e. with the U.S, but
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they could not move further than the Indian frame of mind. This feeling of anxiety,

unease which is a result of an unpleasant emotion caused by fear of losing one‟s identity

in an completely foreign land, is passed on to the next generation also. Ashok and

Ashima‟s son Gogol, who emerges as the central figure in the novel is the typical

example of this phenomenon. The title The Namesake itself reflects the struggle Gogol

Ganguli goes through to identify with his unusual name. He derives genetically from his

parents the pain of being lost in the midst of an alien culture. Gogol is discontented with

his name and hates it for lacking sense. A name holds the power to shape ones self-

esteem and identity to the world but Gogol, in his teens despises his name so much:

…he came to hate questions pertaining to his name, hates having constantly to

explain. He hates having to tell people that it doesn‟t mean anything in Indian...

he hates that his name is both silly and difficult to understand, that it has nothing

to do with who he is, that he is neither Indian nor American but of all things

Russian. (TNS 75)

Gogol cannot detach himself completely from his roots and identity. He tries to reject his

past but it makes him a stranger to himself which is the greatest enigma of his life.

Addressing the theme of immigration, clash of cultures and the significance of names,

Jhumpa Lahiri portrays the struggle of immigration and the question of identity. The

weirdness of this name „Gogol‟ strikes him repeatedly. All through the novel, Gogol is

troubled by this strange name. Even when he changes it to Nikhil, he realizes that he

cannot escape from it. While Gogol seeks Americanization as Nikhil, he is confronted

with an inner struggle between the two names:

There is only one complication: he doesn‟t feel like Nikhil. Not yet. Part of the

problem is that the people who now know him as Nikhil have no idea that he

used to be Gogol. They know him only in the present, not at all in the past. But

after eighteen years of Gogol, two months of Nikhil feels scant, inconsequential.

At times he feels as if he‟s cast himself in a play, acting the part of twins,

indistinguishable to the naked eye, yet fundamentally different. (TN 105)

Nikolai Gogol who is regarded as the main inspiration in the development of the

nineteenth century Russian Realism inspires Ashoke Ganguli to name his first-born son

as Gogol. And Gogol grows up with a name that seems to make him stand apart from the

rest of his classmates:

Though substitute teachers at school always pause, looking apologetic when they

arrive at his name on the roster, forcing Gogol to call out, before being

summoned, „that‟s me‟,teachers in the school system know not to give it a second

thought. After a year or two, the students no longer tease and say, „giggle‟ or

„gargle‟.(TNS 66-67)

Gogol, having been named after a Russian writer, represents a hybridized identity living

in a multicultural society which results in alienation:

He hates having to tell people that it doesn‟t mean anything „in India‟. He hates

having to wear a nametag on his sweater at Model United Nations Day at school.

He even hates signing his name at the bottom of his drawings in art class. He

hates that his name is both absurd and obscure, that it has nothing to do with who

he is, that it is neither Indian nor American, but of all things Russian. (TN 76)
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Despite the fact that Gogol frequently wonders about the reason for having such an odd

name, his father Ashoke bears no doubt about the aptness of the name. For Ashoke,

Gogol was his rescuer because it was a section of Gogol‟s writings that he was reading

when the dreadful train accident took place. It was the book and a few pages that he holds

in his hands that saved him from the accident. People around him were dead and even he

was more or less left behind by the rescue crews until they saw the pages of the book that

he had been reading. As he remembers it:

But the lantern lights lingered just long enough for Ashoke to raise his hand, a

gesture that he believed would consume the small fragment of life left in him. He

was still clutching a single page of “The Overcoat”, crumpled tightly in his fist,

and when he raised his hand, the wad of paper drooped from his fingers. Wait„he

heard a voice cry out. The fellow by that book I saw him move. (TN 18)

When it is time for Gogol to begin school, his unusual name annoys him:

There is a reason Gogol doesn„t want to go to kindergarten. His parents have told

him that at school, instead of being called Gogol, he will be called by a new

name, a good name, which his parents have finally decided on, just in time for

him to begin his formal education. The name, Nikhil, is artfully connected to the

old. Not only is it a perfectly respectable Bengali good name, meaning he who is

entire, encompassing all, but it also bears a satisfying resemblance to Nikolai, the

first name of the Russian Gogol. (TN 56)

The main reason that Gogol gets irritated by the name is that it is neither American nor

Indian which represents his mental state where he questions himself about being an US
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citizen with Bengali origin. He would like to redefine himself as born and brought up in

USA more than to be identified from his parent‟s Bengali immigrant background and

hence he discards the name that his parents has given to him and struggles to become

someone else.

