The shoe repair man

At the bus stop near home, there sits a man who repairs shoes. He has appeared there since the last 1 - 2 months or so. Initially when he started sitting there, I wondered whether he would ever find any customers. But I soon realized my folly and why he was in the right place at the right time. He had very prudently picked his place. It was bang next to a busy bus stop which saw heavy footfall at all times of the day. It was close to a couple of schools and colleges. With that many feet in the vicinity, surely somebody is bound to walk around with footwear which needs mending, broken straps which need a stitch or two, worn out soles which need replacement. Proving his business acumen true, he is quite a busy man these days. Whenever I pass by, I see him stitching or sewing or applying glue, with a customer or two waiting patiently nearby. Even one of my shoes came undone at the sole one of these days and I found myself limping past him in my half-split-open-at-the-toe shoe trying not to catch his eye. Nowadays, it would seem like what our area was doing without a shoe repairer all these days.He has merged unobtrusively into the landscape.

He is a dark and wiry man,always wearing a white shirt darkened with time and dirt. He has a small cloth bundle next to him, which I always imagine contains his life's possessions. I have even contemplated where he was before he came to our area, whether he is remaining thin because of retro infection (stereotyping on my part; it could be a plain and simple case of  no-money-to buy-anything-to-eat), how much he earns per day and so on.

Today as I passed by him, I found my self remembering what someone told me some time back. When asked why we Indians cannot manufacture good quality shoes which wont get damaged within a month or 2 of use, one Indian retorted, "Then what would all the poor cobblers who make a living out of repairing our damaged shoes do for their livelihood?" So true, I found myself thinking today.

PS: I wanted to take a pic of him and all his tools which he spreads out on a cloth in front of him. But I was not very confident of my clandestine photo snapping skills and abandoned the idea. On an ideological level, is it proper to make 'poverty porn' out of someone's struggle to eke out a decent living?

This is how we help our poor countrymen to earn a living!

In this Pic, I'm trying to show my only 6 month-old shoe which came off at the sole. [I'm also trying to show off my mint green nail polish ;) ]

The seedy Delhi (under)belly

It has turned out to be the incident that shook Delhi most since the Anna Hazare fast. Day after day, crowds are turning out relentlessly to protest the brutal rape and assault which happened inside a Delhi private bus. So much so that even my usually 'oblivious to any thing not trending in FB' BIL also voiced his concern on the heinous incident. What I want to write about it is not clear, all I know is, I should not fail to write about it. It is almost passe and mundane to write about how tough it is for women to walk on the streets or use public transport. It is so common that it does not even count as a mentionable expereince. May be what caused the outpouring of outrage over this particular was that probably it was gruesome even by Delhi standards. Rape is an everyday matter in Delhi and even as I write now, 2 cases of rape of a 3 yr child and a 40 yr woman is trending on news channels.

After the news about 'Amanat's' rape broke, for days together, R and I would talk about it with disbelief. We would discuss how those men could do this so cold bloodedly? We talked about how these thugs should be made to suffer for the rest of their lives so that every living moment, they would regret what they did. Even if you are drunk, how can you inflict so much damage so as to rupture the intestines? If they were these base animals when drunk, they could not have been any less filthy vermin when sober. The very thought of her physical condition was painful to me and I avoided thinking of the trauma she would have gone through.Over days, as she struggled on the ventilator, I wondered why she should remain after all this, for society would never allow her wounds to heal, atleast not mentally.  It was heartening to hear that she was a fighter and remaining alive and weaned from ventilator. But now septicemia is setting in and it will take all the prayers and miracles to keep her alive.

What use is tougher laws, dress codes death punishment for rape, removing tinted windows from buses and other token measures when attitudes wont change? Today this happened in Delhi. But this could happen anywhere in India. A mob assaulted a girl in Guwahati and few months later, the same has happened to a Manipuri theatre artist in Bangalore too. India is no country for women.

The search for Inspiration

There was a phase a few weeks back during which I was going crazy about nail polishes! Yes, and that's the same me who did not own a single nail polish for close to three years. Gasp. This time I decided to go online to purchase since the stores often did not stock up on the shades I liked. I decided to do some research before I actually decided to take the plunge and order them online. After all, I have to know if the red nail enamel I am going to spent my money on is actually going to scare me off when I see it the first thing in the morning.

Thus it was quite accidentally that I stumbled onto the huge online community of Indian beauty bloggers and sites like makeupandbeauty.com, peachesandlblush.com, where people have actually posted pics of makeup products which they have used on themselves. It amazes me that there are these blokes who would actually spent time & money buying these products, trying them on, take pics and post them for the benefit of others. It was quite a big help to me to see how the colours would come out, whether they actually resemble the shades as claimed online. After substantial research I went ahead and bought 3 shades (*gasp*), orange (remember, I was crazy), bright red and a beautiful pink. The same day I received the shipment, I tried on the orange enamel. Needless to say, it was as crazy and eye popping as I imagined, but I have loved every moment of having it on. It somehow reminds me of summer, sun, sun light, all things warm and cozy.
This is the pic I clicked of it.

Orange orange...

 For anybody who cares, this shade is called Laranja citrico, from Maybelline colorama series. I was quite satisfied with the result as it closely resembled the pics from real life users which I had seen in other sites I mentioned here.

Yes, now coming to the title, I was going through one of the sites mentioned above and found that it is owned by a lady who also works in an office and has makeup blogging as her passion and hobby. (It is another matter that she appears to have deep pockets too). I was quite smitten by the fact that she could identify what was her passion in life and follow it diligently so early on, in her early 20s. This set me thinking what would I take up as a passion if I were in her shoes, what I would follow as a serious hobby despite all the demands on my time? Hard to tell as of now. Well, its never too late in life to recognize what could be your passion and inspiration. I take solace from the fact that Capt. KrishnaMenon was 65 years old when he started the Leela Palace chain of hotels! So I'll wait and be on the lookout :)