Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel The Namesake struck me by the sublime simplicity with which she narrates her story. It seems as if I was the ultimate recipient of her tactfully-chosen words. Lahiri is known to give careful attention to the most intricate of details in her stories. Her fluent style of describing the minutest details - like ever-continuing strands of a noodle, starting from the color of the pillows to the mood of an individual at a given point in the story.

The Namesake captures the theme that has permeated Lahiri's short stories: the emotional dislocation of immigrants and their children who are struggling to reconcile family traditions with a new and baffling culture. The story is about Gogol, born in New York of immigrant Indian parents, and it tells of their experiences in a strange new world filled with opportunity and uncertainty ... more like a lifelong pregnancy ... of which the outcome is unknown.

The book struck me on several fronts: the writing style greatly appealed to me. Furthermore, Gogol's stories and experiences struck a familiar chord. It was almost as if I was reading excerpts from certain aspects of my life thus far. Funny enough, its hard to believe that she's 39 - she looks good for 39 ... tee hee.

But more surprising is the fact that I had no idea that they had a movie in the works that's coming out this Fall. You can check out the preview here.

Even more surprising is that Kal Penn (Indian guy in Harold & Kumar go to White Castle and Van Wilder I & II) got the lead role for this. This may seem to be the most serious role he had so far - even though I thoroughly enjoyed his roles in the aforementioned films, I felt that he was playing a lot of stereotypical stuff. For instance the fast-talking college-aged stoner in Harold and Kumar, the naive Indian kid in Van Wilder and such. But the preview's really exciting ... something worth my diary.


But that leads me to the other point: Why is it that people so far away from their native land develop this obsessive association with their native identity even though they have been living away for a while? Why is it that this obsession is low or even lacking while they were present in their native land? I mean, honestly, I never thought about buying my country's flag when I was there ... the thought occurred to me after leaving. Well, I offer no reasons since I am thinking through it, but I guess living in a multi-cultural environment motivates us to seek our identity. So even though you never questioned who you were, you are implicitly forced to define yourself to the different people you encounter (different ethnicities, religions, backgrounds etc). More on this later though.

And yeah .. the very good gifts are the ones you bring home ...