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This is the fattest book in my home
Much older than me
I worry about what will become of it when I’m gone
Where will it live, who will have it rebound, who will save it
It contains a hundred and twenty-five thousand, five hundred and eighteen words
It has thousands of common Hindi words drawn from Urdu, Arabic, Persian, English
and other Indian languages
Lots of words that were dead by the year 2009 have been put in here
in the hope that they might be revived
I cannot say what’s special about this dictionary
The cover has been lost
Its three editors, publisher, and printer are all dead
The one who dreamed of building this dictionary
was dead before it was published
It rightly expresses the sentiment that its publication would soothe
the soul of that dreamer in heaven
It costs twenty rupees
which makes me think it was bought by my father
who was always tight for money
Possibly he bought it with money from the education department
They say my father found the names of all four children
in this very dictionary
There’s his signature on three of its pages
There must have been a couple more because
the first few pages are missing
From this dictionary you can tell my father
liked to write M.A. and his full postal address after his signature
From one such address it was discovered that my village
which is now in district Sitamarhi
was once in Muzaffarpur
Since the word rocket is not in this dictionary
one can hardly expect the word robot to be in here
Nevertheless, I use it and at times
when I can’t see it, I grow restless