(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
The Saturday of the wedding they packed suitcases, rented a car, and drove down to New Jersey, separating only when they got to the hotel, where they were claimed one last time by their respective families. Starting tomorrow, he realized with a shock, Moushumi and he would be regarded as a family of their own. They had not seen the hotel before hand. It was fascinating to everyone, its most memorable feature, a glass elevator that rose and fell ceaselessly at its center, much to the amusement of children and adults alike. The rooms were gathered around balconies. Gogol had a room to himself, on a floor with his mother and Sonia and a few of the Gangulis' closest family friends. Moushumi stayed chastely on the floor above, next to her parents, though by now she and Gogol were practically living at her place. His mother had brought him the things he was to wear, a parchment- colored Punjabi top that had once belonged to his father, a prepleated dhoti with a drawstring waist, a pair of nagrai slippers with curling toes. His father had never worn the punjabi, and Gogol had to hang it in the bathroom, hot water running in the shower, to get the crease out. "His blessings are always with you," his mother said, reaching up and placing both her hands for a moment on his head. For the first time since his father's death, she was dressed with care, wearing a pretty pale green sari, a pearl necklace at her throat, had agreed to let Sonia put some lipstick on her lips. "Is it too much ?" his mother worried, regarding herself in the mirror. Still, he had not seen her looking this lovely, this happy, this excited, in years. Sonia wore a sari, too, fuchsia with silver embroidery, a red rose stuck into her hair. She gave him a box wrapped in tissue.
"What is this," he asked.
"You didn't think I forgot your thirtieth birthday, did you ?"
It had been a few days ago, a week night he and Moushumi had both been busy to celebrate properly. Even his mother, preoccupied with last-minute wedding details, had forgotten to call him first thing in the morning, as she normally did.
"I think I'm officially at the age when I want people to forget my birthday," he said, accepting the gift.
"Poor Goggles."
Inside he found a small bottle of bourbon and a red leather flask. "I had it engraved," she said, and when he turned the flask over he saw the letters NG. He remembered poking his head into Sonia's room years ago, telling her about his decision to change his name to Nikhil. She'd been thirteen or so doing her homework on her bed. "You can't do that," she'd told him then, shaking her head, and when he'd asked her why not she'd simply said, "Because you can't. Because you are Gogol." He watched her now, applying her make-up in his room, pulling the skin next to her eye and painting a thin black line on the lid, and he recalled photographs his mother at her own wedding.
"You are next, you know," he said.
"Don't mind me." She grimaced, then laughed. The excitement of the preparations saddened him, all of it reminding him that his father was dead.. He imagined his father wearing an outfit similar to him, a shawl draped over one shoulder, as he used to during pujo. The ensemble he feared looked silly on himself would have looked dignified, elegant, befitting his father in a way, he knew, it didn't him.
There was an hour-long watered-down Hindu ceremony on a platform covered with sheets. Gogol and Moushumi sat cross-legged,, first opposite each other, then side by side. A video camera and hand-held white lights hovered above their faces. Shenai music played on a boom box. Nothing had been rehearsed or explained to them beforehand.
The priest was a friend of Mousumi's parents, an anesthesiologist, a Brahmin. Offerings were made to pictures of their grand parents and his father, rice poured into a pyre that they were forbidden by the management of the hotel to ignite.
It was the first time he'd seen Moushumi in a sari, apart from all those pujos year ago, which she'd suffered through silently. She had about twenty pounds of gold on her. Two enormous paisleys had been painted in red and white on her cheeks. Until now Moshumi's parents were called as uncle and aunt, as if she were a sort of cousin. But by the end of the night he would become son-in law and so be expected to address them as his second set of parents, an alternative to Baba and Ma.
For reception he changed into a suit, she into a red Banarasi gown with spaghetti straps, something she'd designed herself and had made by a seamstress friend, in spite of her mother's protests, who was in favor of a shalwar kameeze. And when Moushumi happened to forget her shawl on a chair and bared her slim, bronze shoulders, which sparkled from a special powder she'd applied to them, her mother shot her reproachful glances, which Moushumi ignored. Countless people congratulated them, asked them to pose for photographs with them, wrapping his arms around his friends. He was numbly drunk through it all, thanks to the open bar her parents had sprung for. When they bumped into each other , on her way from the ladies room, they exchanged a quick kiss, the smoke on her breath faintly masked by the mint she was chewing.
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