by Vikram Seth
Several men and two young boys were working inside by the sunlight entering through the doorway and a couple of dim, bare electric bulbs. They were dressed in lungis for the most part, except for one man, who was dressed in kurta-pyjama, and Jagat Ram himself, who wore a shirt and trousers. They were sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of low platforms—square in shape and made of grey stone—on which their materials were placed. They were intent on their work—cutting, skiving, pasting, folding, trimming or hammering—and their heads were bent down, but from time to time one or the other would make a comment—about work or personal gossip or politics or the world in general—and this would lead to a little ripple of conversation among the sounds of hammers, knives, and the single pedal-operated Singer sewing machine.
When he saw Kedarnath and Haresh, Jagat Ram looked mystified. He touched his moustache in an unconscious gesture. He had expected other visitors.
‘Welcome,’ he said calmly. ‘Come in. What brings you here? I’ve told you that the strike won’t come in the way of fulfilling your order,’ he added, anticipating a possible reason for Kedarnath’s presence.
A little girl of about five, Jagat Ram’s daughter, sat on the step. Now she began singing ‘Lovely walé aa gayé! Lovely walé aa gayé!’ and clapped her hands.
It was Kedarnath’s turn to look surprised—and not entirely pleased. Her father, a little disconcerted, corrected her: ‘These are not the people from Lovely, Meera—now go and tell your mother we need some tea.’
He turned to Kedarnath and said, ‘Actually, I was expecting the people from Lovely.’ He did not feel the need to volunteer any further information.
Kedarnath nodded. The Lovely Shoe Shop, one of the more recent shops to appear just off Nabiganj, had a good selection of women’s shoes. Normally the man who ran the shop would have got the Bombay middlemen to supply him, as Bombay was where most women’s shoes in the country were produced. Now he was obviously looking close to home for his supplies, and tapping a source that Kedarnath would have been happier tapping—or at least mediating—himself.
Dismissing the subject from his mind for the moment, he said, ‘This is Mr Haresh Khanna, who is originally from Delhi, but is working for CLFC in Kanpur. He has studied footwear manufacture in England. And, well, I have brought him here to show him what work our Brahmpur shoemakers are capable of, even with their simple tools.’
Jagat Ram nodded, quite pleased.
There was a small wooden stool near the entrance of the workshop, and Jagat Ram asked Kedarnath to sit down. Kedarnath in turn invited Haresh to sit, but Haresh courteously declined. He sat down instead on one of the small stone platforms at which no one was working. The artisans stiffened, looking at him in displeasure and astonishment. Their reaction was so palpable that Haresh quickly got up again. Clearly he had done something wrong and, being a direct man, he turned to Jagat Ram and said, ‘What’s the matter? Can’t one sit on those?’
Jagat Ram had reacted with similar resentment when Haresh had sat down, but the straightforwardness of Haresh’s query—and his obvious lack of intention to offend anyone—caused him to respond mildly.
‘A workman calls his work-platform his rozi or “employment”; he does not sit on it,’ he said quietly. He did not mention that each man kept his rozi immaculately polished, and even said a brief prayer to it before beginning his day’s work. To his son he said, ‘Get up—let Haresh Sahib sit down.’
A boy of fifteen got up from the chair near the sewing machine, and despite Haresh’s protests that he did not want to interrupt anyone’s work he was made to sit down. Jagat Ram’s youngest son, who was seven, came in with three cups of tea.
The cups were thick and small, chipped here and there on their white surface, but clean. There was a little talk of this and that, of the strike in Misri Mandi, of the claim by a newspaper that the smoke from the tannery and the Praha Shoe Factory were damaging the Barsaat Mahal, of the new municipal market-tax, of various local personalities.
After a while, Haresh became impatient, as he tended to do when he was sitting idle. He got up to look around the workshop and find out what everyone was doing. A batch of women’s sandals was being made; they looked quite attractive with their green and black plaited leather straps.
