The Story of a Shoemaker

A few days back, after a long gap, I visited a cobbler to get my 7 year old leather sandals repaired. My adolescent son used the sandals for a short period as the strap of one of his slippers had snapped. But even the limited use by him was enough to inflict serious injuries to sandals that required treatment by a skilled person.

The diminutive bespectacled shoemaker Ramdeen is in his forties and stammers a little. The plastic framed spectacles perfectly sit on his sharp nose. While busy mending my sandals sitting on a raised square platform under the canopy of a tree, he kept talking with me without diverting his attention from the sharp awl that he used to stitch the injured parts of the sandals.

Ramdeen belongs to Raebareli in UP and came to Chandigarh about 25 years back in search of job with a friend from his village. Being landless, newly married and little scope of getting work in his home state, left no choice except migration. His friend worked as cobbler in Chandigarh and used to frequent different sectors in search of customers. Ramdeen also joined him and started helping in repair work.

Over a period of few months, Ramdeen learnt the basic skills of a cobbler and started working independently. Door to door visit didn’t ensure regular work and therefore, earnings were totally unpredictable. While hammering the stitched part of the sandal on the three-way-last, he reminisced of not getting a single customer on a number of occasions even after full day’s ramble. At times, he used to get first customer in afternoon or in the evening, besides that, most of the customers used to be very hard bargainer. Moving around along with tool kit was very tiring and his entire body used to ache in the evening.

Therefore, he thought of a permanent space for his trade. The luck was with him and he got a place close to an inner sector road in one of the developing southern sectors. For the first few days, hardly any customers visited him but things changed after three-four months; his income increased gradually and became steady. At present he earns about Rs 250 to 300 each day.

He shares a room with two people, also from Raebareli, in a Mohali village. They prepare evening tea after landing at room around 8 PM and relax for some time before cooking dinner. Mostly dinner consists of dal and chapattis but on rare occasions fish or chicken also becomes part of the menu. They usually go to bed at 11 PM. In the morning, after finishing daily ablutions, they get busy in preparing meal that can be considered breakfast cum lunch and leave for their respective place of work in bicycles after having it. Milk and fruits do not form the part of their diet and two meals a day sustains them.

This way Ramdeen is able to save a major part of his hard earned money and sends it regularly to his family by money-order. His family consists of 3 sons, one daughter, wife and mother. The eldest son is second year engineering student, the second and third one are in middle school and the youngest one, the daughter is in primary school. As the children are growing, the expenses are also going up. So, at times, to meet the exigencies he takes loan at high interest rate from money lender. The loan amount plus interest is reimbursed to the lender by paying fixed daily installment over a period of two months.

Almost every six months he visits his family. Some time back he was allotted a piece of land by UP government under the ‘land for landless people’ program. But the revenue official allotted that land to another person. He talked to different authorities but to no avail. At last, he hired a lawyer to get justice and it further added to his financial owes.

But there is light for him at the end of the tunnel. He looks forward for the day when his eldest son would get job after completing engineering and will help him by sharing financial and other family responsibilities. Ramdeen’s face exudes confidence and solace when he talks about his eldest son. He also dreams of building a brick house with latrine and bath-room at the periphery of his village as the existing thatched mud hut is shared with the families of his two brothers and has no scope for expansion due to congestion. Besides that he wishes to rear a buffalo in the new house.

But till his son gets employed, he has to work relentlessly and struggle to keep himself and his family floating. And who knows, even after that?