The question of identity is a complicated concern for the second generation of

diaspora. At home Indian cultural values are obeyed, while in the public domain the

American code of behaviour is followed. Ashima and Ashoke try hard to keep hold of

their Indianness, their culture despite surrounded by the American culture. They go at the

Kathakali dance performance or a Sitar recital at memorial hall. When Gogol was in third

grade, they send him to Bengali language and culture lessons every other Saturday, held

in the home of one of their friends. The second generation immigrants are not attached to

their cultural past, because it is easier to accept America‟s hybrid culture. As both Gogol

and Sonia grow in suburban New York, they prefer American to their Bengali culture,

which is not appreciated by their parents. Gogol‟s closeness with Maxine, his American

girlfriend is an assertion of his independence, and his desire to completely merge with the

American culture. Though genetically tied up to his traditions ethnically he is alien and

an indifferent citizen in America and attempts to get rid of his heritage. He does not see

himself as an outsider living in a foreign land. He wants to be seen as American, revolts

against his past as he feels uncomfortable with his name as it causes a feeling of unease

or awkwardness. He often wonders how he can actually fit with his American friends

with strange name like Gogol. Gogol‟s identity is one that is conflicting from his parents

because thinks that his exclusivity is “American” and has no trace of Bengali roots. He

tries to reject his past but it makes him a stranger to himself. With the rejection of
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Gogol‟s name, Lahiri rejects the immigrant identity maintained by his parents. But this

outward change fails to give him inner satisfaction. “After eighteen years of Gogol, two

months of Nikhil feels scant, inconsequential.”(TN 105). He hates everything that

reminds him of his past and heritage. The loss of the old name was not so easy to forget

and when alternate weekends, he visits his home “Nikhil evaporates and Gogol claims

him again.” (TNS 106). He was Gogol when his parents call him on phone. He tries to

put a wall between his past and his present, but it is not easy. Hence he suffers from the

uniqueness of his name throughout his life living in the United States where children are

often ashamed of their differences from others. Though Gogol is a native-born citizen,

Americans never view him as an American, so during adolescence he desires to blend in

and live unnoticed. This concern that a first generation immigrant faces can be related to

what Jagtar Kaur Chawla explores:

The first generation Indian diasporic sensibilities, governed majorly by the strong

undercurrents of culture and traditions, stick to the natal bonds and cultural

identity in foreign lands. These culture-preservation efforts are tested and

challenged on several fronts externally. Ironically, the biggest threat is posed by

internal agents, the second generation, who being culturally hybridized, find

themselves torn between two sensibilities. Intrinsically attached to the American

mainstream, they take only peripheral interest in reinforcing the ties with their

roots. (1)

Thus, Lahiri has realistically outlined the identity crisis faced by the first generation and

the second generation migrants, in their attempts to fit in to the new place which is very

typical of diaspora writing. This kind of difference in Uma Parameswaran‟s view is

mainly due to their respective attitudes to the „concept of home‟ and response to

„homeland‟. Parameswaran herself a second generation migrant states:

Within diaspora community the concept of „home‟ continues to exacerbate

intergenerational frictions that, let us remember, exists everywhere. Inter-

generationality has several groupings other than the usual one depending on

age. (35)

In an interview with Houghton Mifflin Company, Lahiri comes clean that her growing up

as a child of immigrants bears a resemblance to that of her central character, Gogol in the

novel:

I think that 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. This has been my experience, in any

case. (“A Conversation with Jhumpa Lahiri”)

