Grandparents In Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake

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It has been observed in Uma Parameswaran “Contextualizing Diasporic Locations in Deepa Mehata’s Fire and Srinivas Krishna’s Masala”, a random interview amongst a young group of thirty graduates and undergraduates (of South-Asian immigrants in North America) have been asked with whom they prefer to spent quality hours; quiet unexpectedly with the exception of four members, the rest replied as ‘grandparents.
In the life of immigrant children, the grandparents play an important role, helping them to evade geographical distances that exist between a child’s land of belonging and his land of origin. It is found that most of grandparents willingly or unwillingly do not settle with their own children and can see or meet them and their children only
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In Lahiri’s The Namesake, repeated references are made on the role of grandparents in the life of both Ashima and Ashoke, leaving an undeniable impression throughout their journey around the globe—from Calcutta to America. Ashoke Ganguli, the father of Gogol, develop his voracious reading habit since his childhood from his parental grandfather who was once a professor of European Literature at Calcutta University. The naming of his son Gogol is also the result of Ashoke’s grandfather’s influence on him. Ashoke had special interest on Russian Literature which he inculcated from his grandfather who gifted him a short story collection by Nikolai Gogol. He become so passionate on this Russian writer that later on when he was asked to name his son in the hospital record, his mind strikes with no name other than Gogol. Gogol had never seen his great grandfather but he will be remembered forever through his …show more content…
It is a customary ritual in Indian especially among the Bengalis that a child should be named with the name given by grandparents which is a way of expressing regards to the senior most member of the family. So, Ashima’s grandmother burdened with her eighty years, walked to the post office with her cane just to drop the telegram bearing two names of her great grandchildren—one boy and one girl, the names which she had not revealed to anyone. But the ‘name’ lost forever as the telegram never reached in the hands of Ashima in

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