The voices said you needed shoes.

Friends! You will be surprised to know that we have just one pair of shoes in our home for use. When I go out, others will wait for my return so that they can go, and sometimes I have to wait for the same reason. Not that we can’t afford to buy another pair of shoes, but rather we have enough shoes of different styles and patterns, but those are not fit for our feet. Some are ugly, others are uncomfortable, some others create blisters, some are loose, and some are very tight. Again, some others have that damn Velcro, damaging saree-s. We have rain-boots, flats, sandals, heels, flip-flops, and dance shoes. Those are just a few of hundreds. Aha! What a wonderful collection, but of no use for us! Sometimes excess becomes a notorious symbol of status. When Imelda Marcos, the First Lady of the Philippines, fled her country, journalists breathlessly reported that she had left behind 3,000 pairs of shoes. Not to such extent, time and again, we distribute these shoes to young boys and girls, when their new sessions of schools and colleges begin.

One day, I was late for college. Hurriedly, I put my feet inside the shoes and ran for the bus. Suddenly, I looked at my feet with minstrel’s delight, white on the left and black on the right. Ha Ha Ha … I was feeling embarrassed! I had no time to go back and change.  What a stupid act I had to undergo pulling my saree time and again to cover my shoes.

While returning home, I was little relaxed and I saw a poster which said "Life is short, buy damn shoes"—and nearby there was a window of a big shoe shop, my eyes caught a defining piece of footwear. I imagined that it would create a style of my own. So collecting my courage, I entered the shop and bought it, following the slogan, and immediately changed the shoes. Oh! My God, I was floating in the clouds with ease and comfort. It is true that a pair of shoes makes a huge difference to one's appearance, reveals a lot about one’s personality. If attending an event such as a wedding or other banquet-style party, the high-heeled shoes make a grand return. Unfortunately I, too, used to wear high-heeled shoes.

 Michelangelo, the mastermind behind the Sistine Chapel’s meticulously painted frescoes and intricately carved sculptures in Florence's Basilica of Santa Croce, was undoubtedly a towering figure in the history of art, but his shoes suggests that the artist was actually short in stature—5 feet 2 inches tall only.

However, until the 5th century BCE, when Greek influence became dominant, people used to wear a high, laced shoe with a turned-up toe. During the 16th century, men’s shoes had extremely broad toes, shaped like a duck’s bill. In 17th-century Europe, boots were generally worn. Shoes had moderately high heels and were often decorated with large rosettes made of lace and ribbons. Nevertheless, with the development of modern machinery, shoes could be made quickly and inexpensively in innumerable styles, with various designs and colours. Since time immemorial, shoes have been made of leather, gradually it is being replaced by rubber and man-made fibers as well as certain fabrics, including linen, satin, silk, and so on. Venetian gentlemen were very keen for their wives to wear these extremely high shoes, which hindered their mobility to run off with other men. The elevation project the wearer’s social standing and height served to protect them from the dirty streets of Venice. This was epitomised perfectly by France’s King Louis XIV, whose red-heeled shoes became an emblem of political allegiance. The Japanese, long sandal wearing people, indicated the social status of the wearer by making distinctive sandals for the Imperial Household, merchants, and actors, in fact, for the whole range of professions.

Shoes have always held a significant place in popular culture as well. Fairy tales and stories such as the Wizard of Oz and Cinderella have presented them as objects that hold transformative, magical, and sometimes even dark powers. Cinderella's glass slippers' caused a flutter among royals when the prince "made Cinderella sit, and brought the slipper to her little foot." The Witch of the North gives Dorothy the silver shoes of the dead witch and advises her to go to the City of Emeralds to see the "Great Wizard Oz," who might help her return to Kansas.

A more sinister variation of the myth of the magical shoe is found in the fable ‘The Red Shoes’. Anderson’s story begins when a young girl named Karen failed to show the proper respect for the metaphysical significance of footwear, convincingly wearing her new pair of red shoes to church. That turns out to be not only a fashion blunder but a fundamental violation of the cosmic order, when Karen’s vanity was punished. She was incapable of stopping her dance in the red shoes, even when her feet were amputated, keeping her barred from entering the church.

