Trying to uproot an addiction...

In my twenty-six years of existence, there have not been many things I have been addicted to. There was a time when I could not live without taking my nightly walk and listening to Aerosmith. That time lasted for about six months. I still have that pair of CDs here but when I look at them, I can only vaguely recall the passion I felt for its music. Its like meeting an old girl-friend long after the relationship is over and wondering what drove you to the heights of passion you experienced.

Anyway, I don't like being addicted to anything. These days I am addicted to this book called, "The Namesake". I don't have much work at office these days. Whenever I come back home (which is very early these days), I see that book lying on my cupboard. I have to try very hard to control my impulse to grab it and read it for the umpteenth time.

This is an effort to get over my addiction... After all the library lease runs out this week!

I still have not been able to figure out how book-reviewers think up the balderdash they churn out either in panning or apotheosizing a tome. Get a load of this:
"Against all that is irrational and inevitable about life, Lahiri posits the timeless, borderless eloquence and permanence of great writing"
or even better:
"The Namesake is a quietly moving first novel... Intensely absorbing....locates the universality in precisely evoked individuality"!!!!

This is my humble effort to review this gem. And if you are looking for words like that, please read no further.

I liked this book because the author, with great insight, laid bare what an immigrant feels when he leaves behind everything he calls his own to start a new life in a foreign land. To begin with, you yearn for your Mom's cooking, the surly auto-drivers on the streets of Bangalore and the "Musambi Juice" you used to drink at that shop in Brigade Road after a few beers on a Friday night. And you yearn for something else: A feeling of belonging.

As time passes, the yearning goes down and slowly, the bonds that though strained, still bind you to your motherland, give way and you become part of a diaspora. You have still the remnants of an erstwhile identity. Your children have none. Gogol is neither a 100% American nor a 100% Indian. He can either try to reinforce his American identity and be "More American than the Americans" or try to get back to his Indian roots and be a "Born again Indian". If he does nothing, he will be an "American Indian". Try as he might, he will not be able to evade one of these labels.
Though Gogol has it easy. Atleast he has a well-defined cultural system or a way of life to identify with in India. A "diasporaic" Bihari-Gujarati in Singapore has not even that.... (Thank God taking the next flight to Bangalore will not label me a "Born again Indian"!!!! Too early for that!)

My most favourite character in this book is of course, Ashima. The book begins with her and almost ends with her. She loves her family and makes 67 Pemberton Road a place which wherever they might be, Gogol and Sonia will always consider home. She is emotional, yet strong. She is the most help-less creature in this book but touchingly so. She reminds me of a help-less mother hen who is drenched in the rain and none of her kids are around to help her. That she gets up and helps herself does not in anyway decrease her vulnerability. At the end when she is left all alone, she makes it a point to pick up the pieces of her life and live her life herself without being a "burden" on either of her children. This requires a lot of courage.
I am always touched by the reference to a "teary" Ashima going back home after dropping Gogol off to college for the first time while he, un-caring, goes about doing the formalities required in changing his name.

Parents are like that. So are the children.

The focus of the book is primarily on Ashima in the beginning and on Gogol at the end.
Gogol strikes me as a slightly irresponsible child in the beginning but he quickly matures into an adult who can share his happiness but keeps his sorrow to himself. That Christmas eve, he discovers that his marriage is over but he keeps it to himself lest he ruin the holiday season for Ashima and Sonia. What are most touching are the little things he does for Moushumi.

"Occasionally, in the apartment, he finds odd remnants of her life before he's appeared in it, her life with Graham - the inscription to the two of them in a book of poems, a postcard from Provence stuffed into the back of a dictionary, addressed to the apartment they had secretly shared. Once, unable to stop himself, he'd walked to this address during his lunch break, wondering what her life had been back then."

Its very difficult not to be moved by the pathos of his love which is re-paid by nothing else but submission on the part of Moushumi. Moushumi being a free spirit cannot last in that situation for long and does not.
And that's the tragedy of life and love.