Haresh was indeed surprised at the skill of the workmen. With rudimentary tools—chisel and knife and awl and hammer and foot-operated sewing machine—they were producing shoes that were not far below the quality of those made by the machines of CLFC. He told them what he thought of their skill and the quality of their product, given the limitations under which they worked; and they warmed to him.
One of the bolder workmen—Jagat Ram’s younger brother, a friendly, round-faced man—asked to see Haresh’s shoes, the maroon brogues that he was wearing. Haresh took them off, mentioning that they were not very clean. In fact they were by now completely splattered and caked with mud. They were passed around for general admiration and examination.
Jagat Ram read out the letters painstakingly and spelt ‘Saxone’. ‘Saksena from England,’ he explained with some pride.
‘I can see that you make men’s shoes as well,’ said Haresh. He had noticed a large clump of wooden lasts for men hanging grape-like from the ceiling in a dark corner of the room.
‘Of course,’ said Jagat Ram’s brother with a jovial grin. ‘But there’s more profit in what few others can do. It’s much better for us to make women’s shoes—’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Haresh, whipping out—to everyone’s, including Kedarnath’s, surprise—a set of paper patterns from his briefcase. ‘Now, Jagat Ram, tell me, are your workmen skilled enough to give me a shoe—also a brogue—based on these patterns?’
‘Yes,’ said Jagat Ram, almost without thinking.
‘Don’t say yes so quickly,’ said Haresh, though he was pleased by the ready and confident response. He too enjoyed taking up challenges as much as he enjoyed throwing them down.
Jagat Ram was looking at the patterns—they were for a size 7 winged brogue—with great interest. Just by looking at the flat pieces of thin cardboard that made up the patterns—the fine punched design, the shape of the toe, the vamp, the quarters—the whole shoe came to vivid, three-dimensional shape before his eyes.
‘Who is making these shoes?’ he asked, his forehead creased with curiosity. ‘They are somewhat different from the brogues you are wearing.’
‘We are, at CLFC. And if you do a good job, you may be too—for us.’
Jagat Ram, though clearly very surprised and interested by Haresh’s statement, did not say anything for a while in response, but continued to examine the patterns.
Pleased with the dramatic effect of his sudden production of the patterns, Haresh said: ‘Keep them. Look over them today. I can see that those lasts hanging there are non-standard, so I’ll send you a pair of size 7 standard lasts tomorrow. I’ve brought a couple of pairs to Brahmpur. Now then, apart from the lasts, what will you need? Let’s say, three square feet of leather, calf leather—let’s make that maroon as well—’
‘And lining leather,’ said Jagat Ram.
‘Right; suppose we say natural cow, also three square feet—I’ll get that from town.’
‘And leather for the sole and insole?’ asked Jagat Ram.
‘No, that’s readily available and not very expensive. You can manage that. I’ll give you twenty rupees to cover costs and time—and you can get the material for the heels yourself. I’ve brought a few counters and toe-puffs of decent quality—they are always a problem—and some thread; but they’re at the house where I’m staying.’
Kedarnath, though his eyes were closed, raised his eyebrows in admiration at this enterprising fellow who had had the foresight to think of all these details before he left on a brief out-of-town trip intended mainly for purchasing materials. He was, however, concerned that Jagat Ram might be taken over by Haresh and that he himself might be cut out. The mention of the Lovely Shoe Shop came back to w
orry him as well.
‘Now, if I came over tomorrow morning with these things,’ Haresh was saying, ‘when could you let me have the shoes?’
‘I think I could have them ready in five days,’ said Jagat Ram.
Haresh shook his head impatiently.
‘I can’t stay in town for five days just for a pair of shoes. How about three?’
‘I’ll have to leave them on the lasts for at least seventy-two hours,’ said Jagat Ram. ‘If you want me to make a pair of shoes which retain their shape, you know that that is a minimum.’
