Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.

The counting began and all the children ran and rushed in different directions. Some in groups, some alone, some quietly followed behind others. Everyone was looking for a spot to hide, after all the game of hide and seek had commenced.

Amol knew of a good hiding spot; it was behind the apartment building near the farthest end of park. Not many preferred that hiding spot, it was a risky after all. There was always a chance if you couldn’t run fast enough, the counting might end before one could disappear from the vision of the seeker.

Amol had no such worries; he could run fast, “faster than anybody”, as he would say. He made it to the edge of the park. The park had no raised walls, it was bordered by hedges. But could Amol leap well enough to cross the hedge? Of course, he could, “higher and longer than anybody”, as he would say; and he did, he leapt over the hedge. However, he wasn’t prepared for what was to come.

As he leaped over the hedge and landed on the other side. The sound of the splash clearer than any other sound around was noticed by his ears. Drops of water reached heights beyond the little boy.
Apparently, the watering pipe of the park had a leakage and while the gardener watered the plants, the water slowly flowed out and formed a puddle and a muddy one.

Amol looked at his mud-covered shoes, his feet could feel the water which had seeped into the shoes. For a few seconds he was too stunned to move, then he slowly moved out of the puddle. As he safely stepped out of the puddle and looked in front, he found himself face to face with the seeker. “This has to be the worst thing that has happened to anybody,” said Amol. The seeker who was elder than Amol laughed at his words and ran away to find others.

Shoes nowadays, don’t do well against being wet, or have they always been like this and I only noticed it when I grew up and took them more seriously. Who knows…

Amol wasn’t worried though, he was about that age, “a day of sunlight or two and it would be fine”, he told his friend in school. The shoes did dry out and his mother had cleaned them to the best of her abilities. But the shoes didn’t exactly look as they used to and its material had clearly been affected. They were fine for now though or….. “they are better than they have ever been”, as Amol would say.

Written by Anuran Chatterji

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