Gogol legally changes his name to Nikhil. By changing his name, it has become “easier

to ignore his parents, to tune out their concerns and pleas.” (TN 105). As all around him

is new at Yale, going by a new name does not look weird to him. Even his parents call

him Nikhil in the presence of his friends. But even the change of his name does not

change the path of luck in his life. Like the life and characters of Nikolai Gogol, his life

too seems to be mingled with tragedy and misfortune. Thus, by focusing on Gogol„s

name as a pointer of his crisis of identity, Lahiri has ventured into the complexity and
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cultural plight of the non-Americans that plague the immigrant families in America and

in another place. Through Ashima and Ashoke, Lahiri presents the aura of loneliness of

the expatriate families in an adopted country, a conflict of their familial conventions as

against the daily experience and the struggle of their Americanized children with their

problem of identity and belonging. They are unified by a common sense of displacement

experienced by the members of the family:

Though they are at home, they are disconcerted by the space, by the

uncompromising silence that surrounds them. They still feel somehow in transit,

still disconnected from their lives, bound up in an alternate schedule, an intimacy

only the four of them share. (TN 87)

This often brings about inwardness and isolation. The only dilemma is that he cannot

reconcile it with his identity as Ashima and Ashoke‟s son and thus on some point, it feels

like being disloyal. He imagines hearing the phone ring in the middle of the night at the

summer cottage and thinks it‟s his parents calling him to wish him a happy birthday, until

he realizes that they don‟t even know the number. The call is an imaginary link to a self

he has tried to cut himself away from in order to turn into something different from the

identity which he thinks has been given him by his parents. It is a reminder of the guilt he

feels in rejecting their world. Gogol struggles to transform himself by escaping from the

traditions of the community of Indian immigrants to which his family belongs.

Assimilation and acculturation are very important themes in the study of diaspora

which deals with change in people. It determines the identity of a migrant community.

Therefore, the identities like „American-Indian‟ or „Indian-American‟ rely on the level of

assimilation or integration with the central culture. It is a very natural phenomenon that

when an immigrant chooses to settle down in a foreign country, he/she becomes

conscious about the surrounding host culture. Assimilation involves the process of

absorption of an individual or groups of individuals into a dominant culture. Their

cultural behaviours will stick to the dominant norms and hence the previous cultural

behaviours will decline. Thus when a person assimilates a new culture, his culture

becomes similar to the host culture. Acculturation is the process of cultural and

psychological changes that occur when a minority group accepts the culture of a

prevailing group. In a way, it is learning how to survive and prosper in another‟s culture.

While the first generation of the Ganguli family acculturates gradually, the second

generation assimilates. But in common, with contact with people of the new land they

accustom themselves to the customs of the host culture and get socially attuned. They

integrate socially by learning the language and culture of the country. The focal reason

for Ashima‟s displacement initially, in the American society, is the differences linking

two very complex cultures. America and India ethnically, have critical differences. As

men and women appear to be equally self-regulating in America, there are certain cultural

idiosyncrasies in the Indian approach as to the role of the sexes in society. Ashima is a

typical Indian figure of the family unit in which there is a souvenir of India and Indian

customs. She establishes numerous parties with Indian families in America to preserve

the Indian customs to get a feel of their country, India in America.

Ashima Ganguli is required to become accustomed to American culture, thus

struggling to maintain her Bengali origin. This challenges her unique customs and

negotiates her character, thus showing the significance that the new culture has had on
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her sense of identity. Ashima was not raised to be very tolerant or to consider her

individuality. Rather, she was expected to follow through with an arranged marriage and

to raise a family. Though she pursued this sense of duty with a little resistance, soon after

her first child is born, Ashima declares, “I'm saying I don‟t want to raise Gogol alone in

this country”. (TNS 33). By arriving in America, she leaves behind the people and the

country that she loves, thus negotiating her own satisfaction. Regardless of her attempts

to become American, Ashima will always have a sense of belonging in another place. Her

way of life in Calcutta, despite how often she has to resist it, will always be a significant

element of her identity.

