Ghanshyam Thakur was unbothered by the infamous July heat. Though the sky was inexorable and the sun was pouring fire, and everything on Earth, including the houses and the trees on the hills of Lubhu, was heaving in restless silence, Ghanshyam Baje, wiping sweat off his snowy brows, continued to apply his polishing brush across the shoe of Bardaan with an undistributed concentration.
For the last two and a half months, Bardaan had been the only customer Baje had received despite his eleven-hour-long ritualistic devotion to the work. It had not always been this way. There was a time, it is true, when Baje could not meet the demands of his clamouring customers in a single day and they had to wait till the following morning. Then he used to have an assistant as well, a scrawny owl-eyed young boy, who helped him with the minor details, like, say, running the rag cloth across the leather surface. However, the customers insisted on having every detail of their shoes polished by the hands of Baje which had, over the course of time, settled the boy into being a mere company for him. As time passed and the tradition of shoe-shiners got drowned in the chaotic life of modernism, Baje had to let go of him for more reliable job opportunities. In fact, the income from shoe-shining trickled in such small crumbs that it had become difficult for him to sustain his own small family.
Baje belonged to a revered family of shoe-shiners from Bengal. His ancestors had earned incontestable recognition in the palace of Bengali Nawab, and their fame, floating across the vast plains of Terai and meandering through the labyrinth of mountains, had even reached the ears of King Mahendra. Master Satyandra Thakur, Baje’s grandfather, after an insistent request from the King, had migrated to the valley to serve in the palace. A similar path had been followed by Baje’s father, but after the downfall of the monarchy things had changed for the family. The father had to set up a stall right outside the Narayanhiti Palace and the business had taken time to thrive. Initially people had reservations against anything associated with the ruins of monarchy. In any case, the father’s miraculous ability to tame the glow of the leather with his fingers had gradually won him the hearts of the people. Following the footsteps of his ancestors, Baje had inherited the technicalities of this art from his father.
Bardaan had learnt about Baje’s past in pieces and over the period of several weeks. After all, Baje was a reserved person and barely opened up about his family. However, as regular exchange between them dissolved the mist of hostility, Baje recognized Bardaan’s honest and sensitive heart, gradually starting to share his problems with him the way he would with his son. “Your next shoe, son,” Baje said with a dazzling smile that appeared to relegate the fiery sun behind the clouds for a moment. “Aren’t you already late for work today?”
“Won’t be late,” Bardaan replied reassuringly. “I’ll take Pathao and go to work. Besides, riding in public buses with this heat and the crammed commuters is hell, you know.” After a pause Bardaan asked about the thing that had been bothering him for a week, “By the way Baje, last time you were not here. In fact, I did not see you for, umm, ten days. Yes, it has been ten days, Baje, yeah. Has everything been alright?”
Five killed in Tulsipur shoe shop fire
“O, it was nothing,” Baje said, setting the shoe on the metal frame. “I was a little ill. Just old people things, I should say.” Only then did Bardaan notice the tremble in Baje’s left eyelids. In fact it was a convulsive flutter, and he could tell it was a manifestation of some insidious affliction. In any case, as Baje began to apply the rag cloth over the leather of the second shoe, he smothered the deluge of questions that were bubbling up in his soul and allowed himself to be carried away by the pleasure of watching Baje’s craft unfold.
Bardaan knew Baje did not talk while working, and therefore had developed the habit of watching in silence. In fact, he loved to watch the magic unfold as the dullness of the leather gradually, almost with otherworldly naturalness, mesmerized glow when Baje had finished his rigor. Baje’s method was scientific and followed the studious approach of a mathematician untangling the mysteries of a formidable problem into an enigma of an elegant solution.
Baje’s apparatus contained two metal frames, four distinct cloth rags which he used delicately for specific purposes, three brushes - one hard, one soft and one toothless, the toothless one he ran occasionally over the leather surface whose purpose Bardaan had not yet understood - and five different black leather cream for black shoes and another five brown leather cream for the brown ones. Baje had finished wiping the dust from the surface and was now bent over so low that his nose nearly touched the head of the shoe. He was scrutinizing the edges of the shoe and occasionally brushed away the dirt lodged in the miniature crevices.
