(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
It was in 1999 on the morning of their first anniversary, Moushumi's parents called, waking them, wishing them a happy anniversary before they had had the chance to say to each other. In addition to their anniversary, there was something else to celebrate : Moushumi successfully passed her orals the week before, is now officially ABD ; The term all but dissertation (ABD) is a mostly unofficial term identifying a stage in the process of obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree or equivalent research doctorate (Sc.D., etc.) in the United States and Canada. At this stage the student has completed the preparatory coursework, qualifying examinations, comprehensive examinations, and defended his or her dissertation proposal. To complete the degree, the student must carry out the proposed research which must be original research and write the dissertation that defines a Ph.D. or equivalent research doctorate.
There was a third thing worth celebrating but which she hadn't mentioned - she had been awarded a research fellowship to work on her dissertation in France for the year. She'd applied for the grant secretly, just before the wedding, simply curious to see if she would get it. It was always good practice, she had reasoned, to strive for such things. Two years ago she would have said yes on the spot. But it was no longer to fly off to France for the year, now that she had a husband, a marriage, to consider. So when the good news came she decided it was easier to decline the fellowship quietly, to file away the letter, not to bring it up.
She took the initiative for the evening, making reservations at a place in midtown, which Donald and Astrid had recommended. She felt a bot guilty for all these months of studying, aware that with her exams as an excuse, she had ignored Nikhil perhaps more than necessary. There were nights that she told him she was at her carrel in the library when really she had met Astrid and her baby, Esme, in SoHo, or gone for a walk by herself. Sometimes she would sit in a restaurant alone, at the bar, ordering sushi or a sandwich and a glass of wine, simply to remind herself that she was still capable of being on her own. This assurance was important to her ; along with the sanskrit vows she'd repeated at her wedding, she'd privately vowed that she would never grow fully dependent on her husband, as her mother had. For even after thirty-two years abroad, in England and now America, her mother didn't know how to drive, didn't have a job, didn't know the difference between a checking and savings account. And yet she was a perfectly intelligent woman, was an honors student in philology at Presidency College before she was married off at twenty-two.
They had both dressed up for the occasion - when she emerged from the bathroom she saw that he was wearing the shirt she'd him, moss-colored with a velvet Nehru collor of slightly darker green. She was wearing a black dress she'd worn the first time he'd come to dinner, the first time they'd slept together, and over it, a lilac pashmina shawl, Nikhil's anniversary present to her. She still remembered their very first date, liking the slightly untamed look of his hair as he'd approached her at the bar, the dark pine stubble on his cheeks, the shirt he'd worn with green stripes and thinner stripes of lavender, the collar beginning to fray. She still remembered her bewilderment, looking up from her book and seeing him, her heart skipping, feeling the attraction instantly, powerfully, in her chest. For she had been expecting an older version of the boy she remembered, distant, quiet, in corduroy jeans and a sweatshirt, few pimples dotting his chin. The day before the date, she hadlunch with Astrid. "I just don't see you with some Indian guy," Astrid had said dismissively over salads at City Bakery. At the time Moushumi had not protested, maintaining apologetically that it was one date. She had been deeply skeptical herself - apart from the young Sashi Kapoor and a cousin in India, she had never until then found herself attracted to an Indian man. But she'd genuinely liked Nikhil. She liked that he was neither a doctor or an engineer. She'd liked that he'd changed his name from Gogol to Nikhil ; though she'd known him all those years, it was a thing that made him somehow new, not the person her mother had mentioned.
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