Like a diasporic character, Ashima has been tolerant to displacement despite her

silent rebellions. “Who had forsaken everything to come to this country, to make a better

life, only to die here?” (TNS 180) is her silent rebellion that passes through her mind

when Ashoke is dead of a heart attack in a remote part of the country (TN 180). After her

husband‟s death, Ashima:

[…] feels lonely suddenly, horribly, permanently alone, and briefly, turned away

from the mirror she sobs for her husband. She feels overwhelmed by the thought

of the move she is about to take, to the city that was once home and is now in its

own way foreign. (TNS 278)

However in the fullness of time, she achieves cultural and geographical fluidity as a

result of her way of her life through the decades. Ashoke‟s death is a defining moment in

the lives of the other characters, both physically and emotionally. It is through his

absence that Ashima and Gogol cross the threshold and acquire a new and different
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insight of life, and thereby make crucial transformations to their lives. In fact, Lahiri

pictures the dramatic life adventures of immigrant people and observes how they feel all

around the world. After Ashoke dies, Gogol retains some of his hidden Indian side of

identity, particularly by taking his mother‟s guidance to marry Moushumi. Now Ashima

not only has to live alone but also has to limit her ways of life to the American side of the

family and perform the household responsibilities which were previously taken by

Ashoke. She decides to divide her time between India and America by living between her

roots in India and her family in America. Thus is Ashima‟s transformation to a

transnational figure, “true to the meaning of her name, she will be without borders,

without a home of her own, a resident everywhere and nowhere” (TNS 276). As

suggested by Alfonso-Forero:

[…] the uncertain young woman we encounter in the novel‟s opening pages

attempting unsuccessfully to recreate a favorite Indian snack in her Massachusetts

kitchen is transformed through her role as an immigrant mother and wife into a

transnational figure. (127).

Ashima, who has adapted eventually to the American milieu in a few important ways, is

now caught between two cultures just as her children have been. The most important

things connecting her to America are her children and the memories of her life with

Ashoke. She dwells on the differences between her marriage and her children‟s romantic

relationships. The final remarks on Ashima, her diaspora consciousness and her coming

to terms with her life in America can be seen in the following lines:

:
115

She will miss parts of her life in America, like her children, the library, throwing

parties, and the memories of her husband. Steeling herself, Ashima puts on a thick

pink robe, a gift from her husband, no doubt picked out by one of her

children... She no longer wonders what it would have been like to fall in love

before being married, instead of afterward. (TNS 279)

Before Ashoke‟s death, on Gogol‟s 14th birthday his father presents him the book “The

Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol”. However he does not tell him about the train accident.

Later, his father tells him why he was named so. It has a profound effect on Gogol. It

becomes a way of bridging the gap between father and son:

Gogol listens, stunned, his eyes fixed on his father‟s profile. Though there are

only inches between them, for an instant his father is a stranger, a man who has

kept a secret, has survived a tragedy, a man whose past he does not full know. A

man who is vulnerable, who has suffered in an inconceivable way. He imagines

his father, in his twenties as Gogol is now, sitting on a train…and then nearly

killed. He struggles to picture the West Bengal countryside he has seen on only a

few occasions, his father's mangled body among hundreds of dead ones, being

carried on a stretcher, past a twisted length of maroon compartments. Against

instinct he tries to imagine life without his father, a world in which his father does

not exist (TN 123).

Later, on his mother‟s suggestion Gogol gets associated with Moushumi, daughter of

their friend, because of their common culture and background. But their marriage breaks
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as Moushumi loves Dimitri, a German man. When he learns that Moushmi was having an

affair:

He felt the chill of her secrecy, numbing him, like a poison spreading quickly

through his veins. He‟d felt this way on only one other occasion, the night he had

sat in the car with his father and learned the reason for his name. That night he‟d

experienced the same bewilderment, was sickened in the same way. But he felt

none of the tenderness that he had felt for his father, only the anger, the

humiliation of being deceived [….] And for the first time in his life, another man's

name upset Gogol more than his own. (TN 283)

When Gogol finds it out, they get divorced. Ashima feels guilty for causing Gogol to

meet Moushumi and considers this as an American cultural influence which causes a

severe damage to the Indian ethical and moral values. All these experiences put together

make Gogol completely dejected, yet these life experiences are foundational to the

maturation process of Gogol, making him feel confident in his hard-won identity. And he

comes to some understanding as well of the irrationality and unpredictability of the life

that has defined him.

