shoe cleaning madame?

There is one thing VERY annoying about Leh, that is the shoe cleaners.

I guess every tourist would agree.

Whenever you pass by one of them, they would raise their voice and ask ‘shoe cleaning madame?’ Regardless of what are you wearing. Hiking boots, flip-flops or like me, canvas shoes.

As far as I know, there are 4 of them next to the food market, 2 always lingering around the café that I go for breakfast, and 5!! stationing themselves outside the laundry shop.

But Leh is too small to avoid anyone, not to mention the vast network of these shoe cleaners. Last Sunday, since everyone is out of town and having a good time in Nubra, I went to stroll around this small town, again, without destination. And of course I bumped into several of them.

‘Shoe cleaning madame?’… once

‘Shoe cleaning madame?’… twice

‘Shoe repair madame?’…

I went on, like how I behaved for the past hundred times.

Then I paused.

Wait. How did he know?

Did he really pay that little attention as I passed by 5 seconds ago?

(And all architecture students are trained to spot that, attention to details!)

On both of my shoes, there are big holes as the rubber base around my ankles went off. On a rainy day, my socks do get soaked. It is that irreparable. But it is a usual thing too, all of my converses got thrown away at last because this.

So I turned, walked to him. Took off my shoes. Sometimes even the very irritating ones do deserve a chance to prove their value.

He first traced my shoes on some rubber sheet, cut out the silhouette and then put glue on them, and some small cracks at the sides of my shoes. Let them dry for a while under the sun. The kind of glue he used is like caramel but translucent. After 10 minutes, he put the new rubber on top of the old shoe base, started stitching around it with a big needle. And as if it was a meaningful finale, he hammered two small pins on each of the new bases, just like how we tear off the masking tape as we finish a hand drawing.

The whole process took less than 30 minutes, and cost, 200 rupees.

A little overpriced, but okay, I gave it anyhow without bargaining.

And after a day of walk, its time to examine, how well did these new bases endure.

Some stitches already broken. Hmmm… not at all satisfied. Comments held back, I will tell again after a month.

Be patient, it takes time to prove justice. Thats how I comforted myself.