The Cobbler

It’s rare to find cobblers these days at street corners, sitting on the pavement and mending shoes. With majority of the products being use and throw, footwear seems nothing behind. I almost thought they were extinct. Perhaps they have transformed themselves into modern shoemakers working under the banner of some big footwear companies. After all why do we need mending when we can buy a new one? I believed all this was true until the day when one of my newly brought sandals broke. With just a few weeks old and too costly and beautiful to be thrown away yet, I set out to find the good old cobbler who could mend it for me. I wished they weren’t extinct yet.
I remembered seeing a cobbler sitting in a bus stand nearby my home, but he does not be there at all days. Today I hoped he was there, as I could not take it to the shop where I brought it. I was lucky; he was sitting in a corner at the bus stand and was busy making a new pair of footwear. I gave him my broken sandal and asked him if he could mend them. He gave a careful look and nodded silently and right away got to work.
While waiting for my sandal to be mended, I observed that he had already made two new pairs of slippers and was working on one more. When enquired, I found out that those slippers was for sale and apart from occasional mending work, he makes new pairs of slippers which would fetch him anywhere from Rs.50 to Rs.75 per pair. He complained that very few people needed a cobbler these days and people prefer to buy from large retail stores paying double the money.
And lo my sandals were mended in a jiffy and were ready to be worn. I was charged a paltry Rs.10 for the same. I was glad paying him a ten rupees extra, coz he just resurrected my expensive footwear. I was grateful to him.
On my way back home, I was thinking, how do these people survive in this period of inflation? His earnings per day would be just a 100 to 200 rupees if not lesser. On one side is the rich who wouldn’t mind to spend thousands just for a drink and in the other are people like this who struggle to make just enough money to have a single meal per day. Is it by fate that they have to struggle under poverty? When will they have a decent living? All too big a question and there may be lots of answers but no visible solution.
But for the moment I was thankful to “The cobbler” and will remember every time I get a compliment for my sandal, not the place where I brought it but the person who fixed it.