His age cannot be more than fifty, or less than forty. Tall, lean and dark, with a short white beard, he had his shop by the roadside. It was a very small shop, hardly enough to seat two people. He sat there in the middle of it, stitching a torn slipper. Damaged shoes, slippers, soles and leather bits lay strewn around him. He looked at his son playing across the road, “Sankar come here, bring me some water”.
“Coming appa”, the boy limped across the road, his right hand supporting his right leg.
One afternoon he was busy mending an old shoe, and his polio-affected son was having his lunch, when a white imported car stopped by his shop. Out stepped a middle-aged man in his jeans and t-shirt. He reached the cobbler and asked him if he could make a pair of shoes for him. The cobbler replied that he could. The man seemed delighted to hear that. He said at once, “Look, the shoes I want are of a special type, it should have a thick but hollow sole. Can you make one like that?”.
The cobbler scratched his head and looked around for a minute, then replied, “If you can tell me the purpose of the shoe, I think I can make one accordingly”.
The man cleared his throat and answered, “See, actually I am a cancer patient and I want to make my wife believe that I’ve given up smoking. I want to hide cigarettes from her. So make the shoes in such a way that each odd can accommodate two cigarette packets in them, I’ll wait.”
The cobbler started working on the shoe while the man waited by his car. He lit a cigarette and threw the empty case. The cobbler looked at him and heaved a sigh. The man watched the cobbler work for sometime, and then asked, “How much will this shoe cost?”.
“A hundred and fifty rupees”
“What, just hundred and fifty?, ask something like three hundred or four hundred”.
“No, I charge only what is really worth, nothing less, nothing more”.
“That’s a nice principle, you’re a great man, and will always be a poor great man”, he said and opened a beer bottle, gulped it down and flung the empty bottle. His shoes were ready and he drove away with the shoes after paying the amount.
From then on, he started coming regularly, every two months and always ordered a similar pair of shoes. As he waited for his shoes, he smoked and had his beer, which he always brought with him in his car. On one occasion, he told the cobbler, “You work very hard, and I want to give you something, but you won’t accept anything”.
The cobbler smiled and replied, “If you really want to give me something, please stop smoking and make your wife truly happy. Then ask her to give me something, and I’ll accept it. So first give up smoking”.
The man lit a cigarette, took a big puff and said, “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do”.
Months passed, and on a rainy afternoon, a police jeep came to a screeching halt at the cobbler’s shop. The cobbler starred dumb founded, when an inspector, two constables and a few men in plain clothes approached him. Among them was a handcuffed man whom the cobbler recognized, as the one for whom he had made the special shoes.
“Can you recognize this man?”, the inspector asked the cobbler.
“Yes sir, I made him shoes to hide his cigarette packets”.
“Didn’t he tell you, that its for smuggling gold from Singapore”
“For smuggling! Never sir, never”
“How much did you charge him?”.
“Hundred and fifty”
“How much did he pay you more?”
“Nothing sir, he wanted to pay me more, but I refused to accept anything”. I asked him to please his wife first and ask her to present me something”.
“He’s honest, lets leave”, the inspector said and handed over a five-rupee note to the cobbler, “Keep this with you”. The cobbler hesitated for a minute, and then accepted it. The inspector was about to get back into the jeep when he saw the cobbler’s son playing with empty beer bottles and cigarette packets. He immediately picked them up and read, “Made in Singapore”. He stared at the cobbler for sometime and gave his orders, “Constables, put that cobbler beggar in the jeep”.
The jeep started off to the police station. The cobbler murmured something to himself and then spoke to the inspector in a low voice, “Honestly inspector sir, I knew I was making a mistake, when I accepted your five rupees”.
