Geetanjali Krishna: Shoe business ain't no business

Some time ago, the strap of one of my favourite sandals broke. Loath to just throw it away, I decided to hunt for a cobbler to repair it to make it last just a little longer. The hunt was harder than I'd imagined. While in my childhood, the mochi, a cobbler, with his dilapidated bag of tools, was a common sight in small town neighbourhoods, now he seems to be a rare species. Eventually, I found one in the bylanes of Lajpat Nagar and asked if he could prolong the life of my broken sandals. "Even if they last this season, I'll be happy," I said. The middle-aged cobbler looked at me and smiled: "My repair work will last for years. After I've glued the broken ends and stitched them together with unbreakable threads, they'll never come apart - that's my guarantee!" Fifteen minutes later, my sandal was as good as new, and I thanked him saying, "If I hadn't spotted you today, these sandals would have probably ended up in the rubbish dump." The cobbler smiled ruefully, "It's because of people like you that you hardly see any cobblers in Delhi anymore."

His name was Chandu, he told me, and he came from a long, illustrious line of cobblers in Meerut. "When I was 15, I joined my father's trade. He believed that as long as people wore shoes, they would need cobblers," he said. Chandu's father died a few years ago. Little would he have known, I mused, that the next generation would prefer to throw away shoes rather than have them repaired. "He'd have been baffled, for in his time, people wore the same rubber slippers for years, repairing their straps again and again till their soles wore out," he said.

Much had changed, said Chandu, in people's footwear habits since the time he started work. "Growing up in Meerut, people like us just had one slipper. Between my father, two brothers and me, there was a pair of leather shoes. Even though our sizes were not the same, we took turns wearing that pair to weddings. Even my father's customers didn't have many shoes, which is why they valued them more," he said. Since business was good back then, cobblers like his father grew to acquire quite a name in the neighbourhoods they worked in. "They said that my father's stitches would last longer than the leather of the shoe," said Chandu proudly. "Who could have predicted that today, my stitches may last longer than my profession."

How did he make ends meet, I asked curiously, if business prospects of cobbling were so grim? He said wryly, "Some regular clients pay me by the week to polish their shoes. And there are still some rare birds like you who get their shoes repaired once in a while. But the money isn't great. I do have a side business though." It turned out that Chandu made a tidy side profit by repairing and reselling the shoes that his customers discarded. "See this pair of sneakers I'm wearing? It must have cost at least Rs 5,000, but my customer gave it to me only because it was slightly torn. After a good wash and repair, it looked so good that I kept it for myself." He managed to earn an extra couple of thousand rupees every month from this, he said.

In his own way, I commented, Chandu had managed to turn an obstacle in his business into an opportunity. He smiled and said, "While you might be right, the fact is that my own son is turning 17 and I've told him, do whatever you want in life - but don't become a cobbler like your father."