Feet, Pray, Love.

 It’s the last weekend in October and the daytime temperature in Mumbai is still in the mid thirties. In a few days your Shoeblogger will be returning to London, where, as well as exchanging light kurtas and cotton pants for coat, hat, gloves, scarf, etc, I shall also have to adjust to wearing shoes for the first time in four months.

One thing I realised when I arrived in India at the end of July was that street-style-blogging – at least about footwear – wasn’t going to work here.
I mean, it should. When it comes to costume, whether choosing Western dress, local designers, or traditional garb, Indian style is genuinely fabulous. (How come there is no Indian “Sari-torialist”?) That applies as much to the sari-clad women carrying basins of fish on their heads from Sassoon Docks at 6am as to any Bollywood starlet posing on the red carpet wearing Manish Arora.
However, what happens below the ankle is a different story. A lot of people do a lot of walking in this city, and the combination of heat, dirt, appalling road surfaces, and – what else? Oh, yes, poverty – means that fancy footwear is very low on the list of everyday priorities. The majority of my fellow Bombayites schlep around in some variation of a flip flop (the hawai chappal, according to Wikipedia, which literally translates from Hindi-Urdu as “air sandal”) or barefoot. 

In the last few months I’ve invested in several pairs of traditional Indian shoes (strictly in the interests of research and supporting the local economy.) Some of them will probably never make it onto my feet, as they are genuine pieces of art, like these cream and tan leather slippers with the red and gold trim and crimson applique insoles. I bought them at the shoe market (yes!) on Linking Road in Bandra. 

Ditto these leather “snake eyes” slippers, below, also a Linking Road acquisition. They are hand-tooled two-tone leather, beautifully stitched, with little metal studs and tiny red pompoms for adornment. I am sure even Monsieur Louboutin would applaud the cobbler who painted the red soles.

 The plaited leather moccasins below might not at first sight look that impressive (I shot this post on the stairs and in the corridors outside my apartment, which is not a bad reflection of the city, in terms of decay and general scruffiness.)

However, they were hand-stained for me, as shown above, and are really lovely pieces of craft. Plus I saw a cool girl in the cool Woodside Inn sporting a pair with neat jeans and a beautiful white shirt the other evening, and believe me it is ALL in the attitude.

Rather more elegant are the light fawn chappals below.

 These are Kolhapuri chappals, and – well, I’ll let Wikipedia elaborate: “Kolhapuri chappals are the famous handcrafted footwear made in the villages of Athani Taluk in the Belgaum district of Karnataka state of India. The villages well known for this traditional form of footwear are Madbhavi, Mole, Athani, Shedbal and Ainapur... Kolhapuri chappals are made from processed leather. Hides of buffalo are processed and grazed. Grazing of leather makes the leather hard enough for daily wear and tear use. Some of the traditional designs of Kolhapuri chappals include Kachkadi, bakkalnali, and pukari. These chappals are stout, sturdy, day long usable. These are very popular in rural areas of Maharashtra.” 

I’ll vouch for the hard leather, which is why I haven’t actually worn the Kholapuris yet, but I aim to, next summer. The dark leather chappals below, on the other hand,  I bought on Colaba Causeway (tourist trap, but hey) a week after arriving and have worn every single day since.

 They have survived drowning in the monsoon, getting dumped with piles of strangers’ shoes outside temples, air-conditioned days in the office, sweltering nights in Worli bars – and getting pooped on by birds, at least twice. Yesterday someone on the street offered to clean them for me, for two rupees, which I reckon was because I’d just had a spa pedicure and my feet were in seventh heaven and looked it (Anand at Juice in Colaba, 2215 1108 – your tootsies will worship him). Or it could be a random acknowledgment of the superiority of these humble thongs. 

Whatever, they are mad comfortable, and I love them. Switching them out for boots next week is gonna be a wrench.