Now that both of them were standing up, he towered over Haresh. But Haresh, who had always treated his shortness with the irritation that befitted an inconvenient but psychologically insignificant fact, was not in the least overpowered. Besides, he was the one ordering the shoes.
‘Four.’
‘Well, if you send the leather to me tonight, so that we can start with the cutting first thing tomorrow morning—’
‘Done,’ said Haresh. ‘Four days. I’ll come over personally tomorrow with the other components to see how you’re getting on. Now we’d better go.’
‘One more thing strikes me, Haresh Sahib,’ said Jagat Ram, as they were leaving. ‘Ideally I’d like to have a sample of the shoe that you want me to reproduce.’
‘Yes,’ said Kedarnath with a smile. ‘Why aren’t you wearing a pair of brogues manufactured by your own company—instead of these English shoes? Take them off immediately, and I’ll have you carried back to the rickshaw.’
‘I’m afraid my feet have got used to these,’ said Haresh, returning the smile, though he knew as well as anyone that it was more his heart than his feet. He loved good clothes and he loved good shoes, and he felt bad that CLFC products did not achieve the international standards of quality that, both by instinct and by training, he so greatly admired.
‘Well, I’ll try to get you a sample pair of those,’ he continued, pointing at the paper patterns in Jagat Ram’s hands, ‘by one means or another.’
He had given a pair of CLFC winged brogues as a present to the old college friend whom he was staying with. Now he would have to borrow his own gift back for a few days. But he had no compunction about doing that. When it came to work, he never felt awkward in the least about anything. In fact, Haresh was not given to feeling awkward in general.
As they walked back to the waiting rickshaw, Haresh felt very pleased with the way things were going. Brahmpur had got off to a sleepy start, but was proving to be very interesting, indeed, unpredictable.
He got out a small card from his pocket and noted down in English:
Action Points—
1. Misri Mandi—see trading.
2. Purchase leather.
3. Send leather to Jagat Ram.
4. Dinner at Sunil’s; recover brogues from him.
5. Tmro: Jagat Ram/Ravidaspur.
6. Telegram—late return to Cawnpore.
Having made his list, he scanned it through, and realized that it would be difficult to send the leather to Jagat Ram, because no one would be able to find his place, especially at night. He toyed with the idea of getting the rickshaw-wallah to see where Jagat Ram lived and hiring him to take the leather to him later. Then he had a better idea. He walked back to the workshop and told Jagat Ram to send someone to Kedarnath Tandon’s shop in the Brahmpur Shoe Mart in Misri Mandi at nine o’clock sharp that night. The leather would be waiting for him there. He had only to pick it up and to begin work at first light the next day.
4.6
It was ten o’clock, and Haresh and the other young men sitting and standing around Sunil Patwardhan’s room near the university were happily intoxicated on a mixture of alcohol and high spirits.
Sunil Patwardhan was a mathematics lecturer at Brahmpur University. He had been a friend of Haresh’s at St Stephen’s College in Delhi; after that, what with Haresh going to England for his footwear course, they had been out of touch for years, and had heard about each other only through mutual friends. Although he was a mathematician, Sunil had had a reputation at St Stephen’s for being one of the lads. He was big and quite plump, but filled as he was with sluggish energy and lazy wit and Urdu ghazals and Shakespearian quotations, many women found him attractive. He also enjoyed drinking, and had tried during his college days to get Haresh to drink—without success, because Haresh used to be a teetotaller then.
Sunil Patwardhan had believed as a student that to get one true mathematical insight a fortnight was enough by way of work; for the rest of the time he paid no attention to his studies, and did excellently. Now that he was teaching students he found it hard to impose an academic discipline on them that he himself had no faith in.
He was delighted to see Haresh again after several years. Haresh, true to form, had not informed him that he would be coming to Brahmpur on work but had landed on his doorstep two or three days earlier, had left his luggage in the drawing room, had talked for half an hour, and had then rushed off somewhere, saying something incomprehensible about the purchase of micro-sheets and leatherboard.
