The proto-Gogol?

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[Warning: Spoilers!]

People who feel that The Namesake was too unrealistic might have to reconsider now that the “real” Gogol has emerged [via UB]. Vishaan Chakrabarti is a New York City architect. His father was a Professor (at Harvard, the book was set in Boston unlike the movie) and his mother a librarian who became a classical Indian singer. And yes, he had a nickname that he disliked enough that he legally changed his name while in college.

The Namesake’s Namesake?

Chakrabarti … has good reason to believe he’s the inspiration for Gogol, the protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel (Kal Penn’s role in the movie). “Maybe it’s just coincidence that nine-tenths of the book is the same as my life,” he says, “but it was my friends who pointed it out. Anyone who knew me well saw the similarity immediately.” [Link]

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p>[NOTE: Chakrabarti wasn’t trying to grab the headlines, a friend of his told NYMag, which then contacted him to inquire further.]

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p>He met Jhumpa because, in real life, she was the proto-Moushumi figure:

He dates non-Indian women, to his parents’ chagrin, and, after his father’s death, shaves his head and lets his mother set him up for the first time with an Indian girl–which is how Chakrabarti met Lahiri. [Link]

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p>However, as Chakrabarti himself points out, there was no grand drama between them, just a set-up that went nowhere:

Chakrabarti … does note many differences between himself and Gogol. Most important, he and Lahiri dated only briefly, not getting hitched and divorced, as in the book. Chakrabarti, who’s now married, says they simply never hit it off. [Link]

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p>In fact, neither of them married Bengalis. I guess just being Bengali wasn’t enough .

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p>I wasn’t surprised to find out that there was a proto-Gogol running around. As much as writers like to claim that their characters spring from their head fully formed, generated by nothing more than their muse and the empty void, we all know it’s not true. Consider Seinfeld for example. Jerry is Jerry. As bizarre as Costanza’s adventures were, many of them were tamer versions of things that had happened to the show’s co-writer, Larry David.

As Alexander explains in an interview for the Seinfeld DVD, during an early conversation with David, Alexander questioned a script, saying, “This could never happen to anyone, and even if it did, no human being would react like this.” David replied, “What do you mean? This happened to me once, and this is exactly how I reacted!”… [Link]

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p>Kramer is based on David’s real life whacky neighbor Kenny Kramer, and Elaine was a blend of Seinfeld and David’s girlfriends. Even a show about nothing was based on real people in real life situations.

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p>However, most of the time, the inspiration for characters get no recognition from the authors, especially if the show is a success. The play and movie versions of Six Degrees of Separation were based on the real life exploits of conman David Hampton. Hampton was chagrined to find out that he wasn’t even invited to the party for the play!

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p>Although the link between Chakrabarti and Gogol is weaker, it’s interesting to see the reception he received from Ms. Lahiri:

He’s talked to Lahiri once since the book came out, at a book signing. “I thought she might say something,” he said. “It’s interesting, but she didn’t acknowledge it. Even the way she signed it was like, ‘Nice to see you.'”… [Link]

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p>More than anything else, that makes me think that maybe Chakrabarti really was the model for Gogol ….

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p>This leaves two interesting dangling questions:

  1. If Jhumpa was the proto-Moushumi figure, then does that shed any light on Moushumi? What exactly was going on, either in her mind or her life, at that time?
  2. What was Chakrabarti’s nickname? If you consider the fact that his father was on the faculty of Harvard Med School, does this mean that he was named after his father’s favorite … species of research subject? Disease? The mind boggles on this one.

[Yes, I know that Gogol is probably a composite of various real people with a healthy dose of the author’s imagination. Still, it’s plausible that Chakrabarti was at least the basis for a rough sketch of the character, or that his parents may have provided some of the inspiration for Gogol’s parents … ]

49 thoughts on “The proto-Gogol?”

  1. Oh this is priceless!

    As if peoples copies of ‘The Namesake” weren’t tattered enough

  2. What was Chakrabarti’s nickname? If you consider the fact that his father was on the faculty of Harvard Med School, does this mean that he was named after his father’s favorite species of research subject? Disease? The mind boggles on this one.

