Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake (2003), a Pulitzer winning novel is now a major motion movie. Lahiri won this prize for her collection of ghost stories Interpreter of Maladies. The Namesake is her first novel and a successful one. The story of the novel is, indeed larger, covering two generations, and at once simple : Ashoke and Ashmia Ganguli leave Calcutta to settle in Cambridge. But we miss the point, the reason for their leaving. It all began accidently, one day, in the early hours of October 20, 1961. Ashoke was twenty-two, a student at B.E. College. What Lahiri keeps reminding is that there is no running from death. Ashoke and Ashima, like us, do not only live in space, but also in time. Like Kant, Heidegger thinks that time is an a priori condition for being in the world. Ashoke and Ashima continue to receive bad news of deaths of their relatives back home, but these do not interpenetrate their subjectivity. Within a decade abroad both got orphaned. They do cry, however, they are consoled by their parents' memory. After their return from Calcutta, they get to become part of the American life.
Assitant Professor, Dept. of English Guru Nanak Girls College, Yamuna Nagar
