The Story of a Dictionary

My first dictionary was a gift from an uncle who was a teacher. He gave it to me when I passed the first Board examination of my life at the age of 15 with a total score that was comparatively good. Good in the family, that is. It was a Concise Oxford Dictionary which served me well for many years. In due course of time, an Advanced Oxford took its place. I was in love with both these dictionaries, so to say. I loved words. I loved them so much that I didn’t love anything else apparently.

Words are drugs. You can get addicted to them. I was intoxicated by them. That’s one of the reasons why I leaped at the opportunity when a Reader’s Digest Universal Dictionary was offered to me at a discounted price in 1991. When I look back at that opportunity, it appears more like fiction.

I was giving a party after I passed the master’s in English language and literature while working as a schoolteacher in Shillong. The party was arranged at a friend’s house since my own rented house was a bachelor’s meagre accommodation. That friend, let me call him Y, brought out the brand-new massive dictionary and asked whether I wanted it for a price he quoted or he asked me to quote. I forget certain details. I remember that we were all quite drunk. I remember that the deal was struck rather instantaneously. I also remember what Y told me about how he had got the dictionary. He had got it as a gift while subscribing to the Reader’s Digest magazine. Later on I learnt that he had no habit of reading any magazine, let alone subscribe to one. He was not a reader at all. How he came by that dictionary remained a mystery to me for ever. Why he chose to give it to me at a high discount was a bigger mystery. Why he forged a story about a subscription was also a mystery.

I cannot ask him. Y is no more. Even if I had asked, I would only have got a new story. There was something miasmic about Y’s entire dealings with me, as I realised later. But he was a good man, no doubt. All good people have a miasmic aura about them. That’s something I came to notice many years after the Universal Dictionary became my prized possession. People like me who were invariably perceived and projected as bad had a deleterious transparency. Today I am far less transparent than in those days and hence I am not perceived as bad by people around me. I think so, at least.

The Universal Dictionary has continued to occupy space on my bookshelf to this day though I never use it. I depend on an app in my phone now when I need to check meanings. Or there is the omniscient Google. Between the infinite omniscience of Google and its noncorporeality rises the miasma of some memories that has the corpulence of a massive dictionary.