The Namsake

Last weekend, I went to visit my friend in Birmingham and she wanted to go watch the movie The Namesake. I had never heard of the movie and when she told me what it was about, I wasn’t really interested. She finally convinced me to go, and to my surprise it was an awesome movie! The movie was about a family moving from Calcutta, India to New York and adjusting to the completely new lifestyle. It started off in India with the parents, Ashoke and Ashima, getting married. They then moved to a little apartment in New York with little money and no idea what to expect from this foreign land. After a couple years of struggling they moved into a nicer house and had two kids. The story basically focused on their son, Gogol played by Kal Penn. It followed his struggles in trying to live a normal life in America while holding onto his Indian culture. I thought Kal Penn wouldn’t be good in a serious role, but I definitely underestimated him. Kal Penn along with the rest of the cast did an excellent job. I liked this movie a lot because I could relate a lot of aspects of it to my own life. Just like the family in the movie, my parents moved from India and struggled a lot before they ended up where they are today. Sometimes I do find it hard to balance both the Indian and American cultures in my life. However, I think I have it easier than Kal Penn did in the movie because I am exposed to my Indian side a lot by having a lot of family members close by. I have also been back to India a few times with my parents and brother. Overall, I thought the movie was great and it did an outstanding job portraying the life of this Indian family trying to adjust in America.