The Namesake
I just finished reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s charming story about a boy named Gogol. The book chronicles how in many intricate, small ways, this name (taken from an obscure Russian author) sets him apart from himself and others as he grows up – American by birth, Indian by parentage, lost somewhere in between.
I had not read any of Lahiri’s stories – and was absolutely delighted by her prose. Such a light touch, but so full of detail… it’s a book that becomes hard to let go of. Even now that I’m finished, I find myself revisiting certain scenes in Gogol’s life. For example, the first time he truly falls in love – meeting a girl on a train, as they head home from Yale for the holiday break:
She laughs softly, putting a strand of her hair behind her ear. Her beauty is direct, unassuming. She wears no makeup apart from something glossy on her lips; two small brown moles by her right cheekbone are the only things that distract from the pale peach of her complexion. She has slim hands with unpolished nails and ragged cuticles. She leans to put the magazine away and get a book from the bag at her feet, and he briefly glimpses the skin above her waistband.
“Are you going to Boston?” he asks.
“Maine. That’s where my dad lives. I have to switch to a bus at South Station. It’s another four hours from there. What college are you in?”
“J.E.”
He learns that she is in Silliman, that she is planning to be an English major. Comparing notes of their experiences at college so far, they discover that they had both taken Psychology 110 the previous spring. The book in her hands is a paperback copy of Timon of Athens, and though she keeps a finger marking her page she never reads a word of it. Nor does he bother to open the volume on perspective he’s pulled out of his duffel. She tells him she was raised on a commune in Vermont, the child of hippies, educated at home until the seventh grade. Her parents are divorced now. Her father lives with her stepmother, raising llamas on a farm. Her mother, an anthropologist, is doing fieldwork on midwives in Thailand.
He cannot imagine coming from such parents, such a background, and when he describes his own upbringing it feels bland by comparison. But Ruth expresses interest, asking about his visits to Calcutta. She tells him her parents went to India once, to an ashram somewhere, before she was born. She asks what the streets are like, and the houses, and so on the blank back page of his book on perspective Gogol draws a floor plan of his maternal grandparents’ flat, navigating Ruth along the verandas and the terrazzo floors, telling her about the chalky blue walls, the narrow stone kitchen, the sitting room with cane furniture that looked as if it belonged on a porch. He draws with confidence, thanks to the drafting course he is taking this term. He shows her the room where he and Sonia sleep when they visit, and describes the view of the tiny lane lined with corrugated tin-roofed businesses. When he is finished, Ruth takes the book from him and looks at the drawing he’s made, trailing her fingers through the rooms. “I’d love to go,” she says, and suddenly he imagines her face and arms tan, a backpack strapped to her shoulders, walking along Chowringhee as other Western tourists do, shopping in New Market, staying at the Grand.
As they are talking a woman across the aisle reprimands them; she’s been trying to take a nap, she says. This only goads them into talking further, in lowered voices, their heads leaning toward each other. Gogol is unaware of which state they are in, which stations they’ve passed. The train rumbles over a bridge; the setting sun is feverishly beautiful, casting a striking pink glow on the facades of the clapboard houses that dot the water’s edge. In minutes these shades fade, replaced by the pallor that precedes dusk. When it is dark he sees that their images are reflected at an angle in the glass, hovering as if outside the train. Their throats are parched from talking and at one point he offers to go to the café car. She asks him to get her a bag of potato chips and a cup of tea with milk. He likes that she doesn’t bother to pull the billfold out of her jeans, that she allows him to buy them for her. He returns with a coffee for himself, the chips and tea, along with a paper cup of milk the bartender has given him instead of the regulation container of cream. They continue talking, Ruth eating the chips, brushing the salt from her lips with the back of her hand. She offers some to Gogol, pulling them out for him one by one. He tells her about the meals he’d eaten on Indian trains, the time he traveled with his family to Delhi and Agra, the rotis and slightly sour dal ordered at one station and delivered hot at the next, the thick vegetable cutlets served with bread and butter for breakfast. He tells her about the tea, how it was bought through the window from men on the platform, who poured it from giant aluminum kettles, the milk and sugar already mixed in, and how it was drunk in crude clay cups that were smashed afterward on the tracks. Her appreciation for these details flatters him; it occurs to him that he has never spoken of his experiences in India to any American friend.
They part suddenly, Gogol working up the nerve to ask for her number at the last minute, writing it into the same book where he’d drawn her the floor plan. He wishes he could wait with her at South Station for her bus to Maine, but he has a commuter train to catch in ten minutes to take him to the suburbs. The days of the holiday feel endless; all he can think of is getting back to New Haven and calling Ruth. He wonders how many times they’ve crossed paths, how many meals they’ve unwittingly shared in the Commons. He thinks back to Psychology 110, wishing his memory would yield some image of her, taking notes on the other side of the law school auditorium, her head bent over her desk. Most often he thinks of the train, longs to sit beside her again, imagines their faces flushed from the heat of the compartment, their bodies cramped in the same way, her hair shining from the yellow lights overhead. On the ride back he looks for her, combing each and every compartment, but she is nowhere and he ends up sitting next to an elderly nun with a brown habit and prominent white down on her upper lip, who snores all the way.
It is a lovely read – sad and beautiful, moving. I’m very curious to see what the film will be like.
A 