    THAT was what I wanted to know too! Do you really think he was nicknamed after a disease? Like maybe an STD? I think it would be really, really tempting to mess with my kids like that so I could have a good laugh (and that is how I know I am not yet ready to be a parent). (Although, I did see someone name her new baby Meconium because she heard us say it during the delivery and thought it was purty! It means baby’s first poop.)

  4. Yes, Brian, that is the source for the story. If you look at the quotes, they’re taken from NYMag with attribution …

  6. Chancre Chakraborty! (Don’t click on that link unless you have a really strong stomach. And I guess maybe NSFW? Whatever, IT IS SCIENCE.)

    (It almost even sounds like Shankar!)

  7. If Jhumpa was the proto-Moushumi figure, then does that shed any light on Moushumi?

    I think, if anything, it sheds light on Lahiri. I’m talkin about French action faster than the TGV

  8. What was Chakrabarti’s nickname? If you consider the fact that his father was on the faculty of Harvard Med School, does this mean that he was named after his father’s favorite species of research subject? Disease? The mind boggles on this one.

    Well, Gogol’s father was an electrical engineer, not a writer. . . .so perhaps VC was named after a musician or something. 🙂

    I wrote a profile of Chakrabarti in journalism school which I very sadly never found a home for, but he’s a fascinating man in his own right. I totally thought of him when I read the Namesake but I dismissed it b/c a) I forgot how close knit the east coast Bangla community is and b) he just seemed totally different in personality and presence than my mental picture of Gogol. I had the advantage of meeting him when he was an at extremely impressive stage in his career–don’t remember Gogol ever getting too far?–and apparently happily married with at least one kid. My sense of Gogol from the book is that he was a bit shy and retiring; Chakrabarti is quite charismatic and as the architect of Manhattan he has to sell community boards on his ideas all the time. If he is Gogol’s future beyond the book, then I can see why JL would leave out such an optimistic trajectory–it’s too happily-ever-after for her. I don’t have access to the profile right now, but I can paraphrase three quotes from memory. One is that when he first moved to New York he felt like it was his long lost friend, a brother almost; another was about how he wants to walk with his son on the Highline park when it was finished (how is it doing, anyway, New Yorkers?) and three was that “density is my religion.”

  10. In fact, neither of them married Bengalis. I guess just being Bengali wasn’t enough . Jhumpaji, where did you get so sexy 😉

    Too funny. 🙂

  11. Harvard Medical School Professor ? Impressive.. There’s a lot of brown in state universities now– but not much brown in the Ivy Leagues..

  12. Actually, the Gogol of the Namesake is Jhumpa Lahiri herself.

    This is from someone who grew up in Jhumpa’s family friend circle and her parents (including their home along with the carpet design) are in the book. She says that reading the Namesake was boring because she knew exactly what was coming chapter by chapter since she knew Jhumpa herself.

    I found it pretty funny.

    sp

  13. Jhumpaji, where did you get so sexy 😉

    I wonder if Chakrabarti now finds himself wondering what might have happened if only he’d made a move on that second date when she invited him over for dinner ….

  15. Just curious: Is there a rule about how much of an article can be excerpted in a blog? In this case, it was a very short article and most of it seems to appear here? Not trying to find fault, just wondering if there’s a particular guideline that you guys follow.

  16. I am really glad to see this. It further confirms that the protagonist is not someone whom I’d like to hang out with. With this guy’s image in my head I will never be able to see the movie, and thus, will retain some brain cells for my other activities.

  17. See, this is why when you are “inspired” to write about a real person, make sure they’re dead first.

    (BTW, I thought the inspiration for Gogol was every third desi kid I knew??)

  18. He’s not as pretty as Jhumki, but not bad. Pity being Bengali isn’t enough.

  19. it’s the latest T-shirt slogan : i went on this terrible blind date and all i got was a book that they turned into a movie! ha!

    it does seem likely that it was more from her own upbringing, esp. as sonya mentioned. in her first book, she draws on certain similar elements for her various stories. plus, since they didn’t hit it off, maybe she didn’t know him enough to base an entire book on his life? on the other hand, bad dates are fodder [in more wways than one] for good writing.

