Quote 1
And yet to a casual observer, the Gangulis, apart from the name on their mailbox, apart from the issues of India Abroad and Sangbad Bichitra that are delivered there, appear no different from their neighbors […] There are other ways in which Ashoke and Ashima give in. (3.60)
How in the world are Ashoke and Ashima supposed to choose which American customs to adopt and which ones to ignore? Should they only do what's easy, or make a big effort to fit in? Do you think they strike a good balance in the novel?
Quote 2
For the sake of Gogol and Sonia they celebrate, with progressively increasing fanfare, the birth of Christ, an event the children look forward to far more than the worship of Durga and Saraswati. (3.59)
Ashoke and Ashima seem to adopt American customs for the sake of their American-born children. Do they have anything to gain from assimilating, too?
Quote 3
Ashima thinks it's strange that her child will be born in a place most people enter either to suffer or to die […] In India, she thinks to herself, women go home to their parents to give birth, away from husbands and in-laws and household cares, retreating briefly to childhood when the baby arrives. (1.4)
Apparently, giving birth is quite a different event in India. In fact, for Ashima, doing it the Indian way sounds kind of nice. At least she wouldn't be alone in a room full of strangers. Even the very beginning of life is different over in America.
Quote 4
Ashima has been consuming this concoction throughout her pregnancy, a humble approximation of the snack sold for pennies on Calcutta sidewalks and on railway platforms throughout India, spilling from newspaper cones. (1.1)
Poor Ashima. She wants desperately to recreate Calcutta life in the United States, be she has to resort to Rice Krispies and Planter's nuts. No wonder the snack doesn't taste quite right.
Quote 5
The apartment consists of three rooms all in a row without a corridor […] It is not at all what she had expected. Not at all like the houses in Gone with the Wind or The Seven-Year-Itch. (2.46).
For Ashima, America is not all it's cracked up to be. Can you blame her for being disappointed? Life as the wife of a graduate student is a humble one. She will not be living the Scarlett O'Hara life.
Quote 6
Somehow, this small miracle causes Ashima to feel connected to Cambridge in a way she has not previously thought possible. (2.74)
In the first couple of years in the United States, Ashima gradually warms to American life, particularly when she experiences random acts of kindness. When someone takes her shopping bags to the lost and found, it tells her that not everyone here is a mean stranger. There are nice folks, too.
Quote 7
They've even gone so far as to point out examples of Bengali men they know who've married Americans, marriages that have ended in divorce. It only makes things worse when he says that marriage is the last thing on his mind. (5.61)
Ashima and Ashoke have a completely different notion of love and marriage than Gogol. They see love as something tied to marriage and families; Gogol admits that he is more interested in sex. That has to make for some awkward parental powwows.
Quote 8
Ashima regrets that they can't go earlier, in time for Durga pujo, but it will be years before Ashoke is eligible for a sabbatical, and three weeks in December is all they can manage. "It is like going home a few months after your Christmas," Ashima explains to Judy one day over the clothesline. (2.72)
Not only is India geographically distant, but it also has a different sense of time, with different holidays. It's hard to live on an Indian calendar in America, where people have never even heard of things like Durga pujo.
Quote 9
Having been deprived of the company of her own parents upon moving to America, her children's independence, their need to keep their distance from her, is something she will never understand. (7.25)
Another source of unhappiness for Ashima is her children's desire for independence, particularly since she comes from a culture in which extended families are part of your everyday life. The more independent they become, the farther away they grow from their Bengali roots.
Quote 10
They are not willing to accept, to adjust, to settle for something less than their ideal of happiness. (12.3)
Ashima is thinking here of Gogol's divorce from Moushumi. Which brings up the question, does having an ideal of happiness actually cause unhappiness because it leads to disappointed hopes? Should characters learn to settle?
Quote 11
Ashima feels lonely suddenly, horribly, permanently alone, and briefly, turned away from the mirror, she sobs for her husband. She feels overwhelmed by the thought of the move she is about to make, to the city that was once home and is now in its own way foreign. (12.7)
While at the beginning of the novel Ashima cries for Calcutta, at the end of the novel she cries for her husband and their life together, signaling a shift in the way she thinks of home and happiness.
Quote 12
There is a thrill to whittling down her possessions to little more than what she'd come with, to those three rooms in Cambridge in the middle of a winter's night. (12.6)
Ashima chucks all her possession as she begins her new lifestyle, spending equal time in India and America. It's exciting for her, and takes her back to her younger days as a newlywed in Cambridge, when she had nothing much but love for her husband and her soon-to-be-born son.