Where the feet take you

It was all too familiar a situation. I had been through the same old grind, say what, a couple of hundred times before. My mind had already begun to put in place the plan that was as well-ingrained as math formulas. I simply had to direct my legs towards the old man sitting on the sidewalk near my office and present to him my defective product. He would take a good long look at it, twisting it from all sides, and then announce the method of repair. "If I use glue to repair it, it will come off again. Shall I stitch it instead?" he asked me one time. I nodded, trusting his decision, but was sure that even stitches wouldn't stop me from going back to him sooner than later.

I go through chappals like people go through their monthly groceries. Sure, we buy both expecting them to last for a certain period of time. But while a packet of toor dal may not give up on me till the end of the month, my chappals will certainly lose the battle with my feet well before 31st. Either the strap of my sandal will break or the sole. Hawai chappals, loafers, shoes, sandals, ballet flats - all of them simply refuse to be my feet companions for any length of time.

And it's not even like I wear heels. No ma'am, thanks to my genes, I only have to invest in flat sandals. Unfortunately, the height of my sandals is indirectly proportional to their longevity. Sometimes, I wonder if not wearing heels is the reason why I go through so many types of footwear. Maybe for the sake of my feet sanity, I should teeter-totter in heels and save myself a couple of trips to the cobbler. After all, heels can't break, can they?

A fascinating aspect of my love-hate relationship with my footwear is the fact that they don't like to be appreciated. I remember once I ordered a pair of sandals online, lauding myself for choosing the best-quality footwear ever. Alas! My joy, just like my sandals, didn't last very long. My boss appreciated my new sandals, commenting on how beautiful they were, and immediately, they came apart. Must have been a sensitive pair. You can imagine where I dragged my feet to next.

The most common advice people have when such instances happen is, "You should buy branded ones, my dear. You can't expect chappals from roadside stalls to last long, can you?" But, let me assure you I have invested in many pairs of 'branded' footwear, with enthusiastic and smooth-talking salesmen assuring me that nothing can happen to their super-quality products. And boy, did I prove them wrong. Maybe footwear companies should hire me as their tester. I could definitely help make their footwear truly top quality.

Sometimes, I wonder if there's something called 'footwear karma'. Maybe I was a cobbler in my last life and was very bad at my job. Maybe I did unto someone what the footwear salesmen are doing to me today: give out false promises. And one of those badly made shoes must have given their wearer enough reason to curse me with a lifetime of footwear-unhappiness. I'll never know.

But there's a silver lining. Thanks to my bad luck with footwear, I have started to embrace the barefoot movement. Although, I have to be honest, I didn't quite enjoy walking through that one suspicious pool of yellow water near my bus-stop, or even through a pile of what I can only assume to be wet tissues.

Cinderella lost a shoe and found the love of her life. I am no Cinderella, so guess what I find the cobbler near my office. Again and again.