Translated short fiction: A librarian gets trapped inside a dictionary. Will he be able to get out?

No one visited that library. Still, the librarian opened it every evening in the hope that someone might come to borrow a book. He would sit on the half-wall of the veranda of that old building for a short while. Then, getting up, he would go inside and sit on the chair – it was in worse shape than him – behind the table and start reading. Since the past few years, he had been reading the massive and authoritative dictionary, the Sabdataaraavali, by Srikanteswaram. Once the day’s reading was over, he would replace it among the books in the reference section. He would then press down with his frail finger that inverted half-circle of iron that seemed reluctant to fall into the little well of the lock. Making sure that the lock wasn’t hurt, he would check if it had actually clicked. By the time night fell, the librarian would have closed all the doors of the library and left.

It was on one such day when the librarian was replacing the Sabdataaraavali that he fell into it and was trapped inside. He tried to call out a couple of times. But he couldn’t. He tried to shake himself free to run…

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