New Name, New Man?

    While still in high school, Gogol attends a college party with his friends; when a girl asks his name, he says his name is "Nikhil". Gogol takes on a new persona and becomes a boy with confidence. For one night, Gogol is someone else -- someone he feels is better and desirable, all because of the new name. "He feels at once guilty and exhilarated, protected as if by an invisible shield. Because he knows he will never see her again, he is brave that evening...he doesn't tell them that it hadn't been Gogo who'd kissed Kim. That Gogol had nothing to do with it," (Lahiri 96).
    Before heading off to college at Yale, Gogol legally changes his name to Nikhil. There is an instant shift in his personality. However, I think that Gogol so badly wants to become "Nikhil" that he is caught between himself before the name change and the Gogol after the name change. He feels like he needs to live up to the "other" Gogol. "He wonders if this is how it feels for an obese person to become thin, for a prisoner to walk free...There is only one complication: he doesn't feel like Nikhil...At times he still feels his old name, painfully and without warning," (Lahiri 102, 105). It seems like Gogol basically becomes the standard college boy once he arrives at Yale: going to parties, getting drunk, sleeping with girls. I understand that he desperately wants to break away from his parents and their expectations, but I'm annoyed because this isn't the way to do it. I side with Ashima and Ashoke when they say that Gogol has the potential to become very successful; he has a passion for learning, and even continues his studies outside of what he needs to know.
   But it's his time away at college that brings him closer to "Nikhil" and farther away from his parents. Gogol morphs into his new name; he sketches, he smokes, he dates (non-Indian) girls. Ashima and Ashoke don't entirely approve of the change in their son, but the distance between the old Gogol and new Gogol only seems to grow. I hope that Gogol will soon realize it is only natural for his parents to want more for him.