Thursday 11 July 2013

Of Peace, Patch and Pride

He took the shoe from my hands, and observed it carefully. After a while, a little hurried, he extended one of a pair of sandals for me to put on the naked foot, and looked as sheepish as one could look without breaking into a smile or losing composure. I was not to stay barefeet.

One of my leather shoes has been torn from one side for about two months. It doesn't show so I wear it all the time, making it worse everyday. Dust and small pebbles get in and make walking long distances difficult. A large part of the shoe problem is in the way this shoe was designed. It was designed for beauty, with no thought for amenability to mending. It was not made for me. I believe in mending stuff and using things forever.  But they're comfortable, grown around my large six toed feet. Creased as if they have aged a thousand years with my soul in the last eighteen months.

All artisans take their art seriously. His art is mending shoes, and he is good at it. Madurai is a large city, and Anna Nagar is a large commercial part of it, but in this unnamed bylane the quiet is meditative.

He scratched his head slowly, fingering through the thick patch of overgrown hair. He stroked his overgrown beard, and made up his mind about how he will tackle this problem. As Sherlock would say, the game is afoot.

There is some magic in mending. I find it more attractive than creating new. He held the pointy end of a tool to the sole, and with a lot of effort penetrated it. (Mental note: find the name for this tool). And then he penetrated the leather with much ease; hooked the thick string onto the slit in the pointy end, from inside the shoe, pulled it; tying the string from outside in a complicated knot that matches the original design. The knot had looked simpler to me until I knew and the sole softer. After having figured out a game plan, it was going to be at most fifteen such stitches.

I looked around. This was his place. He wore a clean old shirt that was missing top three buttons and a clean striped lungi was wrapped around his waist. He looked undisturbed in his pose, as he sat on the pedestrian side-walk and many layers of jute bags.

Almost all cobblers I have known have a permanent spot for their work. As cobbler spots go, this unnamed artisan, on an unnamed bylane, has a sweet one. The neem tree casts a deep cool shade, the bylane is peaceful, the wall is conveniently missing a few bricks making alcoves in which sits the pantheon of the various gods that look over him.

Ganesh is in hardboard. This elephant headed, oversized child of Shiva, sits on top of the pile of shoes, that were either found or collected by the cobbler, for their parts. Or perhaps they were sent to be repaired and never recalled. Outlived their usefulness. Forgotten. The son of the god of the underdogs, sits on top of this pile of the forgotten and rejected, in all his golden glory.

The other male god is Muruga in paper. Sealed in a plastic bag, he sits in the wall a rung above Ganesh. Two on Muruga's right and one the top rung sit the devis, small but framed. Mothers rule this place.

At-most-fifteen stitches later, he cut the thread with a blade, and pushed the shoes towards me. I inspected the final affect. It looked good. I was happy with the work, and asked in my English-for-the-Tamil-speaking, "how much?"

He spoke in universal body language, using his hands, "anything you see suitable". I looked into my wallet, found the smallest change I had - a fifty rupee note - and extended it to him. He looked visibly angry. Breaking the hypothesis forming in my mind that he may be mute, he spoke English in a deep grandfatherly voice, "no change."

Here is an elderly person who has perhaps not earned thirty rupees in the day so far. He has mended my shoes saving me a lot of money on new. I thought about all the problems I may cause in the local equilibrium of the cobbler market in Madurai, if I paid him more than he expects.

I asked him to please keep it and started removing the sandals he had given me.

He startled me as he took the shoe from my hands wordlessly; and threw second of the pair of sandals in my direction, asking for the other shoe.

He looked a little upset, ripple'd and unequilibrium'd if you may, as he shined away both my shoes with polish and cream, to earn the rest of the fifty rupees.