Sense of Rootlessness in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “NAMESAKE”

“The formation of a diaspora could be articulated as the quintessential journey into becoming; a process marked by incessant regroupings, recreations, and reiteration. Together these stressed actions strive to open up new spaces of discursive and performative postcolonial consciousness.” 

― Okwui Enwezor  (web)

“Quest for Identity” or “Roots” marks the Diasporic fiction. While major concerns of the most diasporic writers are fractured and fluid nature of individual identities they also points out the differences in exploring how new and old generation Diasporas relate to their land of origin and the host culture. Due to the displacement, Diaspora’s quest for identity, a sense of inability to belong becomes all the more problematic and desperate. The rootlessness, coupled with the apathetic attitude of host culture sums up to the sense of otherness and alienation. If seen metaphysically human beings seem to be in eternal exiles. Human beings do not have a permanent home anywhere. It is this displacement which gives diasporic writing its unique qualities of loss and nostalgia.

As Jhumpa Lahiri said in Kolkata literary meet 2014 “Calcutta has been an absent motive in my life and occasionally it was a present presence … the majority of my conscious life and my upbringing was shaped and informed by the absence of this city and what that absence meant to my parents.” She went on to indicate the diasporic sense of rootlessness and how it gets reflected in her writing “I don’t have any singular connection to one place or one country. I don’t feel like I come from any specific place. But I was raised by two people who not only do come from a specific place but keenly felt the absence of that place as they were raising me. So I think it was inevitable that that it would begin to inspire my writing.”

Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake” (2003) is a cross-cultural, ultigenerational story of a Hindu Bengali family’s journey to self-acceptance in Boston. ‘The Namesake’ explores the theme of transnational identity and trauma of cultural dislocation. The novel is a narrative about the assimilation of an Indian Bengali Family from Calcutta, the Ganguli’s, into America. The cultural dilemmas experience by them and their American born children are quite different. The spatial, cultural and emotional dislocations suffered by Ashoke and Ashima in their effort to settle “home” in the new land are contradistinctive to the miseries of Gogol, Moushumi and Sonia.

Ashoke Ganguli leaves his homeland, and comes to America in pursuit of higher studies to do research in the field of fiber optics with a prospect of settling down with security and respect. After two year’s stay in the USA he comes back to India, marries a nineteen years old Bengali girl from Calcutta named Ashima, who has no idea or dream of going to a place called Boston so far off from her parents ,but agrees for the marriage since ‘he would be there’. After the legal formalities, she flies alone to be with her husband.

The novel raises its curtain with Ashima in hospital going to give Gogol

birth. From the very first chapter the mental alienation faced by Ashima in the foreign land is being exhibited. Ashima often feels upset and homesick and sulks alone. She feels spatially and emotionally dislocated from the comfortable ‘home ‘of her father full of so many loving ones and yearns to go back. She spends her time on rereading Bengali short stories, poems and article from the Bengali magazines, she has brought with her. It is the only way she connect herself with her homeland. Ashima seems to be terrified about the whole prospect of raising a child in a country “where she is related to no one, where she knows so little”. (The Namesake:2003) The fright of Ashima appears justified as she never has any independence in the then parochial society of Bengal. She was domesticated and habituated at being confined within the homely atmosphere and familial relationships which is ubiquitous in the then Bengali society. In the outside world which she has to visit after marriage she finds herself out of that homely atmosphere and thus starts feeling lonely and marginalized. As a native she misses her homeland much more now after being separated from it. Home is a mystic place of desire in the immigrant’s imagination. May be thus she holds on to the Bengali customs more sacredly like not uttering the name of her husband.

After the birth of her son Gogol, she wants to back to Calcutta and raise her child there in the company of the caring and loving ones but decides to stay back for Ashoke’s 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’ (The Namesake; 35).

Ashima and Ashoke too like immigrant of other communication make their circle of Bengali acquaintance .They all become friends only for the reason that they all come from the same native place. Lahiri in her novel ‘The Namesake’ also displays how these immigrants are making 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 to. Ashima tells Gogol about Durga Puja, she also makes him memorize four line children’s poem by Tagore. But concurrently she is conscious of her child being American student and makes him watch Sesame Street and the Electric Company in order to match with English he uses at school. So Gogol is always sailing in two boats simultaneously, one with his parents at home speaking Bengali and living in Bengali style and the other of American Indian. But being too young to comprehend the impact of these things he is least bothered about his hyphenated existence as long as he has not stepped into the outer world which is alien to his parents but not for him as he is born American Indian.

Towards the second–half of ‘The Namesake’ when Gogol celebrates his twenty seventh birthday at his girlfriend Maxine’s parents Lake house in New Hampshire without his parents Maxine and her mother Lydia throw a dinner to celebrate his birthday. At dinner Gogol encounters Pamela, a middle aged white woman. Who insists on viewing him as Indian, despite his polite response that he is from Boston. Maxine’s mother corrects Pamela, asserting that Gogol is American, but in the end even she hesitates, asking him if he actually was born in the United States (157). Even Gogol’s United States citizenship does not guarantee his identity as an American. This tendency to categorize Gogol as an Indian might be viewed as an example of “othering” of “Indian” immigrants in the United States, where individual are identified according to their roots, rather than their country of residence or citizenship. However ‘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.

Gogol doesn’t think of India as his country or ‘desh’, he sees himself as purely American. Though Gogol considers himself an American, he is brought up by between two diametrically different cultures, similar to Bhabha’s in between space where people can, to a certain extent, move and negotiate within their worlds He is both Indian and American. He belongs to Indian parents on a different geographical space than India and is acculturated as an Indian at home but outside the house, he is an American. He thinks of India as a ‘foreign country’ far away from home, both physically and psychologically (The Namesake 118). 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 Gogol’s 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. The protagonist characters attempt to form a multiplicity of identities in a process of cultural formation. Their cultural identity formation includes pieces of cultural inheritance to incorporate into their lives as Americans. Redefining homeland becomes a matter of redefining identity.

Ashima is shown to grow with passage of time during her thirty two years of stay in America, retaining her culture in dress and values as well as assimilating the American culture for her personal growth and for the sake of her children. She after the death of her husband decides to divide her time every year both at Calcutta and in America, she has grown more confident, and enjoys the best of both cultures. Sonia’s decision to marry Ben (a half Chinese boy) and Maushumi’s attitude of not sticking to any one culture or country shows how the second generation is going Global and are becoming multicultural.

Lahiri’s ‘The Namesake’ is an example of the Contemporary immigrant narration which doesn’t place the idea of an ‘American Drama’ at the center of the story, but rather positions the immigrant ethnic family within a community of cosmopolitan travelers. 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.

References

Net: 

1. http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/175632.Okwui_Enwezor 
2. Lahiri, J (2003) The Namesake, Harper Collins, ISBN- 13: 978-0-00-725891-8
3. Images from net