THE NAMESAKE

Untitled Slide

To Be Bengali

• He knows now the guilt that his parents carried inside, at being able to do nothing when their parents had died in India, of arriving weeks, sometimes months later, when there was nothing left to do […] Years later Gogol had learned the significance, that it was a Bengali son's duty to shave his head in the wake of his parent's death. (7.70)
• In Bengali the word for pet name is daknam […] Every pet name is paired with a good name, a bhalonam, for identification in the outside world. (2.21)
• The occasion: Gogol's annaprasan, his rice ceremony. There is no baptism for Bengali babies, no ritualistic naming in the eyes of God. Instead, the first formal ceremony of their lives centers on the consumption of solid food. (2.65)
• He is afraid to be Nikhil, someone he doesn't know. Who doesn't know him […] It's a part of growing up, they tell him, of being a Bengali. (3.19)