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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What two kinds of parties does Gogol have for his fourteenth birthday?
(a) One with family and one with school friends.
(b) One at home and one at a pizza parlor.
(c) One with friends from school and one with Indian friends of his family.
(d) One on his actual birthday, another on the weekend when it's convenient.

2. How Gogol/Nikhil feel about his new name once a few weeks have passed?
(a) He feels like a new and different person.
(b) He wishes he'd never done it.
(c) He doesn't give it a second thought.
(d) He's confused and doesn't know why.

3. How does a book save Ashoke's life?
(a) It stops a piece of flying metal that could have killed him.
(b) It doesn't have anything to do with his survival.
(c) He is reading it and, thus, is in a safe place during the train wreck.
(d) The book is like a warning and he avoids disaster.

4. What does Gogol hate about explaining his name to people?
(a) That many people in India have pet names when children.
(b) That it's not Indian and is absurd and obscure.
(c) How to pronounce it correctly.
(d) That his parents didn't have a name ready when he was born.

5. How does Ashima react to Gogol's time in pre-school?
(a) She finds herself at long last with time for herself.
(b) She is despondent, unused to being alone all over again.
(c) She is concerned that he will forget his Indian heritage.
(d) She wishes she could learn alongside him.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Ashoke do that reminds Ashima of the time he visited her parents' home?

2. Why does Gogol's father take him to his first day of kindergarten?

3. What does Ashoke do while pacing in the mens' waiting room at the hospital?

4. What changes about the planned visit to India when Gogol is about a year old?

5. Who does Gogol meet on a train coming home from school during his freshman year in college?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who befriends Ashima at the hospital and how?

2. What do the Ganguli family do during Ashoke's sabbatical?

3. Why aren't Ashoke and Ashima concerned that they don't have a name picked out before the birth of their child?

4. What is Ashima doing when her water breaks?

5. How does Gogol react to the gifts he receives at his fourteenth birthday party?

6. When Gogol is six, what event changes in the Ganguli family?

7. Why is Ashima afraid while in labor?

8. Why doesn't Ashima's grandmother name their grandchild as Ashima and Ashoke requested?

9. Why don't Ashima and Ashoke have a name picked out for their baby?

10. Why doesn't Gogol look forward to his fourteenth birthday party?

(see the answer keys)

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