Deaf in DC: A Memoir

36. The Four Dictionaries

148 36 The Four Dictionaries AFTER RETURNING FROM OUR DATA COLLECTION AND field research in India during the summer of 1977, life became pretty busy. Nirmala and I had one son, Dheeraj, and another baby on the way. I was taking two classes at Catholic University in the evenings and also analyzing the data we had collected. This was like having two jobs. Nirmala , who loves work, got busier. She took care of the house and Dheeraj and baby-sat a few kids. Due to her pregnancy, her energy level was very low, but the more she worked, the more energetic she became. This helped me focus on my job, classes, and research work. I met Woody often and also took a linguistics class to develop some basic understanding of the field. However, I learned a lot about sign language linguistics by talking to him, Dennis Cokely, and Sue De Santis while hanging around the Linguistic Research Laboratory. They answered my questions and helped me learn more and more. They didn’t ridicule my dream of “developing” ISL in the footsteps of ASL so that people could use ISL simultaneously while speaking Hindi, Marathi, and other languages. SimCom, however, was an abomination to linguists. It was like speaking Spanish and English at the same time, or like speaking Hindi using the word order of English language or vice versa. They humored me about my dream but did not encourage me. However, I got the message. Woody managed to get another grant. This time, we were going to develop a comprehensive dictionary of Indian Sign Language. Kirk was busy finishing his doctorate at that time and had started his own research company. He didn’t have the time to help us, so Woody enlisted support from Susan De Santis, his associate. They made a good team and I got along with them very well. While we were planning our expedition, Woody and Sue developed an affinity for Nirmala’s cooking. We often t h e f o u r d i c t i o n a r i e s 149 met in our house in Laurel, where Woody and Sue ate dal with rice with great pleasure. They both had become vegetarians. Woody, who was also working on his black belt in karate, could eat enough dal to fill a horse. Sue’s effort to have Woody eat less only made him more ravenous. Nirmala , of course, was happy about it. The best praise for one’s cooking is watching your guests eat it as if there was no tomorrow. Woody and Sue decided that since the initial research shows that there are four varieties of ISL in the four regions from where we collected sign samples, we should have four separate dictionaries to keep the integrity of each variety. I would have preferred one dictionary but had enough respect for their linguistic expertise to go with the idea. Then they decided that since it was my idea and I was doing all the planning, I should be the principal author of the dictionaries. That was a bit hard to swallow at first. People with the expertise should be the principal authors. However, they were adamant and getting glories is not exactly against my nature. So I agreed. I started to contact all the good people who had helped us in 1977 for support with the big project now. The idea that there will be a dictionary of Indian Sign Language was a strong motivating factor for all of them. The All Indian Federation of the Deaf, which owned and operated two printing presses, agreed to publish the first dictionary. Things were moving. We spent most of the summer of 1979 in India. Woody and Sue had another project, so they first went to Taiwan and joined me in Delhi. Nirmala and I flew with the kids—now two of them, as Neerja was born in 1978—directly to Delhi. Nirmala took the kids to Gagret, my ancestral home, and Lohara, her parents’ home, while I traveled with Woody and Sue. This time around, the task was huge. Instead of the 120 words, we had to collect all possible signs for the dictionary. We spent over a week in each city and worked all day. The monsoons had set in and the heat and humidity weren’t helping. Somehow, Woody and Sue tolerated the weather better than I did, despite my having grown up in India. In each...