Gogol is the envoy of the identity crisis suffered by most diaspora children who

are born in foreign countries, but control agony and distress. Gogol‟s state is a standard

condition of identity crisis, which they share and experience. Despite the fact that the

very Indian part of him was less acknowledged during his childhood, it became obvious

in his youth. In the story, it is his life that becomes an expression of the unpleasant,

desolate and existential way of life of the diasporans. The position of Gogol can be
117

associated to Jhumpa Lahiri herself. Although both of them maintain ethnic identity, their

self identification as immigrants gradually grew faint and disappeared. However, unlike

Jhumpa Lahiri, Gogol, with his strange name, feels insecured equally in his homeland

and host land.

A struggle between two cultures comes as the Gangulis wish to raise Gogol and

Sonia with Bengali culture and values, but they grow up relating mostly to their peers and

the surrounding culture in the United States. The Namesake portrays the constant struggle

of the first generation immigrants and their children to find their place in the society. The

first generation immigrants struggle when they adapt to a different culture and their

children struggle while trying to respect their roots in adapting to the American society.

Due to this difference, perhaps, they go far away from each other. However much later in

their lives they begin to truly value their Bengali heritage. When in college, Gogol rejects

his identity completely and becomes Nikhil because Gogol is not just a name; it signifies

all his discomfort in two different cultures. In her article, Diasporic Identity and Cultural

Alienation in Jhumpa Lahiri‟s The Namesake, P. Angela remarks:

Lahiri uses Gogol‟s name to, literally and figuratively, represent the ways in

which his cultural heritage serves him from the social sphere, forcing a gap

between him and his American friends, and serving as a constant reminder of the

depth of this disparity. He already knows that his Indian heritage sets him apart

from his schoolmates, and that his inner turmoil is evident from a young age. He

tries desperately to distance himself from being Indian. (98)

Away from home at college in an American culture, Gogol lives as Nikhil so happily for

many years, detaching himself from his roots and his family as much as possible. Gogol‟s

identity is embellished by both cultures and this leads him to learn that he cannot fully

abandon or attempt to diminish either but blend the two together. He feels no longer

ashamed of himself, but proud of his name and all that it means. As the novel finishes,

however, Gogol discovers that the answer is not to completely leave behind or attempt to

diminish either culture, but to interconnect the two together. Gogol is not fully in

agreement with his identity until he realizes that it is a combination of both the cultures

and societies. He does not need to be one or the other; rather he is made up of both, and

this very fact reinforces his pride. Though the novel enfolds more failures or downfalls

happening in Gogol‟s life, he is capable of emotionally supporting himself and remains

independent. He is no longer uncomfortable or self-conscious of himself or the manner he

has lived. He is satisfied of who he is and where he comes from. Above all, he is proud of

his name and all that it evokes:

The givers and keepers of Gogol‟s name are far from him now. One dead.

Another, a widow, on the verge of a different sort of departure, in order to dwell,

as his father does, in a separate world……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 exist. Yet the thought of this

eventual demise provides no sense of victory, no solace. It provides no solace at

all. (TNS 280)

Gogol‟s identity is closely linked to his name, so it saddens him that one day he might not

have family members who can call him Gogol, that one day he might not have anyone
119

who can remind him of his cultural roots. By the end, he chooses to keep on “Gogol,”

since he realizes that everything that he has experienced, from the naming attempt of

Gogol at his birth to his consciousness of the optimism behind Gogol, is the meaningful

fragment to identify who he is. He tries to cope with the situation to gain a new identity

which does not need a particular nationality and hence different from the old one. This

culminates in ultimate realization of Gogol:

It had started with his father's train wreck, paralyzing him at first, later inspiring to

move as far as possible, to make a new life on the other side of the world. There

was the disappearance of the name Gogol's great-grandmother had chosen for him,

lost in the mail somewhere between Calcutta and Cambridge. This had led, in tum,

to the accident of his being named Gogol, defining and distressing him for so many

years. He had tried to correct that randomness, that error. And yet it had not been

possible to reinvent himself fully, to break from that mismatched name. His

marriage had been something of a misstep as well. (TN 286-287)

Finally Gogol triumphs over his denial of his namesake, starting the process of accepting

this part of his identity. Simultaneously, reading the book at the end is like following in

Ashoke‟s footprints, and so Gogol finds that bond with his heritage and his dead father in

his own unique manner, after a long duration of staying away from that heritage:

