Nikhil/Gogol Ganguli Timeline and Summary

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• Gogol is born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in August 1968.
• The hospital will not release him without a name. Since his parents have not received the letter from his grandmother giving his formal or "good" name, his parents provide him with the pet name "Gogol."
• At his annaprasan, or rice ceremony, Gogol is great at eating rice pudding, but he hates being made, at six months old, to choose a career. He chooses… crying.
• A few months after his first birthday, he visits Calcutta with his parents.
• In 1971, Gogol moves with his family to a university town outside Boston. He attends preschool.
• Two years later, Gogol enters kindergarten. His father tries to get the school to call him by his formal name, Nikhil, but Gogol insists on being called Gogol, a decision he'll regret as a teenager.
• At the age of 10, Gogol visits Calcutta for a third time, and he is impressed by how many Gangulis there are in the phone book.
• Then, in 1982, Gogol celebrates his fourteenth birthday with two parties. At the party his parents throw, the only girl close to his age is Moushumi, who totally ignores him. On this birthday, his father gives him a copy of The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol.
• A year later, Gogol goes with his family on an eight-month trip to Calcutta. At the end of their trip, the family visits the Taj Mahal at Agra. Gogol gets some kind of stomach virus.
• In 1984, as a junior in high school, Gogol is assigned Nikolai Gogol's "The Overcoat" as an assignment for his English class.
• Gogol crashes a college party with his high school friends. At the party, he introduces himself to a girl as Nikhil and gets his first kiss.
• The summer before he leaves for college, Gogol goes to Boston's Middlesex Probate Court and officially changes his first name to Nikhil.
• Gogol begins his studies at Yale under his new name, Nikhil (but the novel still calls him Gogol). In the fall of 1987, Gogol meets a girl named Ruth on the train. They start dating, but break up a year later.
• In his senior year, Gogol goes home for Thanksgiving. His father tells him the story behind his name.
• By 1994, Gogol has received his graduate architecture degree from Columbia and is working at an architecture firm in New York City.
• He meets a girl named Maxine at a party. They start dating, and it's serious.
• In August 1994, Gogol goes with Maxine on a drive up to New Hampshire. They stop for lunch at his parents' house for a quick visit.
• In the weeks before Christmas, 1994, Gogol's father passes away from a heart attack while he's in Ohio.
• Gogol goes to his father's hospital in Ohio to identify the body, then goes to his father's apartment to clear it out.
• After that, Gogol spends a month with his mother and sister, mourning his father, after which he breaks up with Maxine.
• Fast forward to 1997. Gogol has just had an affair with Bridget, when his mother, Ashima convinces Gogol to call Moushumi, the girl from his fourteenth birthday party. He does so and they meet up for drinks. Then, a week later, they meet up for lunch.
• The next weekend, Gogol goes over to Moushumi's for dinner. They have sleep together and begin a relationship in earnest.
• After dating for a year, Gogol and Moushumi get married in August 1998, around the same time as his birthday.
• In December, four months after their first anniversary, Moushumi confesses to Gogol that she is having an affair. They divorce.
• On Christmas Eve, 2000, Gogol arrives at the family home to help his mother move out of the house. While he's there, he finally reads from the book his father gave him, The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol.