Shunya's Notes

The Namesake

Namit Arora

Namesake_2 Mira Nair’s movie packs in far more universal appeal than Jhumpa Lahiri’s book. Rather than the movie’s fidelity to the book, my main basis of comparison was: on the whole, does it tell a deeper, richer story? I thought yes; it improved on a mostly drab and plodding book, altering it in positive ways.

 

For instance: the movie reduced the book’s all-pervading, melancholy sense of loss and exile of the middle-class Indian economic migrant (which I couldn’t relate to and found rather annoying); it had richer vignettes of India as seen through visiting NRI/ABCD eyes; its manner of revealing the significance of “Gogol” was more effective; near the end, it made the middle-aged Ashima come into her own as a woman/singer; and so on.

 

The movie captured several “immigrant moments” at least as well as the book, the stuff that lots of Indians will surely relate to – old world mannerisms and husband-wife relations, the mulish adherence to tradition and custom, difficulties with names, the particular cliquishness of Bengalis, and most importantly, the tragicomic distance between most first generation Indian immigrants and their offspring.

   

Ashoke’s death and Ashima’s reaction to it were handled more deftly (except the oddly formal/festive attire Ashima wore at home when she got the news). However, the moment of parting between Gogol and his white girlfriend was worse than the book’s (if I recall correctly), showing her in an absurdly selfish light. His relationship with Moushumi and her character were much less developed than in the book. This, in particular, shifted the book’s primary focus on Gogol to more of a family portrait.

 

I liked Kal Penn as the bored and bumbling ABCD teen and young professional with his small rebellions and his later arc of personal growth. We see his insecurities, his disdain for the “Indian culture” his parents represent, his desire to belong in the only world he has known. Tabu and Irfan Khan were also good, though I understand their Bengali accents were not too authentic. Ultimately, the movie lacked the emotional and intellectual resonance of a great work of art, and that I think is largely due to the slight work of miniature artistry on which it is based.

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17 responses to “The Namesake”

  1. Ruchira Paul Avatar
    Ruchira Paul

    I am glad to note that you reacted similarly to Jhumpa Lahiri’s anemic prose as I did, although I have not yet read The Namesake. After An Interpreter of Maladies I probably was not going to. But my book club has it on the list down the road. I may end up seeing the movie before I read the book if the film is released here in the near future.
    As a reader of Bengali literature, I was very surprised when Lahiri pointed to Ashapurna Devi as her idol. Ashapurna and Lahiri’s styles have nothing in common. Ashapurna created grand sweeping, oversized, yet intricate tapestries fed by deep insights, cutting ironies and considerable humor. Lahiri is given to minor embroidery work on delicate handkerchiefs – pretty enough but not enough to make you go “wow!”
    So far I have read several reviews of The Namesake, the movie, some on a couple of “Indian American” blogs. From your description of the movie, I feel that my own reactions are going to be pretty similar to yours – similar points of irritation and identification. It always surprises me a bit when I come across the sense of tragedy and alienation that often suffuses the Indian experience in the US. As you rightly point out, economic migration is a bit different from political refuge or fleeing from other harsh realities. Sometimes, all that identity talk sounds a bit like self indulgent whining. (One can always go back “home,” you know.) My daughter saw the movie during a preview screening. She liked it but did not necessarily identify with everything she saw.
    I like Mira Nair’s film making better than Gurinder Chadha and Deepa Mehta’s. Nair is more vivacious, fun loving and less given to overdoing things than either of the other two.
    And yes, Bengali “cliquishness” is something that only those who come up against its impenetrable brick wall can appreciate. 🙂

    Reply
  2. Shunya (Namit) Avatar
    Shunya (Namit)

    Well said. I agree with your take on Nair and Lahiri. As for Bengali cliquishness, I first encountered it at IIT KGP, though I met enough who weren’t cliquish. Now most of my Indian friends are Bengali. Not long ago, one of them, noting my pseudo-intellectual ways, even pronounced me “an honorary bong”. Hey, come to think of it, perhaps I’ve myself become part of a Bengali clique without even knowing it! 😉

