Jhumpa Lahiri , born on July 11, 1967 is an Indian American author. Lahiri’s debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies(1999), won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name. She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna, which she says are both “good names,” but goes by her nickname Jhumpa Lahiri is a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama
In 2003, Lahiri published The Namesake, her first novel. The story spans over thirty years in the life of the Ganguli family. The Calcutta-born parents immigrated as young adults to the United States, where their children, Gogol and Sonia, grow up experiencing the constant generational and cultural gap with their parents. A film adaptation of The Namesake was released in March 2007, directed by Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn as Gogol and Bollywood stars Tabu and Irrfan Khan as his parents.
Book Review
The Namesake overflows with the subtle grace and dignity of a family forced to make peace with their divided loyalties to India and America. In quiet yet compelling prose, Jhumpa Lahiri portrays the temperaments of the Calcutta-born parents, Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli, a pair tied to their Indian roots, customs and rituals. The traditionally-wed young couple emigrate to America in 1967 and must adjust to an entirely new world. After the birth of their son, circumstances force them to forego custom and offer a name for the birth certificate. Nonplussed, Ashoke offers the “second” name, Gogol, never meant for use as the child’s public, or formal, name. Ashoke impulsively makes this choice based on the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, who inspired Ashoke in a very personal manner as a young man.
The Essay on Namesake: Nikolai Gogol and Gogol S Circumstance
The Namesake has a connection to belonging as if deals with the disconnection of the Ganguli’s. The theme of alienation and the search for belonging between the two cultures is represented through the shifts between the two countries; where Ashoke and Ashima move to America growing their children up in an American society but teaching them Bengali traditions. Lahiri uses techniques such as symbols ...
The Ganguli’s fit readily into an academic community where they eventually find a group of other Bengalis, establishing a network of friends who gather for holidays and special occasions common to Bengali traditions. As for their son, Gogol, who is a well-mannered and dutiful boy, he nevertheless detests his name, although he is helpless to change it until he is an adult. The majority of second-generation Bengali children become gradually Americanized, less drawn to tradition. These children never really participate in the family celebrations or occasional visits to see relatives in Calcutta to the same degree as their parents but are more attracted to their new culture.
The unfortunate Gogol is tethered to this dual Indian-American life, never quite fitting anywhere. At first he gravitates to the social acceptance of Americanization, pushing aside the Indian rituals that draw attention to his differences. But after a number of relationship failures and some few successes, Gogol is attracted to the comfort of his heritage, one that has settled deep in the marrow of his bones. His perspective changes dramatically over the years, and he becomes a man who seeks a connection with his family of origin.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lahiri (for The Interpreter of Maladies) delves into the heart of the Indian-American experience: the difficult and tedious adjustments, the pain of leaving a warm and comforting home and years of tradition. The real beauty of her prose is the way it flows into graceful character definition, particularly that of Gogol and his mother. The author lives inside her characters, exposing their flaws and noting their strengths with compassion, bringing them to life.
Gogol’s story is actually a simple one, as lived by many multii-cultural citizens of America. The human complaints and complications stem from the dichotomy Gogol endures for most of his early years, but the strength of Lahiri’s writing is in the exquisite details. These people are not strangers; they are our neighbors, friends and fellow workers, whose lives are just as fraught with indecision as ours. With enviable ease, Lahiri illuminates the intimate traits that are so appealing and familiar.
The Term Paper on Use Of American Indian Images In The Boy Scouts And Camp Fire Girls
Use of American Indian Images in the Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls Taking into consideration such organizational movements as the Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls, we may focus our attention on these organizations usage of American Indian images. Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls use American Indian images pretty often in various kinds of activities and specific to the organizations staff. One of the ...
From Gogol’s fearful, cling-to-tradition immigrant parents to his continuous struggle for comfort in his own skin, the reader is privy to the intricate process of assimilation, particularly that of Indian-American life and the ties to family that comfort an immigrant population. There is an incredible generosity that is transferred from one generation to another in The Namesake. Add in culture shock and the need for acceptance in American society and the novel’s focus is familiar: the value of family in any land.
Film Review
The namesake written by Jhumpa Lahiri was made into a movie by Mira Nair which follows two generations of a Bengali family from late-1970s Calcutta to New York City. It conveys a palpable sense of people as living, breathing creatures who are far more complex than their words might indicate. The story of upwardly mobile immigrants torn between tradition and modernity as they are absorbed into the American melting pot has been told in countless movies.
This variation is gentle and compassionate. The longing for roots of these displaced middle-class Indians lends a soulful undertow to a film conspicuously lacking in melodrama.
The film has a crackling star performance by Kal Penn who brings an offhanded charisma to the role of Gogol, the first-born child of Ashima (Tabu), a classically trained singer, and Ashoke Ganguli (Irrfan Khan), an aspiring engineer, who move to America in 1977 after their arranged marriage in Calcutta.
Alone together in a foreign land in the middle of winter, the shy, polite newlyweds are virtual strangers, and the movie captures their delicate process of mutual accommodation. Ashima’s initiation into American culture has gentle, humorous moments. She is astonished to discover gas stoves that work 24 hours a day and learns the hard way that wool sweaters should not be dumped into a washing machine.
A prologue looks back to a turning point in Ashoke’s life. During a train trip in 1974 to visit his grandfather, a friendly stranger advises him to leave India and see the world. Ashoke is reading “The Overcoat,” the famous story by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, who spent much of his life outside his homeland. When the train crashes later in the trip, Ashoke miraculously survives, and the Gogol story becomes a totem in his life, a symbolic tie to his homeland and an omen of good luck.
