The Namesake

by Jhumpa Lahiri

Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

I love pet names and nicknames. Sometimes in public when I'm calling for one of my best friends I forget how embarassing it can be to be called Dookie in front of other people. It's a nickname that we call each other. We aren't Dookie to other people. It's something we share.

For when Ashima and Ashoke close their eyes it never fails to unsettle them, that their children sound just like Americans, expertly conversing in a language that still at times confounds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust.

I can't imagine how that must be for Ashima and Ashoke. Coming to live in a foreign country and their children being part of the unfamiliarity at times. Especially when Gogol was rejecting everything they came from.

Living with a pet name and a good name, in a place where such distinctions do not exist—surely that was emblematic

of the greatest confusion of all.

One person with two names, why is one good and the other known as something else? It makes sense in the culture they are a part of but in this new country, to others, it doesn't make much sense. It struck me as odd that the principal or whoever he spoke to at the elementary school couldn't tell there was a significant difference between the two names. It seemed disrespectful on her part to indulge Gogol on using his pet name.

“Now I know why he went to Cleveland,” she tells people, refusing, even in death, to utter her husband’s name. “He was teaching me how to live alone.”

This one hurt. You could see up until this point how she was acclimating to being on her own and finding out how to fill up the time. I think Ashoke doing this for her is the truest sign of love in their relationship for a couple that had their love built after time. He knew she would've needed to learn on her own.