(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
The nuptial night formalities and procedures were ignored before they completed the first official lovemaking. Afterward they opened up champagne and sat together on the bed, going through the large shopping bag full of cards with personal checks inside them. The checks had been given to them by their parents' hundreds of friends. They registered the gifts on numerous sheets of hotel stationery. Most of the checks had been written out to Mr. and Mrs. Nikhil and Moushumi Ganguli. Some were written to Gogol and Moushumi Gogol. The amounts were for one hundred and one dollars, two hundred and one dollars, occasionally three hundred and one dollars, as Bengalis consider it inauspicious to give round figures. Gogol added up the the subtotals on each page, "Seven thousand thirty-five," he annonced.
"Not bad, Mr.Ganguli."
"I would say we've made a killing, Mrs.Ganguli."
Only she was not Mrs.Ganguli, Moushumi had kept her last name. She didn't adopt Ganguli, not even with a hyphen. Her own last name, Mazoomdar, was already a mothful. With a hyphenated surname, she would no longer fit into the window of a business envelope. Besides, by now she had begun to publish under Moushumi Mazoomdar, the name printed at the top of footnoted articles on French feminist theory in a number of prestigious academic journals that always managed to give Gogol a paper cut when he tried to read them. Though he'd not admitted this to her, he'd hoped, the day they'd filled out the application for their marriage licence, that she might consider otherwise, as a tribute to his father if nothing else. But the thought of changing her last name to Ganguli had never crossed Moushumi's mind. When relatives from India continued to address letters and cards to "Mrs.Moushumi Ganguli," she would shake her head and sigh.
They put the money toward a security deposit for a one-bedroom apartment in the Twenties, off Third Avenue. It was slightly more than they could comfortably afford, but they were won over by the maroon awning, the part-time doorman, a lobby paved with pumpkin-colored tiles. They were not thinking of children until Moushumi finished her dissertation. In their new home, they entertained together on occasion, throwing the sorts of parties their parents never had, mixing martinis in a stainless-steel shaker for a few of the architects at Gogol's work or Moushumi's graduate student friends at NYU.. He transferred the money in his bank account over to hers, and had common account with both their names printed on checks. The pass code they decided on for their ATM card, Lulu, was the name of French restaurant where they had their first meal together. They ate most nights side by side on the stools at the kitchen counter or at the coffee table, watching TV. They made Indian food infrequently ; usually it was pasta or broiled fish or take-out from the Thai restaurant down the block. But sometimes, on a Sunday, they took train out to Queens and had brunch at Jackson Diner, piling their plates with tandoori chicken and pakoras and kabobs, and shop afterward for basmati rice and the spices that needed replenishing. Sometimes they went to one of the hole-in-the-wall tea shops to drink tea or to to eat sweet yogurt or haleem, served by Bengali waitress. After dinner they watch TV, as Moushumi wrote out thank-you cards to all their parents' friends for the gifts. These were the things that made him feel married. Otherwise it was the same, only now they were always together. At night she slept beside him, always rolling onto her stomach, waking up every morning with a pillow pressed over her head.
Occasionally, in the apartment, he found odd remnants of her life before he had appeared in it, her life with Graham ; the inscription to the two of them in a book of poems, a post card from Provence stuffed into the back of a dictionary, addressed to the apartment they'd secretly shared. Once, unable to stop himself, he'd walked to this address during his lunch break, wondering what her life had been like back then.
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