This book resonates with my ideology, which states that once a person leaves their home, there's no going back. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri explores spaces of silence, in airports and empty apartments, in phone calls that cross time zones, where the idea of belonging is fleeting.

Through the Ganguli family, Lahiri explores the ways in which something as simple as a name can be a conduit for the history and the longing that come with migration. Through every chapter, she conveyed the pain of building an identity in a place that is not yours. Some Namesake quotes have touched my heart and here they are for your reference.

Namesake Quotes BY Jhumpa Lahiri About Identity And Family Love

• "That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet."
• "You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late."
• "Do what I will never do."

• "They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end."
• "Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting. "Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go."
• "Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people."
• "She has the gift of accepting her life."
• "But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their hand-holding on the street and lying on top of each other on the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy."

The Namesake (Image Credits: Instagram)

• "On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl."
• "Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go."
• "My grandfather says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. "To travel without moving an inch."
• "Though no longer pregnant, she continues, at times, to mix Rice Krispies and peanuts and onions in a bowl. For being a foreigner Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been an ordinary life, only to discover that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity of from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect."
• "Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it."
• "You remind me of everything that followed."

• "One hand, five homes. A lifetime in a fist."
• "Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed."
• "Is that what you think of when you think of me?" Gogol asks him. "Do I remind you of that night"?
• "Not at all", his father says eventually, one hand going to his ribs, a habitual gesture that has baffled Gogol until now. "You remind me of everything that followed."

These quotes by Jhumpa Lahiri from The Namesake are more than a reflection of the immigrant experience; rather, they appear to me as a softer, more spacious understanding of identity. These quotes will remind you that belonging is often found in small acts like pronouncing a name correctly, cooking a familiar dish, and returning to a book that felt like home.