    Reply
  3. Ruchira Paul Avatar
    Ruchira Paul

    Bengali “cliquishness” is real and also quite funny. If it was not such an “insider” topic, I would have relished writing a whole blog post on the subject, being intimately familiar with the inner workings of this phenomenon. If you are an “honorary Bong,” I trust you have learnt to delicately point your nose in an upward direction too! 🙂
    If it is any solace, let me assure you that Bengalis themselves are occasionally the targets of this purist sentiment. My parents had lived and worked in Delhi for most of their adult lives. But their social circle consisted almost wholly of Bengalis – not so much by choice as that in their generation, socialization among the middle class rarely crossed linguistic, cultural barriers. My sister and I on the other hand, had friends across the entire linguistic, religious landscape of India. So, it was not wholly surprising that both of us ended up dating and marrying “boys” from other communities. Our own immediate and extended families were unabashedly delighted with our choice of mates. But many well meaning Bengali friends and neighbors took it upon themselves to warn my mother (they knew well enough to steer clear of my father) of the certain dire consequences that awaited such reckless and ill advised alliances. My mother was not the only victim of the self appointed advisory committee’s close mindedness. Occasionally I too had to listen (my sister being younger, was somewhat inoculated by the precedent set by me) to accusations of poor choice and even betrayal. When the accuser was an older neighbor or family friend, I learnt to bite my tongue. But amazingly enough, many were my contemporaries who were born and brought up in Delhi, just like me, but had never learnt to trust non-Bengalis, especially Punjabis (all potential killers and goondas), my husband being one of that dreaded community. With these younger busy bodies, I had perfected a retort that promptly brought all discussions to an abrupt halt. I used to counter, “It is too bad that I have let you down. Believe me, it wouldn’t have happened if Subhash was alive today!” As you know, to the average Bengali, Subhash Chandra Bose was the messiah whose enormous potential promise of putting Bengal on the top of world hierarchy was cut short by his untimely death. My sister and I still break into hysterical laughter when we recall some of the garbage we had to put up with.
    But guess what. Our beloved husbands (with more than five decades of happy married lives between them) are not above occasionally suspecting my sister and me of Bengali “cliquishness.” Go figure!

    Reply
  4. vp Avatar
    vp

    I can’t resist the temptation to add my two cents on the Jhumpa Lahiri phenomenon and Bengali cliquishness.
    When I read the Interpreter of Maladies , I liked Lahiri’s prose and her eye for telling detail. I felt though that she would run out of material pretty soon – there is only so much mileage one can extract from the relatively tame experiences of culturally displaced middle class immigrants. Also, there is a constricting narrowness to the tribulations of Bengalis in the US – even the Indian immigrant expereince is too broad a canvas for her to paint, let alone that of people from other countries and cultures. I felt that she relied strongly on the particular rather than the universal aspects of the immigrant experience.
    There are other writers who have made a career out of exploiting the exotica of distant cultures in a foreign land. Egregious among them are mistress-of-spices Divakaruni and Bharati Mukherjee – whom I am unable to read after having suffered through a couple of her short stories years ago.
    As for Bengali cliquishness, it is by no means unique among Indian linguistic groups. The four south Indian groups are notorious for their cliquishness and so are the Gujaratis. What distinguishes the Bengalis is the pride they take in their language, culture and intellectualism – with considerable justification, I would argue.
    I have normally not found this annoying except when they start believing that anything intellectual that either happened or is happening has to be connected to Kolkata. I have seen anecdotal evidence of this in academic writing about Indian history and culture as well, where Bengal has been studied extensively to the neglect of other regions. Part of this is due of course, to the disproportionate representation of Bengalis in academic disciplines.

    Reply
  5. Ruchira Paul Avatar
    Ruchira Paul

    VP:
    I too am familiar with the Southie and Marathi snobbishness although not so much with the Gujarati variety. However, all these are a bit distinct from the Bengali’s feeling of superiority. All the rest have a slight angle of ethnic / racist element in their hauteur. (I had close Tamil Brahmin friends who plied me lovingly with delicious idli, dosa, sambar but wouldn’t touch even a tomato sandwich made in our “dirty” fish eating kitchen.) Bengalis on the other hand, are actually not very racist. Their obsession is entirely to do with their feeling of intellectual / cultural superiority and yes, that beautiful language. They sincerely believe that no one else on earth appreciates music, poetry, subtle humor and football as well as they do. The fact that Bengali literature (including children’s lit) is (was?) indeed an amazingly vibrant force, reinforces that concept. And who would dare to argue about Tagore?
    Agree completely with you on the mistress-of-spices, both of whom along with Ms Lahiri, happen to be Bengalis! Bharati Mukherjee now bristles at being called a south Asian writer. She claims that she writes about universal experiences and as such, should be known as an American writer. Doesn’t matters much, her anger. Nobody reads her any more.

