Today I was walking to LSR along the highway, in a bit of a
rush to get back to class after a sneaky salad break with Chrissie, Anjali and
Emma. We were dodging parking cars, swerving scooters and an array of mechanics
that line the main road doing their work on the sidewalk. We passed people
waiting to jump on the next bus. Getting on buses is an admirable skill in
Delhi; half the time the bus barely comes to a complete stop before it is off
again.
I was busy musing over bus-boarding skills and delicious,
fresh salads when my thong (flip-flop for all you Brits) broke. I stumbled and
didn’t know quite what had happened. Then I realised my shoe was dragging
behind my foot. The little round plug was gone and it didn’t look like there
was much hope for repairing my three-year old, fake Havaiana. I tried dragging
my foot along, plastering it to my thong for a few metres, yet the attempt was
clearly futile. How was I going to tackle the last five hundred metres back to
Lady Shri Ram without walking bare foot on the rather dirty road? We were now
five minutes late for class.
At that moment a helpful autowala (auto-rickshaw driver),
seeing my plight, pointed to a shoe repairman and said,
He’ll fix it.
The mochi was sitting on the street right beside where
my shoe had broken. When I handed him my Havaiana he turned it around, upside
down, set it down and got to work. He passed me his sandal before he began and
I stood there watching, wearing a big rubber sandal, on the side of the
highway, next to the bus station. He found an old piece of suede, sewed it to
the rubber part of the thong that was now missing a plug, poked it through the
hole on the sole, stitched it all together and handed it back to me. His speed
and skill were impressive. My Havaiana has been given new life.
I asked him how much it would cost, Kitna lagega?
He looked up at me from his cross-legged position on the
pavement and said,
Jo aap khushi se de. Whatever you give with happiness.
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