The mirror is mean to me. It is always true, crystal clear…almost too true for my liking. I have always liked things sugarcoated, hidden behind the wonderful concept of assurance. Maybe that’s why I never realized that a shoemaker’s job is not a fulfilling one. Or that my loneliness has turned me into a hollow block of wood, merely drifting to wherever the current took me. And maybe that’s why I was never able to foresee the terrible fate that awaited Chotu.
Now when I think of the day I first met the five year old, actually caught him trying on one of the size 9 shoes, I feel confused. The one thing that the world and I agree upon is that I am not a kind man. But that day when he asked me innocently asked me why he couldn’t fit into someone else’s shoe, I had to let my guard down. I wanted to tell him that everyone has their place in the world and a size that they fit into, but I never could say it. I just let him try every shoe he wanted to.
He came almost every day after that, and almost every time, he had a new bruise. A black eye, a blue-green mark of violence on the arm…something new and more daunting than the last one. When I enquired, he only said, “ I can’t fit into any shoe other than mine.” Chotu became the reason I never sold an unworn shoe after that. He had to try every last one of them, leaving the ones that were actually his size.
3 months of his company did not miraculously change me, but it sure made an organized worker out of me. Chotu insisted on trying on a new shoe every alternate day. How a 57 year old coot like myself managed it is a mystery to even me . But I did ,and I got better .
I never make baby shoes, why would I? Newborns need a lot of things and I never considered shoes as one of them. But last week made a pair. I did it to tease Chotu. He could never fit even his 4 toes in it and finally try to fit into his own. Little did I know that Chotu was done trying any shoe. Apparently, he had been recognized as a misfit among the people he begged and stole with and had been set free. i don’t know what kind of freedom he achieved, but I try to believe that it wasn’t too painful.
The mirror is mean to me. I want to see the reflection of a man who is kind, brave and has the guts to rise against injustice. Instead what I see is a man who ignored his only friend's misery invented a happy, wonderful child out of a deprived one and never realized that Chotu was looking for a better pair of shoes to fit in, instead of his own. I see a man who has an untidy sign in his shop that reads 'baby shoes for sale. Never worn'.
Inspired by Ernest Hemmingway's Flash Fiction-For Sale:baby shoes,never worn.