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Indian And American Culture In The Namesake

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In The Namesake, characters are constantly making comparisons between Indian and American life. For Indian immigrants such as Ashima and Ashoke, many aspects of American culture are foreign to them, and they also feel like strangers in American society. They struggle to maintain certain Indian traditions, while adapting to American customs. Indian-American characters such as Gogol and Moushumi often feel foreign in both India and America, as though they 're lost in between the world of their parents and the world in which they were born. They often feel like tourists, only, unlike most tourists, they have no chance of a homecoming. The Gangulis starts their assimilation in the American society with the celebration of days such as Christmas, Thanksgiving or Easter, they do not seem to be very different from any American family anymore ( “ And yet to a casual observer, the Gangulis, apart from the name on their mailbox, apart from the issues of India Abroad and Sangbad Bichitra that are delivered there, appear no different from their neighbors” (p 64) ) and I think that their aim by doing that is to protect Sonia and Gogol, so they will not feel different from the other children in their school that celebrated those days. In addition to that the family also adopts a new cuisine (“ They learn to roast turkeys, albeit rubbed with garlic and cumin and cayenne, at Thanksgiving” p64 ) and new traditions ( “ to nail a wreath to their door in December, to wrap woolen scarves around

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