  25. Taz, when you saw The Namesake, was the Bengali used (Calcutta dialect) very different or reasonably similar to the Bengali spoken in your parents’ part of Bangladesh? Would you have understood it if there were no subtitles? In general, can you (and Razib, feel free to chime in) understand Indian Bengali?

  26. For me, WITH the help of the subtitles I could relate a lot of the Bengali words to their Hindi equivalents. Without the subtitles I don’t think I would have caught more than a word or two here and there.

  29. In general, can you (and Razib, feel free to chime in) understand Indian Bengali?

    amee bhalaw bhasa balthe paree 🙂

    1) yes, i can understand “indian bengali.” quotation marks because my family is from comilla, and kushtia dialect (on the other side of bangladesh) is almost certainly more like the bengali across in the border in india.

    2) the bigger issue you bring up is the prevalence of diglossia in bengali, with the high prestige written form being strongly shaped by calcutta dialect. but i had no problem understanding everything that was said in the movie born into brothels, and, strangely, i note that i can understand “hindi” speaking peasants more easily in documentaries than the hindi in bollywood.

  30. I would guess PDX, and Eugene probably has it now or very soon.

    i’m not in eugene anymore! if you go swinging south on I-5 toward cali, send me an email!

  31. p.s. re: “indian bengali,” there is a difference in relation to sanskritization of bengali as spoken by hindus. but this seems to apply to hindus from bangladesh too. e.g., some hindu friends of the family from chittagong would say “jawl” instead of “pani.” i wouldn’t be surprised if muslim west bengalis said pani….

  32. amee bhalaw bhasa balthe paree 🙂

    Puhleez! You are SO not a bengali. What you actually said was “I can say love”. That will get you a long way on a date.

  33. razib,

    i have seen enough Ray movies, that i can understand city bengali in very rough sense – the general idea.

    sometime ago, i saw Khamoshi Pani, set in rural Punjab of Pakistan, and has heavy urdu and punjabi. i did not need subtitles even once.

    this does not hold for other eastern and southern indian subcontinent languages.

    hindi in bollywood is hindustani (hindi + urdu + english + punjabi + marathi + mumbai dialect*** (mostly))

    *** screen writers get influenced what hear 24/ 7

  34. 29#My bad – I didn’t read the rest of your comment. You’re from Comilla – yeah! So that’s dialect. Cool bro.

  36. sometime ago, i saw Khamoshi Pani, set in rural Punjab of Pakistan, and has heavy urdu and punjabi. i did not need subtitles even once.

    this does not hold for other eastern and southern indian subcontinent languages.

    1) i am pretty sure that the hindis cluster with gujarati and punjabi as west-central indo-aryan languages. in contrast, assamese, bengali and oriya are the eastern branch (i believe marathi is on a branch in the south). i am pretty sure that the intelligibility between hindi and punjabi is probably like between oriya and bengali.

    2) did you just cluster eastern brown languages with the aliens with indian accents??? oh no you didn’t!

  38. 1) yes, i can understand “indian bengali.” quotation marks because my family is from comilla, and kushtia dialect (on the other side of bangladesh) is almost certainly more like the bengali across in the border in india.

    Yes, supposedly the Padma River in Bangladesh is a sort of a linguistic dividing line…to the west of the river, the dialects are similar to Indian Bengali. East of the river, the dialects are (from what I’ve read) very different.

    strangely, i note that i can understand “hindi” speaking peasants more easily in documentaries than the hindi in bollywood.

    That makes sense since Hindi and Bengali (and actually Punjabi too) form a dialect continuum. Urban colloquial Hindi (which is mostly what Bollywood uses) is based on western (Delhi) dialect with a lot of Perso-Arabic loanwords. It’s almost the same as colloquial Urdu. As you move eastward from Delhi towards Bengal, into eastern UP and Bihar, the Hindi dialects gradually become more like Bengali (the Bihari dialects like Maithili are sort of halfway between Hindi and Bengali in a lot of ways)…so if you as a 2nd gen Bengali heard rural Hindi from Bihar or Eastern UP, I’m sure it would sound more familiar than Bollywood Hindi would.

