The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri and Mira Nair Movie Review

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri and Mira Nair - Movie Review Example The Namesake is directed by Mira Nair, with Jhumpa Lahiri helping out with the screenplay along with Sooni Taraporevala. Kal Penn plays Gogol, who the title of the movie is after. His parents Ashima and Ashoke are played by Tabu and Irrfan Khan respectively. They have another child, a girl called Sonia who is acted by Sahira Nair. The story starts off with Ashoke travelling in a train, reading a book written by the Russian author Nikolai Gogol. A brutal accident takes place in which almost everyone dies. However, Ashoka survives and is only discovered because of the fluttering page of the book he was reading earlier. His recovery follows his marriage to Ashima – a girl chosen to be his bride by his parents – and they move to the States. It is hard for Ashima to live at a place which is completely different from the place where she had spent all her life at. Life in New York City is poles apart than life in Calcutta. Yet she does manage to try her best to fit in. An Indian wife is nothing if not willing to change herself, her lifestyle just for the sake of her husband. What was fortunate for Ashima was that Ashoke actually fell in love with her and her with him, which made adapting comparatively easier. She knew the English language, but not fluently. But she worked it all out just to make her husband happy. Life away from her parents, everything that was familiar, was not easy, and she particularly felt the absence at the birth of her first child named Gogol when there was no one around but her husband. Ashima adjusts to the new environment but seeing her children so utterly unconscious of all the traditions and values that she was brought up with pains her. She tries to smile it off, fully aware of how things were different now that they were not living in their native land, with their elders to guide them. She was told to stay close to her family whereas her children were moving out. Their dressing, the songs they blasted were miles apart.  Ã‚