The Namesake

As you can see, I have been busy, after the end of the prelims. This template took me a long time to make, coz I had to start from scratch. A whole day spent [Not wasted]. If you really want to see the blog in all its splendor. switch to Firefox, coz IE will have some trouble with a few tags I have used.

After the exams, instead of studying I have been behaving like it were a vacation. Have already seen 4 movies, got my cycle cleaned, and read a really nice book.

'The Namesake' written by Jhumpa Lahiri, is one of the best books I have read in a very long time. The protagonist of the story is an Bengali ABCD born in the late 60's. His parents refuse to give him a proper name at birth, coz his great-grand mother wanted to name him and had sent a letter with her choice, but the letter never reaches its destination. The father calls him by the name of Gogol, his favorite Russian author. The kid begins to hate the name in school and finally changes it to Nikhil when he turns 18. How he struggles with his identity, form the basis of the story.

I have always been an anti-goat when it comes to reading novels. If a novel is popular, I suffer from the pressure of liking it, and most often I cant get myself to read it. That's the reason why I haven't read 'The God of Small Things' yet. This is also might be the reason why I cant finish reading a single page of Ayn Rand. I would rather pick up some obscure novel, which I had never heard of, and read it, rather then some novel whos author has had realms of newsprint written about him or her.

So when I had picked up Jhumpa Lahiri's 'Interpreter of Maladies' I was sure that I wouldn't last more then one story. Her name had cropped up all over the media 4 years ago, after she got the Pulitzer Prize. I was rather surprised when I liked her stories. Her slow style of narration hypnotised me.

Yesterday while doing nothing in particular, I chanced to find her novel: The Namesake. After reading it for two days, I cant say why I loved it so much. I can relate to Gogol, who has doubts about himself when no one else does. I can empathise with his insecurities. I feel the 'I am different' that he does.

But Lahiri's way of writing is something totally different. You are with the character, but not the character. So you can actually see the character as another person close to you; You don't try to imagine yourself to be in his or her shoes, because you have gone thru all those fictional situations along with them. It's like this: If you are in a particular situation, you know what you will do, but if your friend is in that situation, you don't think, you just empathise with him. Maybe this is why the book affected me so deeply and touched a chord somewhere.