The Namesake: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

It has been a year since Ashoke’s death. Gogol and Maxine are no longer together—the argument that ended their unraveling relationship had to do with him opposing her desire to accompany his family to India for the funeral. He returns home now every weekend, drawn to the framed photograph of his father on the wall, the closest thing Ashoke has to a grave. Ashima’s mourning has caused her to age quickly, and Sonia now lives with and takes care of her. Gogol is enrolled in a course at Columbia again, preparing to take the registration exam that will make him a fully-licensed architect in his own right.

Out for drinks with his classmates one night, Gogol begins talking with an architecture student named Bridget. She is married, and her husband is a professor in Boston. They begin an affair, never seeing one another aside from the evenings of their review class. It is only when Gogol is on the train home to Boston, and a train going the opposite direction passes by, that he begins to feel guilty, wondering whether Bridget’s husband is sitting on the southbound train.

Ashima has begun to ask questions about Gogol’s romantic situation, even suggesting that he patch things up with Maxine. Gogol knows that Ashima hopes he will settle down soon, but he tries to keep from being annoyed—as he might have been before Ashoke’s death. One day Ashima mentions a girl Gogol used to know, a Bengali named Moushumi Mazoomdar, who had broken off an engagement the year before and “could use a friend.” The first time she gives him the phone number, he only pretends to write it down, but when she persists Gogol agrees to meet with Moushumi.

Moushumi is waiting for him in a bar in the East Village, reading a book in French. Their conversation starts with a discussion of his new name, and the fact that she was taught as a child to call him Gogol Dada, or cousin Gogol—a past link that makes them both feel a bit awkward. Moushumi remembers his house, and his family, and she apologizes for missing Ashoke’s funeral. She had been in Paris at the time, after graduating from Brown, and is now a PhD candidate in French Literature at NYU. She talks frankly of her “prenuptial disaster,” and then they change the subject to the last time they saw each other, at Gogol’s graduation party, when they didn’t speak.

As the bar fills up, they decide to leave, and then, spontaneously, to have dinner. They walk to a small French restaurant, where Gogol insists on paying the bill, and then he walks Moushumi home, surprised at how much he is enjoying himself. On the way back to his apartment he makes the indulgent decision to take a cab, eager to reflect on the date alone. The driver is speaking in Bengali on his cell phone, and as they near his apartment, Gogol leans forward and, speaking Bengali, points out the right address. Gogol leaves a generous tip and steps out of the car.

In the next few days, Gogol recalls images of Moushumi from years ago that he had forgotten—the books she always brought along to the parties, her seriousness at a young age. He is secretly pleased that she has seen his house and tasted Ashima’s cooking. He remembers a Christmas spent in her home, arranging an anonymous gift exchange, and Moushumi reluctantly playing the piano at her mother’s insistence.

A week later they have lunch, meeting at his work, where Gogol shows her around the office proudly. They go to an Italian restaurant he knows, and she orders the same meal he does, eating approvingly. They talk about her dissertation, and that Christmas party years before. Moushumi tells him that playing the piano was always a fantasy her mother had for her, never something she wanted to do. As they pay the bill, the waiter asks Gogol if Moushumi is his sister—a question that embarrasses but pleases them both.

They walk out into the cold New York winter. Moushumi sees Gogol shivering, and insists that they go to buy a hat. He enjoys the way she watches him try it on, and she then buys it as a present. At the counter, he sees her eyeing a beautiful, expensive hat, which she tries on, but leaves behind. Gogol returns to work, but when his day is done he returns to the store and buys the hat from the knowing saleswoman. He hides it in his closet, having decided to give it to her as a birthday present before he even knows when her birthday is. That weekend, at home, he looks through family photo albums and finds Moushumi in the background of an old birthday photo.

The next weekend Gogol goes to Moushumi’s apartment for dinner, bringing a bunch of sunflowers. She looks for a place to put them on the countertops, which are filled with the ingredients for the meal she is cooking, and asks him to get a vase from a high shelf. They begin cooking together, making coq au vin, with Moushumi acknowledging that her mother would be appalled that she isn’t cooking Indian food. Steam from the pot fogs her glasses, and as Gogol helps her take them off, he leans in for a kiss. They go to the bedroom, where they make love “as if they’ve known each other’s bodies for years.” They are roused from bed by the smell of burnt chicken, and sprint naked into the kitchen. In the end they order Chinese.

Within three months their lives become intimately intertwined. When they go out to dinner, they sometimes make comments in Bengali to avoid being overheard. Even as they get to know one another, Gogol feels he already knows her life—he can picture Moushumi’s house, the parties, the family dynamics, as if they were his own. They talk of their trips to Calcutta, and of being misidentified as Greek, Egyptian, or Mexican. She tells him nostalgically of her life in Britain, and of the paranoia of her parents upon moving to America.

Moushumi admits that Gogol is exactly the type of man she has avoided all her life. From a young age, there was pressure in her family to marry a Bengali, but she had made a pact never to do so. Instead she remained single and lonely throughout college, forming intense crushes on her teachers. Her rebellion at Brown was academic—although she studied chemistry as expected, she secretly double majored in French, a culture she turned to in defiance of the other two that tried to lay their claim on her.

After graduation Moushumi moved to Paris, despite her parents’ protests, and after years of loneliness fell into a series of passionate affairs with men who wooed her with expensive presents. She worked at a language center with American expatriates, where she met Graham, an investment banker, and fell in love. They lived together in secret in New York for a time, before Graham met her family. By this point, her parents were more accepting of an American husband, and one night she impulsively asked him to marry her. He accepted, gave her his grandmother’s ring, and flew with her to Calcutta to meet her extended family, charming them all.

Graham agreed to a Hindu wedding, and all of the preparations were made, with the announcement made in the local paper. Then one night a few weeks before the wedding, at a dinner with friends, Moushumi heard him discussing their time in Calcutta, complaining about the lack of alcohol, the endless relatives, their provincial ways. Walking home afterward, they began to argue. For Moushumi, it was fine that she reject her past, but hearing these things from him felt like a betrayal. Moushumi threw his grandmother’s ring into the street, and then Graham slapped her across the face. By the end of the week he had moved out, the wedding was canceled, and she dropped out of the rest of the semester at NYU, taking a trip to the emergency room after swallowing half a bottle of pills.

Moushumi recovered slowly, watching television and movies all day, living in Brooklyn for a time with another couple. It was painful for her to see them together every day. She worked until she could afford to rent another studio, and was grateful to be alone. She grew thin, subsisting on Triscuits and raita, but was determined to stay at NYU, and when summer ended she worked hard to catch up. She began to date again, intermittently—and then she met Gogol.