(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
One day Gogol attended a panel discussion about Indian novels written in English. He felt obliged to attend ; one of the presenters on the panel, Amit, was a distant cousin who lived in Bombay, whom he had never met. His mother had asked him to greet Amit on her behalf. Gogol was bored by the panelists, who kept referring to something called "marginality," as if it were some sort of medical condition. For most of the hour, he sketched the portraits of the panelists, who sat hunched all over their papers along a regular table. "Technologically speaking, ABCDs were unable to answer the question 'where are you from ?'" the sociologist on the panel declared. Gogol had never heard the term ABCD. He eventually gathered that it stands for "American-born confused deshi." In other words, him. He learned that C could also stand for "conflicted." He knew that deshi, a generic word for "countryman," means "Indian," knew that his parents and all their friends always refer to India simply as desh. But Gogol never thought of India as desh. He thought of it as Americans do, as India.
Gogol slouched in his seat and pondered certain awkward truths. For instance, although he could understand his mother tongue, and speak it fluently, he couldn't read or write it even with modest proficiency. On trips to India his American-accented English was a source of endless amusement to his relatives, and when he and Sonia speak to each other, aunts and uncles and cousins always shook their heads in disbelief and said, "I didn't understand a word !" Living with a pet name and a good name, in a place where such distinctions do not exist. He searched the audience for someone he knew, but it was not his crowd ; lots of lit majors with leather satchels and gold-rimmed glasses and fountain pens, lots of people Ruth would have waved to. There were also lots of ABCDs. He had no idea there were this many on campus. He had no ABCD friends at college. He avoided them, for they reminded him too much of the way his parents chose to live, befriending people not so much because they liked them, but because of a past they happened to share. "Gogol, why aren't you a member of the Indian association here ?" Amit asked later when they went for a drink at the Anchor. "I just don't have the time," Gogol said, not telling his well-meaning cousin that he could think of no greater hypocrisy than joining an organization that willingly celebrates occasions his parents forced him, throughout his childhood and adolescence,to attend. "I'm Nikhil now," Gogol said suddenly depressed by how many more times he would have to say this, asking people to remember, reminding them to, feeling as if an errata slip were perpetually pinned to his chest.
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