I have heard a lot about my grandpa from my dad, who he said was a very learned man of his times and was well known in the literary and educational circles of Kannur. He also spoke a lot about a English to Malayalam dictionary written by my Grandpa. I have never met my Grandpa because he had passed away almost a decade before my birth, and was very curious about him.
I spoke to some of my family members about the dictionary but nobody had any clear information. Many of them did not even know whether my grandpa had completed the dictionary before his death. However, when I visited Thappali House for a vacation in the summer of 2000, I set myself on the task of finding this dictionary. Finally I did manage to find it, in multiple parts in different bookshelves, and putting them together I found that we had the entire dictionary intact.
I brought the dictionary back with me to Mumbai. I knew that the dictionary was a very important part of my family history and I wanted to somehow make it accessible to others too. After all, it was my grandpa’s dream to publish this. I toyed with the idea of printing the dictionary in manuscript form-in its current state. I also thought about getting the entire dictionary typed and stored in an electronic document format. I realized that the dictionary had to retain its original look and feel. It also had to be restored in an electronic format for permanent archiving and portability. So, I finally decided to get the whole dictionary scanned and converted into PDF files. We have made the PDFs available on this website and also plan to print some leather-bound limited editions.
After 45 years, my grandfather’s dream of publishing the dictionary is finally accomplished…..and how! My grandpa wouldn’t have ever imagined that his dictionary would be published one day and made available to everybody in the world – on the World Wide Web!
Abhilash Nambiar
31.07.’08