The Namesake-Week 4 Post A

The cultural experience the reader gets from "The Namesake" continues to grow. The first months after Ashima and Ashoke bring their baby boy, Gogol, home the culture just begins to bloom in front of your very eyes. Gogol, being a newborn baby, comes with a lot of Bengali traditions. At the time when Gogol is able to eat solid foods, a ceremony is held to celebrate his first meal, and the many to come. This ritual would be the equivalent to a baptism, except that it is viewed as coming into the life of God. In the ritual Gogol is put in to  ceremonious garb and is covered in coal and a hat that his mother made for him from tin foil and paper. Then, a plate of many traditional foods are placed in front of the baby where he eats his first grain of rice. Second, they place dirt, a pen, and money in front of him, in hopes that he will choose one. Each object symbolizes and tells the future of the young baby. If he grabs the money he will be a wealthy man, if he grabs the pen he will be a businessman, and if he reaches for the dirt, he is destined to be a farmer. The reader also witnesses cultural changes, but the other way around. Ashima, left alone with her new born child and nothing to do begins to find errands to run to occupy her time. Many of the things that she would normally be able to find in India aren't in America, so she finds substitutes for many cooking items. She also even begins to feel more connected with Cambridge when she leaves her shopping bags on the train, and by the next day were returned to her. She felt that this gave her more of a connection to where she is now.