I squint my eyes in concentration as I always do. I am sitting on top of the hardbound Chamber’s, much to the amusement of a family not easily impressed. The dictionary was a gift to my parents from the grandfather on my being born. Of course, the portentous gesture of gifting a dictionary was not lost on them. It makes me laugh when Ma tells me that I once, in an inspired move I imagine, took a piss on it. Not her. The symbolism of such an act is hard to ignore by parents somewhere constricted by values steeped in orthodoxy and those that an education affords.
She still has a fit every time I use my feet to move dropped stationery.
The front page with the scrawled benediction to my parents and their first born is now sanitized and stored away, relegated to the realms of nostalgia and power cuts at night. I remember as I watched Ma choose jewelry to wear for the night, picking up the frontpage safely ensconced among more pricey artifacts. I remember running my hands over the writing and thinking to myself how one could ever arrive at the decision of gifting a dictionary and how the person who wrote this was now dead. Maybe, I thought, his fingerprints would be all over that page and I was now touching him.
Growing up, there was always an implicit understanding that Chamber’s was the best dictionary there ever was. In those days without the crutches of Wikipedia, what was said (or implied) at home was sanctum. I grew up hating the Oxford English Dictionary that everyone in school touted. Even the English teacher with corpulent arms and the audacity to wear a sleeveless blouse. Surely, I thought, any dictionary which comes in different sizes that these classmates carry, is not really being true to itself or the language. Worst of all, using the dictionary to look up certain four letter words they were not allowed to say aloud.
I was a youngin with principles.
And the worst of them all, Webster’s. They just spelled words plain wrong. The guys with parents in the US would spell it Sulfur and Aluminum. Then one day me and my friend have the same argument. This time she has proof. I refused to believe what she showed me. The Chamber’s 7th edition in an act of complete betrayal, paid obeisance to those bastards at Oxford. Turns out, she was right. As were the millions of others who never even had heard of Chamber’s. Oxford did come before them. What hurt me the most was that my mother knew all along. She was perpetrating a lie and I tagged along for the false ride.
She guessed how I felt I think. I remember her explaining to me that night why she still thought Chamber’s was better. I learnt what a cryptic crossword was. I learnt older did not mean better.
I learnt the spirit of a word. Literally.
I just read this again and loffed at the ‘Even the English teacher with corpulent arms and the audacity to wear a sleeveless blouse.’
Was she from Delhi? Heh.
I wanted to type how I hmm simply love this post, and how I cannot explain why… but then I read Narco’s comment.
So, Narco, teachers in the rest of the country are impeccably dressed?? Pshaw.
Purely_narcotic: Thanks. She fit the bill alright.
Sirop: Why thank y…