Gogol is anxious to return to his room, to be alone, to read the book he had once

forsaken, has abandoned until now. Until moments ago, it was destined to

disappear from his life...for now he starts to read. (TN 278)

Their house will still be sold, and this physical connect to Gogol‟s past is dwindling, but

on a deeper level, in this moment Gogol is opening himself up to every part of his

identity for the very first time:

Gogol opens to the first story in the book, “The Overcoat.” Soon Ashima will

come to find him, wondering where he has been, scolding him, urging him to

come and take his photos. He will descend the staircase and help to serve the

food, and then to clean the plates, watching his mother give away leftovers in the

cooking pots themselves. But for now, Gogol settles against the headboard and

begins to read. (TNS 291)

Developing a new identity in a foreign country for the diaspora community is an exercise

in transformation as the immigrants usually face challenges to identify themselves in a

new culture trying to learn a new language, a new culture, a new way of thinking and

trying to immerse their self into the new culture to deal with culture shock

and adjustment of their new community. Ashima and Gogol, equally cope with

challenges all over the process of integrating the new culture and developing a new

identity. Ashima, being a mother living in both American and Indian cultures, tries to

balance both lives by celebrating holidays with her children. She assimilates as an

American identity gradually throughout the book. Until she has to live on her own,

Ashima has begun to make a few changes in her own life by getting a part time job in a

local library. She enjoys freedom by herself and makes friends among her colleagues, her

first real American friends in 20 years living in the US. Being physically and financially

self-sufficient, Ashima has submerged into American life and formed an American
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identity as an independent woman. S. Gopi Krishnan who observes this point of

transnationality in the novel says:

„The Namesake‟ is a novel that celebrates the cultural hybridity resulting from

globalization and the interconnectedness of the modern world and rethinks

conventional immigrant‟s experience. Lahiri is aware of the existing problem of

cultural diversity in the multicultural United States, and she argues that the

struggle to grasp a transnational identity becomes an urgent issue for immigrants

in this environment. (466)

Ashoke‟s demise signifies the notion that a loss in life can transform one to re-evaluate

and analyze their existing life. When Nikhil visits his father‟s apartment to remove his

father‟s old belongings, he struck a chord of his culture-the Bengali way. This goes to

show that one‟s endeavor for cultural change or for change in general, can be

relinquished by a significant loss. Loss holds the power to influence change. It has the

power to resurface pre-existing memories that were otherwise suppressed by idealistic

views. Ashima decides to sell off her family home and spend six months in America and

six months in Calcutta. The last party she throws at her house reminds her of her husband

and the way her life has been shaped before her:

She has learned to do things on her own, and though she still wears saris, still

puts her long hair in a bun, she is not the same Ashima who had once lived in

Calcutta. She will return to India with an American passport. In her wallet will

remain her Massachusetts driving license, her social security card. (TN.276)
122

Ashima accepts her dual identity: one Indian and the other American. Accepting,

adapting, changing, assimilating and molding are the key words for the immigrants to

succeed in the new country. Jhumpa Lahiri‟s characters suffer the trauma of „dislocation.‟

Though they eventually and partially give in to the host culture, they also keep the pride

of the national heritage and culture. All her first generation immigrants take pride in their

native culture. They have the emotional bond with their homeland. For Lahiri, Aruti

Nayar writes:

[…]Lahiri negotiates the dilemmas of the cultural spaces lying across the

continents with a master‟s touch. Though endowed with a distinct universal

appeal, her stories do bring out rather successfully the predicament of the Indians

who trapeze between and across two traditions, one inherited and left behind, and

the other encountered but not necessarily assimilated. (2)

From the moment Ashoke decides to move away from India, Lahiri provides the reader

with a picture of the life of the expatriate, the diasporic writer writing about diasporic

characters. Ashoke and after that Ashima learn to live in the land they were not born in.

The novel portrays sensibly the experiences of this family, which is every so often

afflicted with a feeling of cultural alienation: diaspora both literal and metaphorical

referring both to physical displacement as well as the shaping of a different sensibility.

