From my childhood days, I have had a strange fascination for footwear, shoes in particular — any make, any type — rubber, leather; it didn’t matter what model they were, from shoes that were part of the uniform in school to those that were worn on occasions, from formal wear to sneakers.
When I was a toddler, my parents made me wear shoes that made loud squeaky sounds with every step I took, to keep track of my whereabouts. Having had a mischievous streak early on, I soon learnt to trick them by crawling on all fours.
Once school life began, shoes became an inherent part of my attire, like my undergarments, shirts, and trousers. My morning routine, like that of most school children, consisted of spending a good amount of time ensuring that the black shoes shined by the end of the vigorous buffing I gave them using a muslin cloth. The smell of the wax that I liberally applied on the pair did not help make the already cumbersome task anymore enjoyable. What’s worse, within a few minutes of entering school and running around, it would get dirty again. So, I carried around a piece of cloth to school to periodically wipe my shoes, to avoid being pulled up by my teachers or the headmistress for looking shabby.
As I grew up, I went from being just mischievous to ‘notorious’; at least that was how some of our neighbours and teachers described me. Some good-natured persons, however, said I was only as ‘mischievous’ as a boy my age should be. But my father didn’t seem to agree, as his shoes spent more time in his hands, ready for target practice and aimed at me, rather than on his legs. And even when he wore them, they still landed on me with the same ferocity. I would, on many an occasion, frantically try to hold them tight with both my hands lest they slipped and ‘caressed’ my whole body. At times, they would leave tell-tale marks on my back.
Something I have never been able to understand is why my shoe soles — noble souls that they were — wore off and needed to be patched, or simply came off, frequently, whereas they appeared to last a lifetime for others. Rubber, leather, or any other material that footwear manufacturers could come up with, I must have treated them all with equal disdain, considering the history I had with them. Whether the soles were stitched, or pasted, or stitched and pasted, it did not make any difference.
For removal, I invariably followed the ‘knee-jerk’ approach — as if taking a free kick on the football ground — with a fair measure of success till one day, when the pair landed plumb into freshly prepared idli batter kept in a big open container. I never got to wear shoes after that.
M S VAIDYANATHAN maharajapuram.s.vaidyanathan@gmail.com