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American Family Life Insurance Company (AFLAC), a Fortune 500 company, and their Chief Executive Officer (CEO),Dan Amos, were recently recognized by Ethiosphere Magazine as the World’s Most Ethical Company for the fourth consecutive year (Aflac Named Most Ethical Company for Fourth Consecutive Year, March 2013). This award is given to companies who demonstrate a commitment to ethical leadership, ...
Years later when his son is born, Ashoke is told that the baby cannot leave the hospital without a name. In India several years might pass before a child is given a formal name, chosen by the maternal grandmother. Ashoke impulsively calls his son Gogol. As the boy grows up, his ambivalence about his temporary name, which he embraces, then rejects (his formal name is Nikhil), becomes a metaphor for his divided cultural identity.
In high school Gogol rebels from his family and behaves like a typical pot-smoking, rock-’n’-roll-loving American teenager. On a visit to Calcutta he sneers at Indian ways. After studying architecture at Yale, he falls in love with Maxine (Jacinda Barrett), a stereotypical blonde princess from Long Island. Cultural tensions flare when he brings her home to meet his family, and the couple are expected to withhold any expressions of physical affection, according to Indian tradition.
Gogol eventually falls in love with Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson), a beautiful Bengali woman who lived a freewheeling life in Paris before coming to the United States. His female counterpart, she is as culturally confused as he is, and the relationship runs into trouble.
Despite all the tensions in the Ganguli household, “The Namesake” expresses a reassuring faith in family solidarity. Avoiding the cliché of pitting disobedient immigrant children in pitched battles against tradition-bound parents from the old country, the film assumes that blood ties are the strongest bonds holding together the social order.
In the second half of the movie the Ganguli parents step into the background as the focus shifts to Gogol. But instead of disappearing, Ashoke and Ashima loom as dignified, stabilizing pillars of tolerance and devotion whom their son and his younger sister, Sonia (Sahira Nair), cherish, even as they reject the old ways.
The Essay on The Influence of Movies vs. Books
Books and movies both have equal importance for the man of 21st century. As the technology develops so are the needs of man. Every one’s life has become quite fast and busy. Books and movies provide you the best way to escape and relax yourself from busy schedule. Great revolution has occurred in both books and movies with the passage of time. Firstly if we talk about movies, they have great ...
A comparison
The namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri was published in 2003 and the movie directed by Mira Nair was released in 2006 , here after reading and viewing the film I present my comparison between the book .
The book is well written, clear, evocative and brings out the conflict between the eastern and western cultures with brilliance and simplicity. Its basically about the identity crises that a confused American desi suffers …the conflict arises because of his double identity …as Gogol Ganguli, the Bengali boy and son of immigrant parents (an identity which he is slightly ashamed of) and the western one, his American avatar Nikhil, shortened to Nick. This is what Jhumpa Lahiri brings to life in the book. We suffer with Gogol…Nick. Even if you have never experienced this kind of identity crises, the author explains it so poignantly, through various incidents, that we have no trouble identifying with Gogol.
The story is in fact about this boy Gogol, the namesake of an eccentric Russian author. Gogol struggles to throw off the shackles of the name and what it implies…his Indianness, as Gogol is his father’s favorite author. Gogol’s rebellion becomes evident when he leaves home…with his various affairs for example and a disinclination to come home. He even starts to live with his white girlfriend who lives with her parents, and admires the western way of living. It is only when his father dies that he changes, and regrets the way he has behaved. It’s very believable, the change in Gogol…how the shock of his father’s death brings him back to his roots.
In the movie it’s the relationship between Gogol’s parents, Ashima and Ashoke, that makes greater impact. Ashima’s difficulty in adjusting (the movie opens with this), her loneliness and the growing love between husband and wife. It is very moving. Maybe it was because of the power of the actors (Tabu who plays Ashima and Irfan Khan who plays Ashoke) that these two characters make such an impact. But I also think that Mira Nair diverted from the book. For example, the movie does not show Gogol living with his girl friend’s parents (just shows him spending a few days there)…but this incident is what tells us how completely Gogol has rejected his Indian identity. He prefers her parents to his. By Indian standards, a boy living with the girl’s parents is mildly shocking. Even when Gogol is shown breaking up with his girl-friend, it seems sudden, in explicable. You can’t leave a relationship of several years because your girl friend makes a few insensitive remarks!
The Essay on War Horse from Book, Movie and Play
Have you ever witnessed a well-adapted animal thriving in its environment? Well similarly when a book is transformed into a movie or play it needs to be adapted so that it can thrive in its environment. For example if you read a great book and when you watch the movie you see every scene that you read in the book, the movie won’t be so good. There are many examples in which we see a movie or play ...
In the book it’s clear why Gogol leaves her. Its his realisation that his girlfriend is not really interested in his Indianness (this has been shown subtly before), and the fact that she wants him to be completely American…and can only grudgingly accept the differentness of his parents. But when he realises that at heart he is actually Gogol, not Nick, that is when he decides to break up. He needs to find someone who understands Gogol. He does, but this doesn’t work out. Again, in the book, we understand why his wife (an American born Bengali girl, as confused as him) falls in love with another man. Her being torn apart…trying to be a good Bengali wife by sacrificing a life and career in Paris. In the book this comes through very well. Not in the movie. Infidelity seems to be the main cause..the movie was simply unable to bring out the complexity of the novel. Maybe all movies cannot do justice to the book from which they are made, and in my opinion, this movie is one of them. Though in itself the movie is worth a watch. Its a piece of art, and has some brilliant scenes. The only problem is that it pales in comparison to the book.