The absence of the motherland (or being away from it) becomes an invariable presence as

it always seems to color the insight of the expatriate. Jhumpa Lahiri, a child of Indian

immigrants, belongs to the second generation of Indian Diaspora whose ongoing quest

for identity never seems to end. In the press release for The Namesake on Houghton

Mifflin website, on being asked what in her opinion distinguishes the experiences of
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South- Asian immigrants the United States, with regard to their children who are born

and raised there. Lahiri answers:

The question of identity is always a difficult one, but especially for those who are

culturally displaced, as immigrants are, or those who grow up in two worlds

simultaneously, as is the case for their children. The older I get, the more aware I

am that I have somehow inherited a sense of exile from my parents, even though

in many ways-superficial ones, largely-I am so much more American than they

are. In fact, it is still very hard to think of myself as an American […..] The

feeling that there was no single place to which I fully belonged bothered me

growing up. It bothers me less now. But it bothered me growing up, the feeling

that there was no single place to which I fully belong. (Houghton Mifflin

Company)

Among the Indian Diaspora, the concept of home, nation and cultural identity of

belongingness to the place of origin/ ancestry continue to change from one person to

another. In the first generation of immigrants, it is found that the migration results into

the feeling of alienation, nostalgia of the past and rootlessness at the place of migration

because they are still hanging on to the cultural beliefs, practices and social norms of the

homeland. The writers of the diaspora desire to keep alive their traditions in their

writings. Their basic inspirations are their memories of the past from the motherland.

When the immigrants recollect their past, they are not only nostalgic about their

memories but about their geographical place which is not only a geographical physical

space but also the mentally conjured psychological cultural space. Lahiri depicts various

Diaspora themes such as alienation, rootlessness, exile in her literary works which are
124

nothing but the experiences of immigrants in their exile. Lahiri‟s The Namesake is an

exemplar of the present-day immigrant commentary which positions the immigrant ethnic

family within a community of multi-ethnic travelers. She chronicles displacement and

social discomfort in a fresh manner. She intersperses the two cultures and creates inner

chaos for many of her characters who struggle to balance the Western and Indian

influence. Her works are permeated with the ethos of Indian culture and emotional

response. Her novels are more about the co-operation of culture than about confrontation.

The novel end in Gogol‟s coping with his pangs to live a new life in diaspora. The

dynamics of relationships continue to puzzle Lahiri‟s characters in their multiplicity of

relationships, be it from the west or the east but remain universally the same. However,

culture and diaspora remain central concerns in the daunting novel as she interprets

various maladies that Gogol suffered and the way he seeks remedial measures. Indira

Nityanandam critically observes:

This novel explores the process of cultural mingling with Ashima being the least

inclined to lose her Indian identity and be swamped by the new culture. The novel

is the expatriate‟s voice attempting to make meaning out of the web in which she

finds herself. (15)

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri optimistically facilitates the understanding alienation

and loss of identity related to home, identity crisis, nostalgia, and isolation that strikes to

diaspora group. All the major characters at the beginning of the novel face a period of

uncertainty and confusion due to which their sense of identity becomes insecure. Gogol

tries to find his roots, his identity and finally learns the lesson of action preach by

existential beliefs. He realizes that the only way for an immigrant to get rid of identity
125

conflict is to acknowledge that dual, fragile and hyphenated identity. Her works are

explicitly about immigrants, cultural clashes, assimilation, adaptation and so forth. Much

of the part of the novel centers on the Gogol‟s name that is the most basic part of an

individual‟s identity. It unveils how the socio-cultural forces, ethnicity, and genders have

influenced the expatriate characters and brings out anxieties, uneasiness, nostalgia,

rootlessness and alienation, disconnection in relationship and identity crisis and the

ultimate assimilation that they have to come to terms with. All these factors are important

components of post-colonial diaspora literature that the novel handles. One must agree

with Bhagabat Nayak who appreciates the novel as:

Lahiri‟s The Namesake projects Ashima and Gogol as cultural survivors in

America‟s multicultural milieu. They demonstrate the lives of hybridity, in

betweenness and liminality. It is difficult for them to maintain cultural insularity,

and like millions of immigrant Indians they essentialise their life in the cultural

available of America. But finally it is their contra-acculturation and rooting for

India that allows them peace and consolation in moments of catharsis. (147)