  39. East of the river, the dialects are (from what I’ve read) very different.

    nod this makes sense. you ever seen the padma? fuck the mississipi. also, east of the padma i’m pretty sure we’re yellower (slanty eyes and less hairy).

    .the Bihari dialects like Maithili are sort of halfway between Hindi and Bengali in a lot of ways

    it wuz somewhere in eastern uttar pradesh (i looked it up). i was pretty shocked i could make out 75% of what the person was saying. i say shocked because it was more intelligible than the hindi in old school bengali movies that are trying to be pretentious in their speech.

  41. Lahiri had no comment on Chakrabarti, who does note many differences between himself and Gogol. Most important, he and Lahiri dated only briefly, not getting hitched and divorced, as in the book. Chakrabarti, who’s now married, says they simply never hit it off. He’s talked to Lahiri once since the book came out, at a book signing. “I thought she might say something,” he said. “It’s interesting, but she didn’t acknowledge it. Even the way she signed it was like, ‘Nice to see you.’”

    sounds like Chakrabarti’s into her. he needs some acknowledgment from her, and maybe he regrets it didn’t work out the 1st time. maybe now that she’s famous his interest is peaked b/c her combo of brains/looks/fame make her a perfect trophy for a NY intellectual.

    or maybe lahiris was into chakrabarti this whole time and stole his life story as a passive-aggressive way of getting his attention. now she’s paying him no notice, not even giving him the pleasure of acknowledging that he’s not the inspiration. maybe she threw herself at him the 1st time but now she really knows how to play the game.

    or maybe i’ve watched more SATC than any hetero-male should.

    i’m sure there are more scenarios, but i need to turn my attention to desperate houswives.

  42. Funny story.

    I saw Namesake at UCLA and we sat on these foldy chairs all parralel to each other in an auditorium. Thus, when the subtitles came on, no one could read the subtitles because they were blocked by the people in front of us. My friend sitting next to me would lean over ask what they were saying. I understood about 80% of what was being said. So I’d translate, but I’d miss a few here and there. I missed a sentence and the friend two seats away translated it into English for me. I was impressed, “I didn’t know you could speak bangla!” I whispered over. “I can’t! I can read English.” Apparantly, she was sitting taller then the rest of us.

    Anyhow, lame story to basically explain, yes, I understood most of the bangla (what i didn’t understand where specific words that we didn’t use in our house). The dialect didn’t sound different at all then what I’m used to. BUT, I’m guessing that dialect is class driven in bangla. My grandfather was schooled in Calcutta (pre-partition) and that side of the family (I’m closer to) was in Pakistan for a while. My dad’s side of the family I have a harder time understanding – lower ‘class’, more village talk, street talk, harder sounding. But then again, I saw Yoni Ki Baat here in LA last week and there was a piece all in Bangla that I also couldn’t understand, but that’s because it was really proper and formal Bangla. I dunno, I guess that since the Bangla I used was really with my mother or grandparents, it has to be used within that limited context (words, dialect) for me to understand.

    In Conclusion. I had an easier time understanding Bangla in The Namesake then I do in Bangla natuks (TV sitcoms/soap operas).

  43. Frankly, there isn’t really that much difference between “Indian Bengali” and “(standard) Bangladeshi Bengali” — there are some differences in accents (which pale in comparison to those betweens dialects of Bengali from different districts in Bangladesh; I, for instance, have no trouble with either standard Indian Bengali or standard Bangladeshi Bengali but can barely makeout one word in five from either Chittagong Bengali or Sylheti Bengali, and I was raised in Bangladesh) and a difference in preference for certain nouns (jal/paani for water, different terms for relatives, etc.). Even my wife, who is American (and not ABCD) and is just beginning to learn Bengali, followed the Bengali dialogue in the movie without too much trouble.

  44. There might not be that much difference between “Indian Bengali” and “(standard) Bangladeshi Bengali” but the difference in cuisine is enormous. West Bengal has the most insipid food possible while Bangladeshi cooking is mind-blowing.

    Oh, back to point. The book was crap and the movie with the no-name gujju bhai as lead is even crappier. Even Kaavya made-up a better plot.

