Cultural Hybridity and Identity in Lahiri and Ghosh

Introduction: Hybridity and the Hyphenated Self

The culturally hybrid nature of the protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake seems to be reflected in his improbable name, Gogol Ganguli. While the surname "Ganguli" reflects the ethnicity of Gogol's parents, Gogol can thank a Russian short story author for his first name. His father, Ashoke, gave him the name "Gogol" because Ashoke had been saved from the rubble of a train wreck when a volume of Gogol's short stories, clutched in his hand, was spotted by rescuers. For Ashoke, the name "Gogol" signifies a new beginning and a new life — to his son, the name merely marks him as strange. Ashoke is willing to embrace Western culture and can comfortably blend it with his Indian memories, but his son cannot do so as easily.

Although Gogol's grandmother back in India was supposed to name the boy, her letter was lost, and instead the book of Russian stories becomes a kind of placeholder for Gogol's real, missing identity. The awkwardness of Gogol's dual identity makes him uncomfortable rather than proving to be his salvation in America. Gogol flounders, as he seems to have no secure sense of where he comes from — India or America. On one hand, his mother still feels strong ties to her home in India, while Gogol's father is a highly effective professor of engineering. Gogol is the child of an arranged marriage, and his parents' relationship is based upon a strict, gendered dynamic between the sexes that seems inapplicable to life in America.

Gogol Ganguli: Identity, Naming, and the Second Generation

Although his parents love one another, the contrast between his life at home and the emphasis on individual choice fostered in mainstream American life propels Gogol into a quest to define his own, second-generation sense of self. Gogol strives to be more Western and to date Western women, but ultimately he turns to his mother to find him a bride. Yet when she does, in another irony, the Indian girl she finds is an ardent Francophile who loves the French language and culture precisely because it is not burdened with the anxieties of Americanization. Gogol seeks to escape his name and his past by renaming himself, but when he does so he chooses yet another non-Indian name — Nikhil — and the more he rejects his Indian heritage, the more it haunts him. His sister is named Sonya, another name that carries no obvious Indian resonance, further illustrating the family's uneasy position between two worlds.

Like The Namesake, Amitav Ghosh's novel The Hungry Tide is mainly populated by members of the Bengali community. However, Ghosh's novel is set back in India. The most prominent cross-cultural figure within the novel is Kanai Dutt, a professional translator who travels to visit his aunt on her small island in the Bay of Bengal in order to receive a package left to him by his late uncle. The last time Kanai spent any time on the island was when he was sent there as punishment for his arrogance as a young boy, and he remains just as self-satisfied as when he left.

Kanai is a businessman, and his skill with languages might seem to indicate a high level of comfort with many cultures as well as an ease with translation. However, he seems oddly immune to the influences of others, just as he had ignored the teachings of his aunt and uncle when he lived with them. Linguistic fluency does not translate into cultural fluency in Ghosh's novel, and true multiculturalism demands the kind of sensitivity and understanding that Kanai lacks.