Everything, as usual, was carried out with sublime perfection. Though by now Bardaan knew almost every detail about the shoe-shining art, his immersion into it was so deep that he did not even notice the convulsive cough Baje smothered off every now and again. His heart leapt with gleaming joy as his dull shoes lit up with a shine that dazzled his eyes. Up until now, however, Baje had only applied two creams after mixing them with gasoline, followed by an unusually tender application of the third rag cloth. Had Bardan not been familiar with Baje’s method, he would have concluded that the finest possible shine had already been accomplished. After all, an inexperienced eye can barely imagine a leather throwing off a shine more brilliant than the glow gracing Bardaan’s shoe at the moment.
In any case, Baje now passed the fourth rag across the leather surface, narrowing his eyes to examine if any miniature pore had gone unattended. With his soft brush he applied another black cream, not using gasoline this time and tenderly began to run the surface as one would caress the delicate forehead of a mermaid. The former shine of the leather disappeared and a saddening dullness came over. From here it would seem to a customer, who had not known Baje’s art, that even the glow that had only a moment ago emanated from the leather, would never be retrieved to life. But as Baje’s seasoned hands set the last coat of cream across the surface and rubbed it for a while, driving the cream into the very heart of the leather, an explicable miracle blazed out of the soul of the leather - an enigmatic and truly splendid shine leapt from the shoe.
“Here you go, son,” Baje said with a smile, handing the shoe over to Bardaan. “I tried to do it as fast as I could. But it’s work, son, and I need to do all the details. I apologize, I can see you’re already late for the office.”
“Not at all,” Bardaan replied, beginning to put on his shoes. Even before he could add something, Baje’s violent cough interrupted him. Without tying the lace he looked at Baje with apprehension and saw the faded stain of blood on Baje’s chin. “Are you alright, Baje?”
Baje remained quiet. He was no longer completely under the shadow of the umbrella which had been tied to a post right behind him. The sun had shifted a little and its menacing blaze lashed now right at his face. Emphasized by the fiery glow, the features of his face stood out distinctly and Bardaan could now clearly make out the dark, persistent presence of death in the purplish wrinkles right under his eyes. “What did the doctors say?” Bardaan found himself asking.
“These doctors always say things that are not true, those brutes!” Baje replied in a quavering voice. “I’m fine. Healthy as a bull as you can see. I won’t die. You’re already later than usual.”
After paying the fee, Bardaan walked down the cobbled footpath, carried along by the wind of Baje’s nearing death. For a while he was gripped by the feeling, a primordial and therefore insistent feeling, that Baje was already dead. That, he thought, his week-long yearning to meet him had been acknowledged by the universe and the dead Baje had been conjured up before him to calm his agitated soul. Of course, being a realist he at once brushed aside this thought with the argument that had Baje already been dead he would not have noticed blood on his chin. Besides, the way the sun illuminated his sagely countenance spoke a ton in favor of the claim that he must be alive. However, as he continued his rumination he was assailed by another realization: it was the fact that Baje had seemed entirely oblivious to the blazing July heat. Of course, both heat and cold, when he worked on shining the shoes, had literally had no effect on him, but something about today bothered him, something he could not pinpoint with his finger, but could feel, like a palpable force, clamour in his soul.
At a turning between Lubhu and Sanagaun, on the bridge, he saw a flock of mysterious sparrows hopping around on the grass. He watched them for a while, his heart throbbing faster, as if struggling to wrench something from the depth of his past lives, something that would help him recognize these birds. Though he was already late for his work, he stood thoughtfully for a long time, letting his eyes linger on one particular bird. Not able to snatch the memory with clarity, he staggered away, feeling the flutter of sparrows in his soul. He wanted to return and ensure that Baje was still there. The office could wait, of course. Nothing seemed to matter for him now, except the desire to know if the Baje was still there on the footpath, alive, sitting languidly in the infernal heat and contemplating the old shoes which had been a part of his apparatus for decades. Bardaan’s feet, however, resisted him and carried him to the office. Though his heart longed to return, his mind tormented by the possibility of not finding Baje on the footpath, vehemently pressed against it and his feet, at least at the moment, was under the sway of his mind.
Later that night, he was to dream about the same incident of the morning - the Baje miraculously shining his dulled shoes. Waking up, all in sweat, those sparrows still clamoring in his soul, he was to hurry downstairs to the shoe rack to check his shoes. Despite the catastrophic downpour of the evening, which had turned his shoes into a splatter of mud, the leather surface was now shining with fiery light. At this sight, the fluttering sparrows in his heart took off, leapt out of him and disappeared into the abyss of the night, leaving a stinging void in him.
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