I hate going down alone. I like to take someone with me for
a short walk and possibly eat something or finish some work or something. This
time I wanted to go down for getting my shoe laces replaced. They had frayed
and I was worried that one day they would just snap. I took Dixi along and at the
cobblers, he asked me which ones he wanted me to put - the cotton ones or the nylon ones. This was
all the invitation I needed to get as much information on them as possible. The
cotton ones are the ones that look a little old and not shiney. They have a
dull matt finish about them. The nylon ones look cool and shiney and you can
clearly see the weave pattern on them. But the cotton ones are the ones that you
want as they have the necessary friction to hold your boots together. The nylon
ones keep opening up as they are too smooth. Hmmm. And everyone goes for the
nylon ones as they are the ones that look good. He sells 10 times more nylon
than cotton! Ah. I too would have chosen the nylon one without thinking. The cotton
ones do look very old worldly.
Then I got him to polish my shoes as well. I was in the NCC
since I started college and thanks to that I learnt the art of polishing shoes.
We used to have a routine that was passed on. Every Sunday was parade and hence
every Saturday evening was the ritual. You sit down with a brush and a tin of polish and you start
polishing your shoes. You polish and polish away. Then you take nylon cloth and
then shine your shoes. And if that’s not enough, the rule was to then use
liquid polish and put a layer on top of that! Wow that was colossal use or
waste of polish, depending on the way you see it. It was a similar routine for
all the brass that was there on the uniform. There were brass buttons on the cap,
brass buckle for the belts and brass on the shoulder insignias. Here also I had
brasso liquid and a cloth dedicated to this. A full 40 minute ritual every
Saturday night. I think that’s a good discipline for a 16 year old boy. Some of
that NCC discipline stayed on for a long time.
Now I find the process very messy and hence I just step down
the office for a quick polish every time. So when the guy picked his nylon
cloth to give the shoe a shine, I was wondering why the squeaky noise was
missing. He said – it depends, sometime you get it and sometimes you don’t. Stations in Mumbai were famous for having
shoe shine boys. I sure that would a legacy of the British in India. These guys
are officially there in every station. Left to our own we wouldn’t have ever
thought of having them here. It’s the marriage of the British love for trains
and shiny shoes. I told the cobbler that the train guys make a huge squeaky
noise when they use the cloth. He said they use a different cloth. I wondered
that possibly those guys would have a special secret on the type of cloth to be
used that made the sound.
I told Dixi that the noise is a call to action, like a ice
cream cart bell. It tells people that come an dget your shoes polished. IN any
case, Dixi was reeling under the amount of information that we got while
getting a simple shoe lace. One should always ask. These kids call me Jugal…
who is Jugal – brother of Google. Because I seem to know so much on so many things.
I told Dixi that you guys call me Jugal, but the answer is here. It’s just that
I am curious on everything and I ask and hence I know. So next time a topic on
shoe laces comes up I will know, how a cotton shoelace is better than a nylon
one.
Everyone has something to give as value to someone else. If someone
spends time doing something as a profession it’s obvious that they will be knowing
some angle of it better than anyone else. The key is to ask the right questions. And
their inner secrets will be exposed to you. ASK