The Namesake spins around the adopted advanced standards from the West and

westernization and how these values bring about generational disparities in Diasporic

cultures, viz, Calcutta/Kolkata in India and America/West. Cultural displacement

involves the loss of language, family ties and support, and is in general looked on by

Diasporic groups unconstructively. In the first generation Diaspora memory and nostalgia

play a significant role. They treasure and preserve all the memories of their homeland and

pass the time very anxiously for the moment of their trip to the country. Their ease and

comfort with their own culture is apparent in their behavior. Quite on the reverse, there
126

are the second generation youngsters, the memories of Calcutta/Kolkata trip are worn out

from their minds “like clothes worn for special occasion, or for a season that has passed,

suddenly cumbersome, irrelevant to their lives” (TN 88). Despite their association to

American and western ways they could not be one of them. As Pravin Sheth remarks:

The formation or reconstruction of Indian identity has to be an on-going process.

Identity has to be constructed by what one inherits as well as by what one has to

struggle to make of oneself. The cultural baggage brought out by the first

generation has to be checked, irrelevant of unessential items … and new ones

need to be added to make life purposeful and relevant to the ethos of the adopted

land. (427)

Hence, the majority of the second generations in their adolescence start to look out their

identity since they cope with several conflicting practices which their parents perceive

from the society in which they live. It brings about acceptance of both cultures and living

in a combined manner. This point is referred by Modood who bears out:

[M]ost of the Asian second generation wanted to retain some core heritage, some

amalgam of family cohesion, religion and language, probably in an adapted form,

but did not expect this to mean segregated social lives, for they lived and wanted

to live in an ethnically mixed way. (110)

This chapter is an attempt to investigate the inner consciousness of characters and brings

out emotive sense of identity by a clash of cultures. In the globalized world,

multiculturalism results in “the Melting Pot” and “Salad Bowl.” The novel overflows

with poise and dignity of a family forced to make reconciliation with their loyalties to
127

India and America. Ashima in due course assimilates to the American melting-pot and

adapts herself to a transcultural lifestyle at the end. A great deal of diasporic works range

over the identitary factors that involve in a complex process of exile from one‟s own

geography and history within experimental narrative strategies. The Namesake does not

deal with imposed exile in the factual sense but an existentialist preference that Ashoke

and Ashima made, which nevertheless unfolds the same feelings of being in exile

encompassing all through the novel by means of the experience of isolation. It is a

remarkable piece of literature by Jhumpa lahiri is an account of remorse- an intense

psychosomatic dilemma. The tug between the two worlds- the Indian world and the

American one- is well studied in this novel and this discovery is rooted upon her

individual experiences growing up in America as the child of Indian immigrants. As a

typical Diaspora writer, Lahiri seems to understand the realization of immigrants and

have delineated them in a „true to life‟ manner. Jhumpa Lahiri‟s sense of exile as

presented through the characters in her novel is a broad-spectrum of the Indian Diasporic

community who leave their home culture to settle in a new and untried cultural and social

environment. Cultural adjustment or acclimatization, on the other hand, is also an

idiosyncratic feature of Diaspora literature which is very challenging. It involves the

process of realization; an individual has to learn and experience a new mixed bag of

cultural patterns and behaviors to live at ease in a place that is new and unfamiliar to

them. The life of the second generation of Ganguli family personified by Ashima and

Ashoke offers an untainted Diasporic attribute which states that culture shock is a

customary part of adjusting to a new culture and virtually every person who lives
128

overseas experiences this. All that is important for a person is to develop a support

system that may help him achieve the ability to function in the new culture.

The next chapter of this thesis is titled A Diasporic Discourse of Identity and

Alienation in Unaccustomed Earth. The eight stories in this collection are divided into

two parts- five individual short stories followed by three interlinked stories about two

childhood friends grouped under the heading Hema and Kaushik. The eight stories in this

book turn an incisive eye on the second generation Indian American children to explore

their anguish and suffering in an exile existence. They straddle two cultures, two

traditions and principles which cause their identity crisis, rootlessness and dual

consciousness. The chapter attempts to bring about the truth that though at the core of

reminiscence is a sense of loss that is both lamented and accepted, it can as well be an

indispensable means on the stand of which one might draw to uphold, augment and

imbibe the true sense of life.

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