(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
Ashoke and Ashima left for India six days later, six weeks before they had planned. Alan and Judy, waking the next morning to Ashima's sobs, then hearing the news from Ashoke, left a vase filled with flowers by the door. In those six days, they got an express passport with "Gogol Ganguli" typed across United States of America seal, as there was no much time left to get the newly selected good name to be registered in the place of nick name "Gogol", Ashoke signing on his son's behalf. The day before leaving, Ashima put Gogol in his stroller, put the sweater she'd knit for her father and paintbrushes in a shopping bag, and walked to Harvard Square,to the subway station. "Excuse me," she asked a gentleman on the street, "I must get on the train." The man helped her carry down the stroller, and Ashima waited on the platform. When the train came she headed immediately back to the Central Square. As the train slowed down to a halt, she stood up, disembarked the train, leaving behind the shopping bag purposely beneath her seat.. "Hey, the Indian lady forgot her stuff," she heard as the doors shut, and as the train pulled away she heard a fist pounding on glass, but she kept walking, pushing Gogol along the platform.
The following evening they boarded a Pan Am flight to London, where after five-hour layover they would board a second flight to Calcutta, via Tehran And Bombay. On the runway in Boston, her seat belt buckled, Ashima looked at her watch and calculated the Indian time on her fingers. But this time no image of her family came to mind. She refused to picture what she could see soon enough : her mother's vermilion erased from her part, her brother's thick hair shaved from his head in mourning. The wheels began to move, causing the enormous metal wings to flap gently up and down. Ashima looked at Ashoke, who was double-checking to make sure their passports and green cards were in order. She watched him adjust his watch in anticipation of their arrival.
"I don't want to go," she said, turning toward the dark oval window. "I don't want to see them. I can't."
Ashoke put his hand over hers as the plane began to gather speed. And then Boston tilted away and they ascended effortlessly over a blackened Atlantic. The wheels retracted and the cabin started shaking as they struggle upward,through the first layer of clouds. Though Gogol's ears had been stuffed with cotton, he screamed nevertheless in the arms of his grieving mother as they climbed further still, as he flew for the first time in his life across the world.
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