Although parents Ashoke and Ashima are proud of the sacrifices they make to give their children opportunities, their son Gogol strives to. And after graduating from Yale, he prefers to hang out with his Manhattan-bred (read: “white”) girlfriend and her wealthy parents than visit his parents in Westchester. After moving from Calcutta to New York, members of the Ganguli family maintain a delicate balancing act between honoring the traditions of their native India and blending into American culture. He’s late to his high-school graduation party because he’s passing around a joint with his best pals. At the center of the story is Gogol Ganguli (Kal Penn), the oddly named son of a professor and his traditional Indian wife. The wife refuses and resists everything American and constantly longs for her familyīased on Jhumpa Lahiri’s acclaimed novel, THE NAMESAKE is a heartfelt depiction of two generations of a Bengali-American family. The Namesake By Peter Travers MaCultural assimilation is a specialty for Mira Nair, the India-born, Manhattan-based director who found he right balance in Mississippi Masala and. The Mira Nair film based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, a rare love letter to Bengali Americans, explores how our most important parts are parts we didn’t choose. The husband adjusts everything much better than his wife does. ‘The Namesake’: What’s in a Name Everything. The family is torn between the old family traditions and adapting to the new American way of life. Award-winning filmmaker and Books on Film favourite Mira Nair revisits her adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiris generation-spanning tale of an American-born. The book takes us through their difficult transformation from Indian way of living into the everyday American lifestyle – the contrast in thoughts, ideologies, and experiences as a foreigner. The Ganguli couple move to Cambridge, Massachusetts after their arranged marriage. Mira Nairs The Namesake is a film adaptation of a bestseller by Jhumpa Lahri about two generations of Indians.

The namesake nair