(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
The Gangulis, apart from the name on their mailbox, apart from the issues of India Abroad and Sangbad Bichitra that were delivered at their home, appeared no different from their neighbors. Their garage, like every other, contained shovels and pruning shears and a sled. They purchased a barbecue for tandoori on the porch in summer. Each step, each acquisition, no matter how small, involved deliberation, consultation with Bengali friends. Was there a difference between a plastic rake and a metal one ? Which was preferable, a live Christmas tree or an artificial one ? They learned to roast turkeys, albeit rubbed with garlic and cumin and cayenne, at Thanks giving, to nail a wreath to their door in December, to wrap woolen scarves around snowmen, to color boiled eggs violet and pink at Easter and hide them around the house. For the sake of Gogol and Sonia they celebrated, with progressively increasing fanfare, the birth of Christ, an event children looked forward to far more than the worship of Durga and Saraswati. During pujos, scheduled for convenience on two Saturdays a year, Gogol and Sonia were dragged off to a high school or a Knights of Columbus hall overtaken by Bengalis, where they were required to throw marigold petals at a cardboard effigy of a goddess and eat bland vegetarian food.It can't compare to Christmas, when they hanged stockings on the fireplace mantel, and set out cookies and milk for Santa Claus, and received heaps of presents, and stayed home from school.
There were other ways in which Ashoke and Ashima gave in. Though Ashima continued to
wear nothing but saris and sandals from Bata, Ashoke, accustomed to wearing tailor-made pants and shirts all his life, learned to buy ready-made. He traded in fountain pens for ballpoints, Wilkinson blades and boar-bristled shaving brush for Bic razors bought six to a pack. Though he was now a tenured full professor, he stopped wearing jackets and ties to the university. Given that there was a clock every where he turned, at the side of his bed, over the stove where he prepared tea, in the car he drove to work, on the wall opposite to his desk, he stopped wearing a wristwatch, resigning his Favre Leuba watch, bought in Calcutta while studying his B.E, to the depths of his stock drawer. In the supermarket they let Gogol fill the cart with items that he and Sonia, but not they, consume : individually wrapped slices of cheese, mayonnaise, tuna fish, hot dogs. For Gogol's lunches they used to stand at the deli to buy cold cuts, and in the mornings Ashima used to make sandwiches with bologna or roast beef. At his insistence, she conceded and made him an American dinner once a week as a treat, Shake 'n Bake chicken or Hamburger Helper prepared with ground lamb.
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