‘Here, these are for you,’ he had added in parting, depositing a cardboard shoebox on the drawing room table.
Sunil had opened it and been delighted. Haresh had said:
‘I know you never wear anything except brogues.’
‘But how did you remember my size?’
Haresh laughed and said, ‘People’s feet are like cars to me. I just remember their size—don’t ask me how I do it. And your feet are like Rolls-Royces.’
Sunil remembered the time when he and a couple of friends had challenged Haresh—who was being his usual irritatingly overconfident self—to identify from a distance each of the fifty or so cars parked outside the college on the occasion of an official function. Haresh had got every one of them right. Considering his almost perfect memory for objects, it was odd that he had emerged from his English B.A. Honours course with a third, and had messed up his Poetry paper with innumerable misquotations.
God knows, thought Sunil, how he’s wandered into the shoe trade, but it probably suits him. It would have been a tragedy for the world and for him if he had become an academic like me. What is amazing is that he should ever have chosen English as a subject in the first place.
‘Good! Now that you’re here, we’ll have a party,’ Sunil had said. ‘It’ll be like old times. I’ll get a couple of old Stephanians who are in Brahmpur to join the more lively of my academic colleagues. But if you want soft drinks you’ll have to bring your own.’
Haresh had promised to try to come, ‘work permitting’. Sunil had threatened him with excommunication if he didn’t.
Now he was here, but talking endlessly and enthusiastically about his day’s efforts.
‘Oh stop it, Haresh, don’t tell us about chamars and micro-sheets,’ said Sunil. ‘We’re not interested in all that. What happened to that Sikh girl you used to chase in your headier days?’
‘It wasn’t a sardarni, it was the inimitable Kalpana Gaur,’ said a young historian. He tilted his head to the left as wistfully as he could in exaggerated imitation of Kalpana Gaur’s adoring gaze at Haresh from the other side of the room during lectures on Byron. Kalpana had been one of the few women students at St Stephen’s.
‘Uh—’ said Sunil with dismissive authority. ‘You don’t know the true facts of the matter. Kalpana Gaur was chasing him, and he was chasing the sardarni. He used to serenade her outside the walls of her family’s house and send her letters through go-betweens. The Sikh family couldn’t bear the thought of their beloved daughter getting married to a Lala. If you want further details—’
‘He’s intoxicated with his own voice,’ said Haresh.
‘So I am,’ said Sunil. ‘But you—you misdirected yours. You should have wooed not the girl but the mother and the grandmother.’
‘Thanks,’ said Haresh.
‘So do you still keep in touch with her? What was her name—’
Haresh did not oblige with
any information. He was in no mood to tell these affable idiots that he was still very much in love with her after all these years—and that, together with his toe-puffs and counters, he kept a silver framed photograph of her in his suitcase.
‘Take those shoes off,’ he said to Sunil. ‘I want them back.’
‘You swine!’ said Sunil. ‘Just because I happened to mention the holiest of holies. . . .’
‘You donkey,’ replied Haresh. ‘I’m not going to eat them—I’ll give them back to you in a few days.’
‘What are you going to do with them?’
‘You’d be bored if I told you. Come on, take them off.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes, why not? A few drinks later I’ll have forgotten and you’ll have gone off to sleep with them on.’
‘Oh, all right!’ said Sunil obligingly and took off his shoes.
‘That’s better,’ said Haresh. ‘It’s brought you an inch closer to my height. What glorious socks,’ he added, as Sunil’s bright red cotton tartan socks came more fully into view.
‘Wah! wah!’ There were cries of approval from all sides.
‘What beautiful ankles,’ continued Haresh. ‘Let’s have a performance!’
‘Light the chandeliers,’ cried someone.
‘Bring out the emerald goblets.’
‘Sprinkle the attar of roses.’
‘Lay a white sheet on the floor and charge an entrance fee!’