    Reply
  6. vp Avatar
    vp

    Ruchira,
    I agree broadly with what you say, though I have a couple of quibbles. First, I don’t ascribe cliquishness among desi groups to snobbery. Their world view is so restricted by their linguistic/cultural milieu that they find themselves unable to interact with others.
    Secondly, I wouldn’t label south Indian or Marathi exclusivism as racism . There is plenty of racism in attitudes towards Muslims and dalits, but that is a pan Indian phenomenon.
    I can’t speak to your personal experience with individuals, but Tam Brahm discomfort with meat and non-vegetarians defies easy categorization. It is an obsession with purity, both for reasons of ritual and hygiene. A bizarre example of this is the self-described “pooja-performing” family that refused to rent my parents’ place in Hyderabad because sitting on the commode while using it would defile them.
    As an aside, the discomfort is conveyed superbly in “Mr. and Mrs. Iyer”. The look on Konkona Sen Sharma’s face when Rahul Bose drinks water by putting the bottle to his lips captures an entire culture.
    Full disclosure: my parents were from the Andhra, but I grew up mostly in U.P. This naturally makes my worldview superior to that of all cliquish people 😉

    Reply
  7. Ruchira Paul Avatar
    Ruchira Paul

    Ah! So, you don’t ascribe cliquishness and racism to narrow world views and confined cultural milieus? What else do you think they are due to? In my experience, in India and abroad, the well traveled folks and those who don’t grow up as part of the powerful majority community in a region, tend to be far more compassionate and open minded. Like you and me for example – a Bengali and an Andhraite growing up in North India. We did not harbor the typical Bengali and Telugu notions of “others” as we might have, if we had lived in Kolkata or Hyderabad – believe me. My own children who grew up here are more broad minded than I am, which is saying something.

    Reply
  8. vp Avatar
    vp

    Ruchira,
    I think you misunderstand me. If you look at the first paragraph in my previous comment, I do ascribe cliquishness to narrow world views. What I disagree with is the equating of cliquishness with racism.
    A personal example might help clarify my point. Despite having lived in the US for close to two decades, most of my friends (those whose houses I can go to and those that I invite to my house) are still Indian. I can justifiably be called cliquish, but I don’t think that anyone could sensibly accuse me of being racist.

    Reply
  9. Dukhiram Avatar
    Dukhiram

    Dostoevsky makes Makar, the protagonist of his first novel Poor
    People, shout out in offence when Varvara sends him a copy of
    Gogol’s Overcoat, as he finds the main character to be living the
    life he now lives. Makar echoes the ‘similar points of irritation and
    identification’ about the ‘relatively tame experiences’ as y’all have
    variously said earlier:

    You hide sometimes, you hide, you conceal yourself inside
    whatever you’ve got, you are afraid at times to poke your nose out—
    because out of everything that could be found on earth, out of
    everything they’ll make you a satire, and then the whole of your
    civic and family life goes around in literature, everything is
    printed, read, mocked, gossiped about! And then you won’t even be
    able to show yourself in the street; I mean, it’s all so well
    demonstrated here, that now you can recognize the likes of us just
    by the way we walk … It would have been all right if towards the
    end he had at least improved, toned things down….

    Gogol had been the first to put a very ordinary person, "protected
    by no one, dear to no one, interesting to no one," in the
    landscape of Russian fiction, and thereby dignified whole lives and
    worlds that had existed almost out of sight for centuries. Ashoke
    Ganguli, too, reads into Akakii Akakiyevich the life of his own
    father, a humble clerk in Calcutta. He breaks down every time he
    reads about the clerk’s humiliation and death. And as again and again
    he read, "Just as Akaky’s ghost haunted the final pages, so did
    it haunt a place deep in Ashoke’s soul, shedding light on all that
    was irrational, all that was inevitable about the world", that
    illustrated "all men are mild lunatics engaged in pursuits that
    seem to them very important."

