Shoes - a Right or a Privilege? by Susheela Narayanan

Shoes – A Right or a Privilege? 

My Grandmother, whom I called Kamala Paati, and I stood  at the busy intersection of Mowbrays Road and our  quiet side street, Deivasigamani Road. It was barely 11:00 o’clock and the sun beat down on our heads. Paati, looked up and down the street, hoping to hail any rickshaw that came around the corner. I unfolded the handkerchief clutched in my hand and dabbed at my forehead. Mother (Amma in Tamil) always said, “You must carry a clean hanky with you - it’s the lady like thing to do.  Keep it in your pocket or hold it in your hand.” 

 Most Indian women wore saris in the 1950s – which did not come with pockets – and tucked  their handkerchiefs into the fold of the sari at their waist.  

Paati looked down at me and smoothed back my hair. “Are you alright”? she asked.  

I nodded. I would have preferred to stay home, sprawled out under the ceiling fan in the cool hall, reading my story book about children in England. My cousins were at school – their summer schedule different from mine. But Paati didn’t want me  burying my nose in a book all day and had insisted that I accompany her to the bank. Amma had agreed.  
Lloyds Bank was only about a mile down the street but no one who could afford to ride would walk a mile in this relentless heat. 

“There comes a rickshaw now,” said Paati, looking down the road again. We both waved vigorously. 

  The rickshaw-kaaran stopped in front of us. “Yenge ponnum Amma?” (Where to ma’am?) he asked respectfully, laying the handle of the rickshaw down and touching his forehead. 
“Lloyds Road,” said Paati, pointing in the direction of the bank. “Evallo?” (How much?) 

In India, bargaining was a fact of everyday life, no one ever paid the first price quoted. Like most of the daily laborers of the time the driver wore a strip of red cloth wound around his head and another piece of red cloth wrapped around his skinny loins. His deeply muscled naked frame was burnt black by the sun and glistened with sweat. She felt a gentle nudge on her back. “Get in,” Paati said– she had negotiated a suitable fare.
  They climbed into the rickshaw and set off at a fast trot up the street. The road shimmered in the heat and the black tar was almost melting in front of them.  “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday heat without shoes or a shirt.”  The aphorism referred to some of the older Englishmen who sometimes strolled the main streets of Madras, wearing leather shoes, but shirtless, in the merciless sun – their skin red and peeling on their backs and shoulders.  “I wonder if they realize they could get heat stroke,” the local people would say, shaking their heads. 

The rickshaw-kaaran, running briskly up the street with strips of cloth tied around his feet, didn’t have any sandals. I looked at my feet neatly shod in black leather shoes, and Paati’s feet clad in thick sandals. Father had bought me red leather T-strap shoes on my birthday last year, which I was saving for special occasions. 

 A tide of emotions welled up within me as I held back tears. I was very quiet while Paati completed her business at the bank. It was a while before we got home, where lunch was waiting. I did not talk to anyone. 

 “She’s very tired,” explained Paati to everyone. “I think the heat got to her.” 

***** 

  “Why did that rickshaw-kaaran not wear sandals, Appa?” I asked Father later.  

“Well,” Father replied thoughtfully, “he probably could not afford them. He might have had a big family at home.” 

  “But why can’t he afford them?” I persisted.  

  “He belongs to one of the poorer classes in India,” Father patiently explained. “They don’t  
  make much money doing this work.”  

  I would later learn that rickshaws became popular in India in the 1800s. It was a cheap and efficient mode of transportation in the cities’ narrow winding streets.  During the British Raj these handy vehicles were used both by the elite and the common man. The rickshaw remained popular in many Asian countries such as China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Young children and women were often taken to school or college by rickshaw. British missionaries later introduced it in Africa. 
  In India in the 1960’s hand pulled rickshaws were largely replaced by cycle-rickshaws (pedicabs) and motorized auto-rickshaws (three-wheelers) as a faster and more convenient public conveyance. The government tried to ban the remaining hand-pulled rickshaws as being “barbaric and inhumane” – but were met with surprising resistance from the rickshaw workers themselves. For many of them it was a family legacy going back a long time. For migrant workers, renting a rickshaw was the easiest way to enter the job market. They have been eulogized in both literature and popular cinema in India.