(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
Three days after Ashima was discharged from the hospital, Ashoke was back at MIT. During day times Ashima had to be on her own with Gogol in the silent house, Alan being back at Harvard, Judy being back at her work at the collective as usual, Amber and Clove were back at school. She suffered from sleep deprivation far worse than the worst of jet lag. She used to cry silently while feeding Gogol, patting him to sleep, and he cried between feeding and sleeping. One day when she found that they've run out of rice, she called Ashoke at his department to ask him to fetch the rice on his way home, there was no answer. She was so upset that she cried for a long time, finally she prepared herself to go to the supermarket on the street. She got up, washed her face and combed her hair, changed her dress, dressed up Gogol and put him in white-wheeled pram inherited from Alan and Judy, and she pushed him through the balmy street of Cambridge, to Purity Supreme, to buy a bag of white long-grain rice. The errand took longer than usual ; for she was repeatedly stopped on the street, and in the aisle of the supermarket, by perfect strangers, all Americans, suddenly taking notice of her, smiling, congratulating her for what she had done. They looked curiously, appreciatively, into the pram. "How old ?" they asked. "Boy or girl ?" "What's his name ?"
She felt proud of herself on doing it alone and in devising a routine. Like Ashoke,busy with his teaching and research and dissertation seven days a week, she, too, found herself doing something to occupy herself fully, to demand her utmost devotion, her last ounce of strength. Before Gogol's birth, her days had followed no visible pattern.
Ashima was engaged by Gogol almost through out the day , pacing the three rooms of the apartment with him in her arms whenever she is free. She used to take him out during afternoon, wandering up and down the streets, to pick up this or that, or to sit in Harvard Yard, sometimes used to meet Ashoke in MIT campus while sitting on a bench there. She used to bring him homemade samosas and a fresh thermos of tea. At times, staring at the baby. she saw pieces of her family in his face ; her mother's glassy eyes, her father's slim lips, her brother's lopsided smile. She purchased wool yarn at a store on the street and began to knit for the coming winter, making
Gogol sweaters, blankets, mittens, and caps. Every few days she used to give Gogol a bath in the porcelain sink in the kitchen. Every week she used to clip the nails the nails of his ten fingers and toes. When she took him in his pram for his immunization at pediatrician's, she stood outside the room and plugged up her ears.
One day Ashoke brought with him an Instamatic camera and took pictures of the baby, and when Gogol was napping she pasted the square, white-bordered prints behind plastic sheets in an album, captions written on pieces of masking tape. To put him to sleep she used to sing Bengali songs her mother had sung to her. One day when lifted him high over her head, smiling at him with her mouth open, and a quick stream of undigested milk from his last feeding rose from his throat and poured into her own ; for the rest of her life she would recall the shock of that incident.
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