    A train accident gives him a second chance "to see the
    world"; that (and not economic migration) is what releases into
    a new orbit the small poignant dreams of an ordinary man who from now
    will live in the (culturally) beseiged fringes of a self-absorbed
    society where no one – including his own son – cares a
    whit about him.

    Reading the Namesake, it seemed to me that the Russian has
    something in common with the Bengali — an absurd sentimentality for
    the ordinary; whereas the muscular Punjabi or Gult might be
    more disposed to ask — Where’s the ROI yaar? The Grand Theme?

    Ashapurna Devi is a bit of a stretch, but the poet Joy Goswami
    might do:

    Behind the pyres, the ragged river-bank
    And on all those ragged edges, risen from the water,
    All their mothers sit, their heads covered with uncolored cloth
    Risen up from the water after long years,
    climbed down from the rain,
    All their mothers sit like small white bundles,
    So that at burning time
    They can be close to their sons–
    At burning time when the dead will remember
    a wife left behind
    An only daughter who ran away with her lover
    Unresolved property and a friend’s treachery
    The dead man will remember the first day at school and
    Unseen for so long,
    unresisted, the cause of his own death
    When he tries, flustered, to sit up on the pyre
    one last time
    And the attendant’s stave strikes hard,
    breaking him,
    laying him out —
    Then she can touch that fire-burnt skull
    With her age-old kitchen-weary pot-scrubbing shriveled hand
    And, spreading the end of her sari over those molten eyes,
    the widow can say
    Don’t fret, baba, my son, here I am, here, I’m your
    mother,
    here, baba,
    right at your side.

    Reply
  10. Ruchira Paul Avatar
    Ruchira Paul

    VP:
    I know that Indians find it counterintuitive to equate ethnic exclusivity with racism which evokes discrimination across racial lines and not within a community. (I am glad to note that you included religious discrimination and casteism within the bailiwick of racism.) I however, see elements of racism in some aspects of Indian inter-ethnic suspicions. But that is my personal opinion.
    The example you have given of your own proclivity to hang out with Indians in your leisure time is not what I had in mind. Perhaps that is cliquishness but I would put an even more benign spin on it – just an enhanced comfort level with people of a common background.
    Perhaps I should explain a bit more clearly what I myself had in mind when I brought up racism in the Indian context with a couple of examples.
    I had an Israeli friend twenty years ago who was an orthodox Jew and her dietary habits put severe restrictions on what she could or could not eat outside a fully kosher kitchen. She used to hang out in my house often and occasionally our morning gab sessions would spill over into lunch time. She would instruct me meticulously as to what (and how) I should put on a lunch platter for her. Thus prepared, she would eat happily the food cooked in a non-kosher kitchen. For her, the focus was the food, not “who” prepared it. She once brought over some kosher chicken for me to make into a spicy chicken dish so that her family could enjoy “authentic” Indian food as they were not permitted to eat in a non-kosher Indian restaurant.
    My Tam Brahm friends were operating on a slightly different level. Despite my immaculate personal hygeine and my promise to prepare a simple snack for them on clean utensils with material that had not come into contact with any non-veg stuff, they were not comfortable in consuming anything in our home. I always suspected that in their case, it was not so much the food, but rather “who” (a meat eater) was handling it that was the consideration. That to me bordered on racism. Not very different from the horror Mrs. Iyer felt when her co-passenger drank from her water bottle.

    Reply
  11. vp Avatar
    vp

    Dukhiram makes the case well for the literary merit of “relatively tame” lives.
    Once you get past the Dostoevsky extract and the thought-provoking Joy Goswami poem though, you come across the Bengali’s absurd (yet touching) sentimentality for the ordinary, which stands in dramatic contrast with the ROI and grand-theme seeking “muscular” Punjabi or Gult.
    Funny how the bright sheen of deep thought cannot conceal the essentialism.

