In 'The Namesake' by Jhumpa Lahiri, every character is in the search of a home where to belong to, and the different houses they habitate mirror their personalities. The wealthy Ratliffs live in an extravagant mansion. Gogol's room at university is kind of disheartening. The first residence of the Ganguli's is small and uncomfortable, but full of love. If identity derives from the sense of home, it is not a surprise that Gogol has many difficulties in finding and setting up a permanent one. This may explain why he wants to become an architect (to build his own home).
But, as the story develops, the narrator acknowledges that "...is his room at Yale where Gogol feels most comfortable. He likes its oldness, its persistent grace. He likes that so many students have occupied it before him. He likes the solidity of its plaster walls, its dark wooden
floorboards, however battered and stained. He likes the dormer window he sees first thing in the mornings when he opens his eyes and looking at Battell Chapel. He has fallen in love with the Gothic architecture of the campus, always astonished by the physical beauty that surrounds him, that roots him to his environs in a way he had never felt growing up on Pemberton Road." (Evidence from the text).
Thus, Gogol's transitory place of comfort turns to be his Yale dormitory rather than the house where he grew up, implying that he has more flair to get used to new places than his parents.
