The man thus described was Bruce Chatwin, travel writer extraordinaire. A few years later, he would walk into Patagonia in South America wearing that very pair of boots and produce one of the landmarks of 20th century travelogues, In Patagonia. Chatwin, who was always looking for accoutrements to aid his writing, once asked journalist Sunil Sethi to bring him a pair of Gujarati leather sandals along with a Calicut lungi.
Chatwin, who believed that the best way for a writer to take in the world was ‘by boot,’ knew how important it was for a writer to take care of his feet. In an iconic portrait of Chatwin by Lord Snowdon, you can see those calfskin boots hung around his neck by their laces, and on his shoulders his leather rucksack made by an Italian saddlemaker. The boots are now in Kathmandu, in custody of Lisa Choegyal, while the rucksack, I believe, is with another friend, Werner Herzog, who in 2019 made the documentary, Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin.
Somewhere in the world there exists a photograph of me extolling the sturdiness and comfort of my black Sreeleathers brogues to Jimmy Choo, who is looking at my feet in a dazed and mystified manner. It was summer 2015, London, dinner at the British Council HQ in Portland Place. Choo was the chief guest and I said to myself that I would never again get a chance to declare my all-consuming love for footwear to a stylist who had once designed shoes fit for Lady Diana to negotiate landmines in Africa.
Choo very graciously corrected me and said that the princess, on that occasion, had chosen to wear Tod’s flat shoes. I am sure my brogues were no slouch either if it ever came to negotiating New Delhi’s landmines, literary or otherwise.
That pair of brogues was of great comfort to me, and for years during my daily commute from the bracing wilds of Bhiwadi in Rajasthan to the chaos of Daryaganj in New Delhi and back, it was my constant companion. Wearing it I crossed broken waterlogged streets, ran to catch speeding state transport buses on NH8, slept on the shoulders of itinerant gau-rakshaks, stepped on sleeping dogs, scorpions and snakes and after each wipe of the towel cloth at the end of the journey, it gleamed as if new.
In the end, I just grew bored with its all-purpose efficiency and gifted it to a colleague of mine who used it for agricultural purposes. He would ride wearing it on his plough, harnessed to two bullocks. The image is pasted on my mind like a postage stamp. The last I heard, the brogues were still doing fine in Sultanpur in eastern UP and refusing to give up the ghost.
Apart from the security and sturdiness of that pair of shoes, what I miss most is their preternatural heaviness. It kept my feet shackled firmly to the ground. It made me feel like Faiz Ahmad Faiz, going to the dentist in Lahore, shackled in chains. Whenever I wore it I could hear sitting in the Metro, between IIFCO Chowk and Delhi Gate, Nayyara Noor’s Assam-tempered voice whispers Faiz’s words in my ear:
Aaj bazaar mein pa-ba jaulan chalo
Let us walk in shackles through the bazaar…
…Hakim-e shehr bhi, Majma-e-aam bhi
The lord of the city and all my comrades too…
…Chashm-e-nam, jaane-shoreedan kaafi nahin.
Tear-filled eyes and a restless conscience are not enough
As a writer you have to do a bit more, dear boy.
