The Namesake question

She seemed to be running from herself and not letting go of the past... friends, culture, wedding dress, affair. She's lost. Going back to Paris is part of the pattern.

Her actions are not justified in how she treats Gogol, but she, more so than him, has trouble balancing her heritage with American culture. She learns and studies French culture and language, and has relationships with men of many different cultures. She only chooses Gogol, I think, because she sees in him a mirror of herself. She has the line where she says she would like to dye her wedding dress (from when she was engaged to the white guy) so she could wear it again. This means that she wants to have an identical relationship to what she had with him, with Gogol. I think she has the most trouble because she went from India, to Britian and then to the United States and then preceded to throw herself into French culture, because one of these, in her mind, would fit her better than her Bengali roots. I just think that she moved around through cultures too much to find comfort in celebrating and practicing the customs of just one of them. Men were the outlet in which she explored many of them, and Gogol happened to be one of her pawns.