Shoes
Ayesha Aleem
In this country, people don’t take their shoes off before they enter
someone’s home. Or even a place of worship, like church. They keep their shoes
on all the time. Sometimes I think they keep them on even when they sleep. But
every now and then, this strange lot does the unthinkable. They remove their
shoes. Maybe to feel the grass beneath their feet at a park or before getting
into a swimming pool. The best place for nicking them, of course, is shoe shops,
where I have the option of brand new shoes as well as an older pair that an
unsuspecting customer may have taken off to try on a new one.
I have to work very hard. Be very quick. Through the day, through the
night. I have to keep going if I want to meet my goal of collecting more shoes
than I did the previous time. Then I empty the load at the same spot that is
quickly becoming famous. People come from all over to gawk at the place that
they thought shoes were being dumped. I enjoy the bewildered looks on their
faces. Kind of like my own private joke.
Two years ago, my beautiful wife died. I had always prayed that I go
first so that I wouldn’t have to live without her. But she left me and suddenly
I found myself splashing around in the deep end without a paddle. Pavi and I
had lived together in the same village that we were originally from, for forty-three
years. We had children but our world was too stifling, too limiting for them.
Our son left to study in Delhi and his sister followed soon after. They are
bright kids who soon got jobs and moved to the United States.
When Pavi died, our daughter Suri, had been visiting. She had sat by her
mother’s bedside and later arranged the funeral. When the last rites were
finished, it was dark outside. We had sat down to dinner without appetites. Her
husband and children had gone to bed several hours before that. ‘Would you like
some dal dad,’
she said. I nodded, barely. She spooned some of the yellow liquid into my plate
and then gave me two chapattis to go with it. She served herself as well and we
sat picking at our foods for a long time, in complete silence.
‘Dad, I want you to come live with me. In America. I can’t leave you here
by yourself.’ We had had this conversation before. My English had never been
very good and I hadn’t spent much time outside my rural home. I hadn’t spent
much time outside a life with Pavi. The kids had always spoken to us in English
hoping that we would learn some. A few years ago, Suri bought her mother and I
a laptop and taught us how to use the Internet.
‘Suri … you have your family … and…,’ I said in my native language.
‘Yes, I do. But you are also my family and I want you to come live with
me.’
A few months later, Suri visited again, this time on her own. She helped
me pack and move. With her. To her. Away from Pavi.
Every year, just before the monsoons, there used to be padh yatra, a pilgrimage on
foot, which ended at a temple not far from where we lived. Devotees from all
across the country would abandon their shoes along the sides of the national
highway to walk barefoot toward the deity. They came from within the state and
Kolkata and places as far away as Mumbai and Gujarat. They walked for miles and
miles hoping that the deity that was their destination, would be pleased with
them and bless them.
Pavi and I had loved this time of year. We loved the sight of piles of
shoes and the throngs of people that would pass by our home. We looked forward
to the event every year. There was something familiar and comforting about it but
it still felt new and exotic each time. It was Pavi’s idea to set up a stall
outside our home that travellers could stop at for water and snacks. We also
offered first aid for cracked heels, calluses and minor injuries. When she
died, so did our annual ritual, and much of the life that we had created
together. Collecting the shoes and creating the pile was my way of holding on
to my Pavi. Of clinging to her memory in this foreign land where people did not
remove their shoes before entering someone’s house or before they went in to a
place of worship.
