Trains appear again and again in Lahiri’s novel, and twice a train accident plays a significant role in the story. The first is the devastating accident in Ashoke’s past, which he barely survives, and the second is when an unknown person commits suicide on the tracks of a train that is carrying Gogol home from Yale. The presence of trains in the novel seems to be a reminder of the constant and inevitable forward motion of life, which advances and accumulates outside of anyone’s control, as Gogol reflects at the end of the novel. It is on a train that Gogol meets Ruth, and on a train that he discovers Moushumi’s affair. Trains also represent motion, travel, and distance, and are a reminder that the novel’s main characters are divided between homes, constantly unsettled.