A Pair Of Shoes

Which mother wouldn’t rejoice at the first toddle of her child! My son had just started walking. He would stand up, balance and move forward with a force.. he would walk till he falls down and would raise his face, look at me and smile. All the pains of childbearing and the first year of motherhood was worthy of that smile. Like how Yasodha saw the universe in her son’s open mouth, any mother would find the world condensed in such smiles of her children.

                    

We bought him a pair of shoes which blinks and makes a squeak whenever his tiny feet would press the earth. He felt encouraged to walk more and would squeak all the time and smile.It was during one such evening that I took him out on the road for a walk. The squeaking was so loud that I felt a bit embarrassed. On the road side I saw those two children outside their small shed house, sitting at the edge of the canal and swinging their feet inside the canal. I had noticed earlier that their mother, Laxmi a tall lean woman, does the domestic top up for many of the houses nearby. I looked at them and continued assisting my toddler who was in full glee at having hit the roads. The younger child aged maybe three and the elder one about seven years got up from their position and came near us. By then I had lifted my son seeing a biker from far. The younger boy touched monu’s squeaky shoes and gave it a couple of squeaks. The elder one pulled him by his hand and led him away. He was turning back and eyeing the yellow shoes with eyes and a beak. I felt guilty all of a sudden for reasons I could not comprehend. I had always felt this guilt.. even as a child when we open our shopping before Nesamma, the woman who worked for my mom at home. I had infact hideously removed the price tags from my Dr. Scholl’s shoes before I place it down at home for fear of feeling guilty if Vimala, the girl who stays with us and take care of the home chores, comes across it. That night I told my husband that the coming weekend we should get a pair of shoes each for those two children.

After a couple of days I saw the children sitting at the same place under the tamarind tree by the canal. This time the younger child was wearing a pair of transparent blue plastic sandals and the elder one was examining them. Seeing me the child with the shoes gave me an innocent happy smile and his brother, bare footed, looked at me with a sense of pride which I saw in his eyes. My heart was filled with a collage of emotions. I smiled at them and kept walking seeing Laxmi’s ever smiling face through the tears which had by then blinded me.