    Reply
  12. Shunya (Namit) Avatar
    Shunya (Namit)

    Dukhiram:
    The Goswami poem is poignant, evocative, and a fitting presence on Shunya’s Notes. But I fail to see its connection to the rest of your comment. Rather than attribute this failing to all Punjabis, I’ll take it upon my own good self. 🙂
    Is there ever a consensus in art? What’s ordinary to one is dull to another; poignant to one, trite to another; self-absorbed to one, universal to another; etc. I find scant resemblance, in character or crisis, between The Overcoat and The Namesake. The very idea made me chuckle as I recalled the saying: “No degree of mediocrity can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it interesting.”

    Reply
  13. Ruchira Paul Avatar
    Ruchira Paul

    Aptly put, Shunya! Goswami’s poem, Gogol and Dostoevsky have little to do with Lahiri’s pallid prose. But as you said, “A determined critic… etc.” Thank god, Dukhiram at least admitted that any comparison to Ashapurna Devi’s mature and muscular style would be a bit of a stretch.
    I am glad Dukhiram dropped by. He has ably demonstrated in one lyrical fell swoop, what you, I and VP were delicately trying to illustrate about Bengali “sensibilities.” 🙂

    Reply
  14. Dukhiram Avatar
    Dukhiram

    Let’s try a powerpoint-style explanation so as to be clearer.

    Russian Masters

    • Put ordinary Olav on literary map

    • A good thing

    Jhumpa Lahiri

    • Ditto.

    • ‘character or crisis’ a bipolar Shakespearian disorder

    • space exists for the genius of the commonplace

      • Dreiser, Zola, Twain

    Joy Goswami

    Movies

    • Often ‘pack in far more universal appeal’ than books

    • Just as comics are prefered by many over books

    • Big bright images, simpler bites, nuances of language lost,

    • happy-happy vs. ‘all pervading sense of loss.

    • High ROI idea – republish Russian Masters as comics

      • Superman Karamazov, Batman Karamazov, Spiderman Karamazov,
        Flash Karamazov

    Bongs

    • Capital fellows in spite of being commies

    Reply
  15. Shunya (Namit) Avatar
    Shunya (Namit)

    Dukhiram: Let’s try this again in your preferred format. 🙂
    Books (overview)
    — Substance mighty important
    — Substance in book at hand, that is, not in some other old book
    — Benefit from muscular capacity to discern the ordinary from the dull
    The Namesake (book)
    — Ashoke dull, his story dull
    — With a moping sense of exile
    — Annoying because he doesn’t have to stay
    — Nothing alike between his life as EE Prof. in east coast university/suburb with wife, kids, warm house/cars/healthcare/cliquish bongs and that of dirt poor lonely Russian clerk who saves for months to replace his threadbare overcoat to survive the winter; coat stolen one snowy night; dies of fever/delirium after a policeman’s scolding.
    — What’s common is that they both eat, drink, shit … the Russian less than the Bong
    — ‘Genius of the commonplace’ is a sentimental oxymoron
    Movies (overview)
    — Most movies not considered better than inspiring book (Tin Drum one exception?)
    — Make up for nuance of language in other ways (AV, expressions, body lang.)
    — Many movies not happy-happy, similar percentage as books
    The Namesake (movie)
    — Better movie than book
    — A minor rescue job by Nair
    — Significantly undermined by remaining fidelity to the book

    Reply
  16. Ruchira Paul Avatar
    Ruchira Paul

    Shunya:
    Some masochistic deep thinkers may find their ROI only by plodding through mind numbingly boring prose and wallowing in sentimental navel gazing. As a “peasant,” I say, bring out the comics and Mira Nair!

    Reply
  17. Sujatha Avatar
    Sujatha

    I saw the movie just about a week ago, and was quite delighted that despite the superiority of the movie over the book, Mira Nair didn’t leave out my major pet peeve of ‘Ph.D. in Fiber Optics’ out of the dialog ( 1970’s, Fiber Optics, you must be kidding, right? Fiber Optics was my ‘brand new’ elective in the late ’80s)
    I will agree that the story runs less ploddingly on the big screen than in the book.
    Curiously, the discussion at the ladies’ lunch that followed seeing the movie was all about “How do we bring up our kids to not fall prey to all the ABCD-ishness displayed by Gogol, his sister and Moushumi?” No conclusions were reached and we all walked away with sense of disquiet and dissatisfaction regarding how we might deal with these future ‘challenges’.

    Reply

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