I had met a happy spirit when I stopped to give my sandals to be repaired to the roadside shoemaker on the busy street of Victoria Terminus in Mumbai. The tiring day and the terrible heat had taken the smile off my face and left me in an irritable mood. But the young shoemaker did not seem to want to stop smiling. He accepted the work I gave him enthusiastically and started his work. “How much are you going to charge me? “ I asked in an irritated tone. “Only 30 rupees,” he replied. I asked him to give my pair of sandals back to me saying that I can get it done in much cheaper rate near my house. “OK OK, how much are you willing to pay?” he asked with a smile and in a tone that sounded as though he was having mercy on me by giving me the relief of paying how much ever I wanted. We agreed on Rs.15. I observed him carefully as he set about his work. He was a young lad of not more than 16 – 17 years with bright happy light-brown eyes. He was humming a tune of a song I thought was from a Bhojpuri film. He was trying to figure out how to fix the heel, neatly without damaging the sandals and analysed all possibilities by curiously checking out the interesting tools he had. He was taking his own time while I was standing on a busy pavement without my sandals!! I was in a hurry to catch the train. The pace at which he was working was beginning to annoy me. However, it was interesting to see him doing his work with such energy and enthusiasm – a work most of us would find so boring and lifeless, that we would choose to just go for a new pair instead of ‘wasting’ our time on the old one. While I was standing – barefoot (the pavements were very clean fortunately) on the busy noisy street – I wondered what might be the reason for this boy smiling bright. He was sitting by the pavement and repairing shoes and sandals for a meager amount. Perhaps the demanding life and cruelties of Mumbai city had not caught him yet. But then I thought that perhaps it’s not strange of him to smile without a reason – a reason necessarily being money, security, the company of your family and friends. Its foolish of us to believe that there has to be a reason to be happy. If you’ve the security, money, friends and family, there’s no reason for you to frown and be sad. So then, why was this boy happy about whatever he was doing? “Dekha, ho gaya na ek dum mast,” the shoemaker exclaims with a sense of achievement. I suddenly came out of my thoughts only to be amazed at the excitement he felt at completing the work satisfactorily. He set about to work on the other sandal. And I walked down my mind’s path again. Perhaps we, in secured environments, expected too much from life and ourselves. That’s why we need a reason to be happy and smile. Perhaps, what is important to us is acknowledgment from others than from ourselves. It’s like saying ‘ if you want to be happy, study hard or earn good money, listen to your parents etc. ’. I guess, the cause and effect theorem runs in the Indian race. Perhaps the shoemaker, has come face to face with the fact that no matter how high we aim, how hard we work, happiness is somewhere within you. There seems to be no meaning in cribbing complaining and cursing all the beings around you for the situation you are in. At the end of the day, you have to live it. Might as well live it with hopes, realistic and a positive attitude and expectations according to your capabilities. Happiness after all isn’t in any ‘How to be Happy’ book or ‘25waystobeHappy.com’. It comes when you realize it is time to stop expecting and start doing what really gives your mind content. It comes when you realize that dream is one thing, ambition is another. Don’t worry. I didn’t realize so many things standing barefoot on the pavement under the scorching sun. But, I definitely set about thinking while I was traveling in the ladies compartment of the train. Here, I saw faces, tired, sleepy and refusing to smile back at you when you smile at them. They complain about the monotonous routine and how they’d have to go home and cook food and how the neighbour hasn’t yet returned the utensils! These were the working women of Mumbai. As for the shoemaker, I had paid him Rs. 20 and left happy. I see him by the pavement everyday – the same bright eyes, a wide smile and singing a song from the bottom of his heart.
Who am I?
A silent wanderer in the wilderness of words, I breathe because I write, garden because I breathe, and read to be free. I’m a bibliophile and a foodaholic cooking at www.cukzy.com.
What I’m Reading (Nov, 2022) : The Winners by Fredrik Backman
Here is a List of Books I recommend.
I love the library! (yep, I was one of those bookworms with glasses at school.) While reading was just a hobby as a child, I began to understand the power of words when I first read about ‘book burning’ – an act to impose censorship, erase history, curtail freedom, and control dissent. But here we are, criticizing book burning & celebrating the freedom to read.
As Oscar Wilde said in “The Picture of Gray” which fought censorship and bans, “The books that the world call immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.”