(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
It was nearly ten in the morning when Gogol woke up again, unobstructed sun light brightening the room. A dull, steady ache persisted on the right side of his head, emanating from deep inside his skull. He opened the sliding glass door to the balcony and stood outside. His eyes burned from fatigue. He saw a few people out there, walking their dogs, couples exercising side by side. He put on his coat, went outside and attempted to walk around the man-made pond there, which, he was told , his father was doing in his leisure time as an exercise. He found the chill brutal, and so returned to the apartment. He took a shower, changing into the same clothes he'd worn the day before. He called himself a cab, went to the airport, boarded a flight to Boston. He was terrified to see his mother and sister, along with a few friends of the family,waiting for him, more than he had been to see his father's body in the morgue.
For the first week they were never alone. No longer a family of four, they became a household of more than ten people, friends coming by to sit with them quietly in the living room, their heads bent, drinking cups of tea, a cluster of people attempting to make up for his father's loss. His mother had shampooed the vermilion from her part. She had taken off her iron wedding bracelet, along with all other bracelets she'd always worn. Cards and flowers came continually to the house, from his father's colleagues at the university,from the women who work with his mother at the library, from neighbors who normally do little but wave from their lawns. People called from west coast, from Texas, from Michigan and DC. The phone rang constantly, and their throats turning weak from explaining again and again, that he was not ill, it was completely unexpected. A short obituary ran in the town paper, citing the names of Ashima and Gogol and Sonia, mentioning that the children had been educated at the local schools. In the middle of the night they called their relatives in India, to whom it was the first time they had had to bear such news from the family.
For ten days following his father's death, he and his mother and Sonia ate mourner's diet, foregoing meat and fish. They ate only rice and dal and vegetables, plainly prepared. When his grand parents died in India, Gogol remembered, his father sitting unshaven on a chair, staring through them, speaking to no one.Now, sitting together at the kitchen table, his father's chair empty, eating meatless meals was the only thing that seemed to make sense. It was only for its duration, their grief slightly abated, the enforced absence of certain foods on their plates conjuring his father's presence somehow.
On the eleventh day they invited their friends to make the end of the mourning period. There was a religious ceremony conducted on floor in one corner of the living room ; Gogol was asked to sit in front of a picture of his father, as a priest chanted verses in Sanskrit. Before the ceremony they had spent the whole day looking for a picture to frame, going through albums. But there were almost no pictures of him alone, his father was forever behind the lens. They decided to crop one, of him and Ashima standing together years ago. They prepared an elaborate meal, fish and meat, cooked as his father liked them most, with extra potatoes and fresh coriander leaves. The friends his parents had collected for almost thirty years were in attendance, to pay their respects, cars from six different states lining the whole Pemberton Road.
Maxine drove up from New York, bringing Gogol the clothes he normally kept at her house, his laptop, his mail. His bosses had given him a month off from work. It was a bit of shock to see Maxine, to introduce her to Sonia. This time he didn't care how the house, how the pile of guests' shoes heaped by the doorway, might appear to her eyes. He could tell that she felt useless, a bit excluded in this house full of Bengalis. And yet he didn't bother to translate what people were saying, to introduce her to everyone, to stay close by her side. "I'm so sorry," he heard say to his mother, aware that his father's death didn't affect Maxine in the least. "You guys can't stay with your mother forever," Maxine said when they were alone for a moment after the ceremony, upstairs in his room, sitting side by side on the edge of the bed. "You know that" she said gently, put her hand to his cheek. He stared at her, took her hand and put it back in her lap.
"I miss you, Nikhil"
He nodded.
"What about New Year's Eve ?" she said.
"What about it ?"
"Do you still want to try to go up to New Hampshire ?" For they had talked of this, going away together, just the two of them, Maxine picking him up after Christmas, staying at the lake house. Maxine was going to teach him how to ski.
"I don't think so. "
"It might do you good," she said. She glanced around the room. "To get away from all this."
"I don't want to get away."
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