(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
When they first moved into the house, the grounds had yet to be landscaped. No trees grew on the property, no shrubs flank the front door, so that the cement of the foundation was clearly visible to the eye. And so for the first few months, four-year old Gogol played on uneven, dirt-covered yard littered with stones and sticks, soiling his sneakers, leaving footprints in his path. During summer Gogol could find, bright summer's days when the topsoil was poured from the back of a truck, and stepping on to the sun deck a few weeks later with both of his parents to see thin blades of grass emerge from the bald black lawn.
In the beginning, in the evenings, the family used to go for drives, exploring their new environs bit by bit : the neglected dirt lanes, the shaded black roads, the farms where one could pick pumpkins in autumn and berries sold in green cardboard boxes in July. They used drive until it was dark, without destination in mind, past hidden ponds and graveyards, culs-de-sac and dead ends. Some times they drove out of the town altogether, to one of the beaches along the North Shore. Even in summer they never went to swim or to turn brown beneath the sun. Instead they went dressed in their ordinary clothes. By the time they arrived, the ticket collector's booth was empty, the crowds gone, there was only a handful of cars in the parking lot, and the only other visitors were people walking their dogs or watching the sun set or dragging metal detectors through the sand. On the beach Gogol collected rocks, dug tunnels in the sand. He darted in and out of the ocean, making faint, temporary footprints, soaking his rolled-up cuffs. His mother cried out, laughing, as she lifted her sari a few inches above her ankles, her slippers in one hand, and placed her feet in foaming, ice-cold water. She reached out to Gogol, took his hand. "Not so far," she told him. The waves retreat, gathering force, the soft,dark sand seeming to shift away instantly beneath their feet, causing them to loose their balance. "I'm falling. It's pulling me in," she always said.
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