The other popular subject matter with sandals playing a key role is the myth about Aphrodite and Hermes, who fell in love with her and was rejected; then he asked for the help of Zeus, his father. The king of the gods sent an eagle to steal one of her sandals. To retrieve it, she was forced to submit to Hermes.

There you go my friends! When my brother-in-law dished out only five rupees to retrieve his shoes in his marriage—a custom we had to follow in our sister’s marriage.

 "Lo! How can I forget the story of the old woman, my mother used to narrate, who lived in a shoe with so many children happily? The place was a zoo. Aha! The front portion was broken, and the roof was leaking. But that is what they get when they live in a gum-boot.

I am reminded of my walking barefoot at the beach—when the texture of sand slipping through my toes and crunching against the tender flesh of my sole establishes a communion or commingling with the physical world. For me, walking barefoot connotes physical contact with the Mother Earth, though the rough pebbles, dirt and sharp bits of glasses might cause injury.

 This leather planet, the world created by shoes, is different from the barefoot world: detached, abstracted, insulated. It releases me from the grip of my physical circumstances and lets me ‘transcend’ the physical world. Perhaps this is what Vincent van Gogh was trying to suggest in his repeated paintings of old pairs of shoes, which seem to encompass an unseen world of meaning, and transports us from the ‘boringly obtrusive usualness’ of actual shoes. As the poet Liladhar Jagudi says:

इस प्रकार आकाश मेरे जूते में हैं और आकाश के जूते  में  मैं 

नश्वर जूता और मै

हर वक्त रहते हैं  शाश्वत आकाश में

To talk about being in someone else’ shoes is to contemplate stepping into a different identity sharing their thoughts and emotions on the same platform . In this subterranean way, we are our shoes. Shoes, then, are always more than simple garments, allowing us to walk, stroll and run on streets, parks and fields. They are tools that amplify our bodies’ capacities and move wherever we wish to, like the protagonist of the movie “Goopi Gyne Bagha Byne” (Bengali movie of Satyajit Ray).

There is a deep motif in many religious traditions according to which shoes are profane, even unholy items. Taking shoes off before entering a place of worship and at the door is a good way to prevent dirt and filth. There is an undercurrent of ambivalence, in which valuation and denigration are equally involved.

In the film The Red Shoes, drawn from Anderson’s tale, talented ballet actress Vicky Page was forced to choose between the technical perfection of dance and her romantic involvement with the show’s composer. When she puts on the red ballet slippers, her choice condemns her—Ouch! Ow! Ouch! The dancers cried. The alligator shoes were carrying Vicky off a balcony and under the wheels of an on-coming train. The shoes effectively get away with murder under suspicion in the aftermath of her death.

Ah! My friends, go and read the book "Philosophy of a pair of shoes" by Mohamad Alachakar. How about two shoes stuck on a shelf of a dusty cupboard, waiting for the next move of the owner, fighting one another and debating about some deep aspects of life, confronting each other's ideologies, trying to knock some sense into one another regarding the whole purpose of existence. Alas! The left will remain left and right will remain right because of their spatial status, as great Philosopher Immanuel Kant proclaimed.  

My friends! If you are not able to find your shoes in your dream, then it means you are not able to find the right solution to your problem.

Finally, after a lot of awesomesauce, I realise that the shoes sit at an uncanny ontological threshold: partly belonging to the earth, partly a piece of our own bodies, partly opening up to the transcendental world. It is simultaneously revered and trivialised in ways that seem to hinge, paradoxically, on one another. Alas! Someone discarded my shoes in the gutter once, strangely I felt someone strip of my possibilities of my self  behind, so I never take my shoes off my feet, which made every walk of my life comfortable in the streets. Now, my feet and my self-hood can return to their shells – secured in the soft numbness of leather-world.

 I wonder whether the feet were created for shoes and the shoes were created for the feet!

Amen !!