Life of ‘Thesaurus Man’ comes alive in documentary
New Delhi, April 26
The life and times of late writer Arvind Kumar, best known for his work Samantar Kosh, the first-ever Hindi thesaurus created, came alive in a documentary launched in the capital on Tuesday.
The documentary titled ‘Shabd Saarthi Arvind Kumar’, traces the lexicographer’s 75 year journey.
Narrated by story teller Neelesh Mishra, it reveals Kumar’s 20-year struggle to compile the maiden Hindi thesaurus, which was published by the National Book Trust India in 1996 as its first offering to the nation in the golden jubilee year of Independence.
Then President Shankar Dayal Sharma had received its first copy on December 13, 1996.
The documentary, produced by Kumar’s daughter Meeta Lall, and directed by Sanjay Sharma, shows that Kumar went on to create several tools for Hindi language including Shabdeshwari, a unique thesaurus of Indian mythological names — the first-ever in any language (1999); Penguin publication English-Hindi/Hindi-English Thesaurus and Dictionary, the world’s largest bilingual thesaurus (2007); Brihat Samantar Kosh, a revised and extended edition of Samantar Kosh (2013); and Arvind Tukant Kosh, a unique book of 57,000 rhyming words (2015).
Currently all these works are hosted on Arvind’s online database, Arvind Lexicon Online.
“With almost one million expressions arranged into a thesaurus-cum-dictionary, Arvind Lexicon offers a vast repertory of synonyms and antonyms along with cross-references to similar and opposite concepts thus combining the functionality of a thesaurus, dictionary and language explorer,” Meeta Lall notes even as the documentary reveals how Kumar quit a life of leisure to pursue his passion. Kumar breathed his last in 2021 after a bout of Covid-19.