  45. Well, I can’t really comment on West Bengali cuisine (my sample size being rather small); and what with Bangladeshi dishes being what I grew up on and what I cook most often, I would probably not come across as unbiased.

    As for the book, let’s just say that I preferred her Interpreter of Maladies to The Namesake. The entire identity issue in the latter was a touch too angsty for me. That said, I’m not an ABCD. And I can certainly see the self-identity issues of the novel resonating with SM posters and readers who are.

    And I don’t have any issues with non-Bengalis playing Bengalis. Frankly, while we generally tend to talk about Bengali-ness as an ethnicity, my personal view is that it is merely a cultural identity based largely on language, history, and the myths we tell ourselves. As such, someone can easily use those tropes to convey a sense of Bengali-ness. Mind you, I didn’t particularly like Kal Penn (sp?) in that role; I just thought his performance (as well as those of the women playing Max and Moushumi) was not as nuanced as that of his “parents”. Was the movie “crap”? No, but I didn’t think it was that spectacular either.

  46. Frankly, while we generally tend to talk about Bengali-ness as an ethnicity, my personal view is that it is merely a cultural identity based largely on language, history, and the myths we tell ourselves.

    Also, learnt behavioral patterns and attitudes. Values, cultural tendencies. Type of family structure, and way of looking at the world. Habits and cuisine. There are a lot of things which make Bengalis distinct in the Indian context (as there are for every Indian sub-ethnicity). Whether there is any genetic basis to Bengaliness, I’m sure Razib could tell us. Probably there is to an extent, although with strong overlaps with neighboring peoples such as Biharis, Oriyas, Assamese, etc.

  47. Amitabh, regarding the genetic basis of Bengali-ness, with the tools currently available, I think you’d find us fairly indistinguishible from the neighbours you mention. As an aside, there’s been considerable research along this line on Jews and Palestinians, focused both on the paternally inherited Y-chromosome and maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, which indicates that most Jewish ethnic divisions and the Palestinians, and in some cases other Levantine Arabs, are genetically closer to each other than the Palestinians are to the original Arabs of Arabia or European Jews to non-Jewish Europeans. And with all due respect to Razib, there actually are several of us atheist Bengali geneticists/molecular biologists out there; it’s just that not all of us blog.

  48. As an aside, there’s been considerable research along this line on Jews and Palestinians, focused both on the paternally inherited Y-chromosome and maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, which indicates that most Jewish ethnic divisions and the Palestinians, and in some cases other Levantine Arabs, are genetically closer to each other than the Palestinians are to the original Arabs of Arabia or European Jews to non-Jewish Europeans.

    Shaad, I don’t disagree with you at all. And I’m sure what you’re saying is correct. But it really amuses me that genetic studies always seem to counteract cherished notions. For example, the Aryan Invasion Theory. Or the notion that the people of England are descended from Germanic invaders. Or, as Razib has pointed out, that many American Black people who think they have Native American blood, actually don’t have any. Most Afrikaaners believe they are pure European but genetic studies say they are not. Etc. etc. Sometimes, the way these studies always seem to contradict national myths, they almost appear to have a political agenda. I know that’s nonsense, but still…

  49. Amitabh, the problem IMHO stems from two facts: first, that we dearly cherish the myths that we tell ourselves, and second, that the differences between people that we see with our eyes are only a miniscule fraction of the multitude of actual similarities and differences brought about by our genes. An illustrative example is the existence of people of African-American “origin” who can “pass” as whites, while their parents can’t.

    I wish I could say that if most people were geneticists/molecular biologists, then most of these race/ethnicity-driven issues would disappear. Sadly, I can’t. In fact, one of the papers focusing on the close relationship between Jews and Palestinians was subsequently retracted by the editors of the journal it was originally published in, not because there was any fault with the science, but because the authors had used terms like “colonists” instead of say, the less loaded and more neutral “settlers”. And if we venture out of say genetics/molecular biology into some of the more softer sciences, things become even more bizarre: Japanese anthropologists, for instance, have notions about the origin of (non-Ainu) Japanese which seem much more informed by politics than actual research.