Who is Moushimi?

Moushimi first enters the novel "The Namesake" as a calm, shy and docile little girl. With her sweet british accent and her nose buried in a book what harm could she do? She returns later on in the book as an adult and makes relatively the same first impression, yet with an air of maturity to her. However we see her character drastically change from the time she agrees to meet Gogol for their blind date, and the final chapter of the novel.

There are a lot of good things that we can say about Moushimi; she is intelligent, independent, and above anything she has a way of getting what she wants. On a more negative note, she proves herself to be deceiving, and disloyal. While she has a certain cleverness about her, she does not always use it in the best ways. Sure, all of her academic achievements are worth more than just the certificates handed out, but Moushimi also finds a terrible use of her intelligence. After a re-encounter with an old friend (or more than that I guess) of hers she begins a process of lying and deceiving her husband. Slowly but surely an affair with Dimitri,a man she once knew in college, and now works with her, develops. Moushimi does her best to hide this from her husband; thinking of elaborate lies, which inevitably keep her up at night, in fear that her husband will poke holes in her story. She always seems to have some sort of alibi all planned out for her, with small peices of evidence to prove it. Sometimes she only tells her husband half of where she's been, making it seem somewhat honest. She isn't technically lying to him; she was at the grocery store, just not the whole time, after all, he didn't ask where she was before that. But just because she is not completely lying does not mean she is loyal. She bends the truth to hide the fact that she is having an affair. On top of that Gogol, was a man who loved his wife dearly, and in fact often questioned what he had done wrong whenever she seemed distant. This man blamed himself for subtle nuances in her attitude throughout the marriage. He was loyal to her the entire marriage; helping to provide for her, wanting what was best for her, and even dealing with the things he found irritating but that she loved ( her obscure group of friends for example). Moushimi's husband goes out of his way to try and make her happy; making reservations at a restaurant Moushimi chose based on her friend's suggestion, buying her an expensive pashmina are just a few examples. Both of these things she rejects. Moushimi finds any minor detail about them to complain about; the cold air in the restaurant, the waiter not looking her in the eye, the pashmina leaving little purple flecks of fabric on her dress. She does not appreciate what her husband does for her, and ultimately does not return the favour of his loyalty.


The question remains, however; why is she like this? My guess is that it is because she is highly indecisive. Moushimi can get what she wants, but she is never sure exactly what she wants. So she ends up making very rash short term decisions. The affair with Dimitri is an example of this. She was unsure of how she felt being married to Gogol, whether she had made the correct decision or not. She ends up admiring the freedom of others, the freedom that she had once had when she was in Paris. So perhaps she is trying to relive that freedom and by sleeping with another man she has an escape from being tied down.
Would it not be fair to say that maybe she is trying to fill some sort of void as well? The woman has obviously had emotional troubles in her past, whether it has been self confidence during childhood or her emotional unbalance after Graham left her. Either way, those types of issues do not go away quickly, and certainly not if they have persisted from youth into adulthood. Personally I believe that she saw Gogol as a "quick fix". Meaning, as a recovery from her failed engagement with Graham she sought out another man that would help her feel as if she could make a relationship last. And Gogol was the perfect fit; a man who was sensitive and romantic, he was passive, and he was Bengali (with the same attitude towards culture as Moushimi) so there was no fear of him fleeing the many traditions. But since Gogol was no more than a short term fix for a long term problem she began to feel empty once again. Aside from out right saying "the affair causes her to feel slightly at peace" (Lahiri, 266), there is a lovely metaphor in the novel that illustrates this, where Moushimi is Dimitri's house, and she notices a gap in his bookshelf, which she immediately fills with another book. I am not sure how much clearing up that needs but just incase, what it is trying to say is that Moushimi is missing something in her life, she is not sure what, but this affair is one of the things that she thinks might fill that empty space.
Independence and intelligence; just a few of the personality traits that make Moushimi enticing and charming to others. Despite their ability to make desirable, and a woman to be admired her uses of them become a downfall; independence to disloyalty, and intelligence to deceit. Whatever the reason behind this may be I believe it in our rights to say that these two traits cause misery to those around her.