I knew him from the days of my youth, as he used to make my father's shoes.
Along with his elder brother, he had a shop in a street in the West End of London, which was amalgamated with two shops. Today that shop is no longer there, but it was one of the most fashionable shops in the West End back then.
The special thing about that shop was that there was no flair in it. It did not say on its signboard that shoes for the dynasty of England are made here. It only had their German name written on it, "Gasler Brothers", and in the front windows were ten five pairs of shoes for the show.
I remember seeing these pairs used to raise a question in my mind – why are they kept like this, are they useless?
Because he always made shoes only after getting orders; Nothing more and nothing less; He used to make as many pairs as was ordered and none of them could have survived, it was unimaginable, because the shoe made by him did not fit the foot, it was impossible. Then why were these useless shoes kept in the cupboard?
And it could not be that they were made by some other craftsman, because he could not bear to see in his shop a piece of leather which he had not made himself.
Other than that those shoes were gorgeous—a familiar pair of pump shoes—oh what a stretch it was!
And that pair made of patent leather » used to sparkle in such a way that seeing it made my mouth water and more. There was a pair of long brown riding boots, the sheen of which had a slight black tinge, which indicated that the shoes, though new, had been worn for a hundred years.
Who could have made such shoes, in front of which the soul of the shoe stood as an idol - the beauty and workmanship of those shoes was such that the ideal of all the shoes of the world had come alive in them.
Such feelings had really arisen in my mind only later, _ but perhaps at the age of 14, when I went to his shop for the first time, since then the pride of him and his brother had engulfed my mind. And since then it has always been remembered till date; Because making shoes—making shoes like he used to make them—which seemed so mysterious and wonderful to me then—is still the same way today.
It was a day after a few years - I had the body of my youth and full feet, showing which I told him with some hesitation - "Mr. Gesler, it would be very difficult to make a shoe with such a hard foot, wouldn't it?"
He replied, "Isn't it tough, babu?" And as soon as he said this, suddenly a smile broke out from the red color of his beard painted with anger.
No one entered his shop as if modestly, and in the shops, "Please give it quickly, I have to go" but in the same spirit as a man sets foot in the church.
There was only one wooden chair lying in his shop - on which the customer used to come and sit and wait, because there was no one sitting at the shop. But soon he or his elder brother could be seen peeping through the scaffolding above that shop, dark as a moat, and filled with a foul smell of leather.
A stuffed voice, the sound of silvers on the tight living of wood, and just he wearing a coat spent in front of you, wearing a small waist shukae-like, apron of cloth, whose arms are clenched up, today present shivering is. Like seeing someone's dream of running shoes, or like seeing the light of day like an owl, the square has woken up and got annoyed by the disturbance.
And I ask "What's up Bhister Gasler? Will you be able to make a Russian leather shoe for me?"'
Without saying a word, he goes back inside the shop from where he had flown, and I sit there on the wooden chair and smell the fragrance of his business. After a few minutes, Bah returns, holding a piece of golden brown leather in his hands, which are slender and with bulging blue-blue veins.
Looking at this piece, he says - "Kitna is beautiful." In reply I say- "Of course!!"
He says again - "When did you want the tail?"
I say- "Oh, when you can give easily."
And he replies - "In the next week." But if he did not become his elder brother, he would have said, "We will share with the brother." Then I get up and leave - "Okay, thank you! Good morning." "Good morning" he replies, but continues to gaze at the leather in his hand.
And as soon as I walk towards the door, he climbs up from the tight living of the wood to the tumbling of his slivers to the heaven of his shoes.
But if there was a shoe of a new fashion, as it had not yet made, then he must have practiced some rhetoric and custom - my . Opening the shoe from his foot, which would have been made by his own hand, he would take it in his own hands, and he looked at it with great affection and critical affection at the same time, as if he was imagining her beauty. Yes, what he filled it with while making it, and is also expressing anger and sorrow at the fact that its wearer is not in the habit of wearing shoes, and he has completely killed his workmanship.”
Then he would get my foot placed on a piece of thin paper and pull it off with his worn-out pencil three or four times. When her trembling fingers came out touching my paws, I felt as if she wanted to grope to the extent of my exact need.
I will never forget the day when I had the opportunity to say to him – “You know Mr. Gassler, the shoe you made last time for a walk, cracked.
Hearing this, he looked at me speechless for a while and did not answer. Like he's telling me, "It just can't happen, withdraw your complaint—or just point it out."
After some time he replied - "Clicking toe was not wanted." "But still cracked."
"You must have soaked him in water without wearing a good thong." "Otherwise, it didn't happen."
Hearing this, he lowered his eyelids, as though he was thinking, "What shoes were they on?"
But again I felt very sorry that I hurt this poor man by saying all this in vain.
“Tow them back,” he said, “we will see again.”
When the cracking of my shoes broke my heart, I could very well guess that Mr. How sad would Gesler be, who made him out of so many desires, and how anxious he would be to learn about it.
"Some shoes" he said, "the pada itself is spoiled. If the secondhand shoe is not able to be repaired by us, then we will return all its dams.”
Once upon a time, I needed a new shoe soon, so I went to a big store and bought it.
One day, by unknowingly wearing it, Mr. Went to the gasler's shop. He ordered my shoes, but did not show any leather. His eyes were fixed on my new factory-made shoes. After all, he did not stay with him; He said, "We have not made this shoe toe."
There was no anger in his voice, no sorrow, no hatred, not even fury, yet there must have been such an intense silent whisper in him that I was stunned!
After this he pressed his finger on a place on my left foot, which was made of something beautiful for the sake of fashion, and said- “You cut it here.… Didn't care Absolutely been."
After this he said many more bitter things. As if some suffocation inside him had broken the dam and left. Today for the first time I heard something from his mouth about the poor condition and troubles of the shoe merchant
“That big company makes a profit from advertising, not with the goodness of its goods – not with its hard work! The result of this is that now we have no work at all and it is getting less and less day by day….”
And today on his wrinkled face I saw feelings I had never paid any attention to before - the grim struggle and the bitterness in which he had been working to pieces for years, and today I see his red beard. I saw tufts of white hair, in which all his troubles cried out.
I tried to explain to him as much as I could as to the compulsions that made me buy those shoes; But his posture and tone had such an effect on my heart that within a short time I ordered him many shoes.
The couple got ready. And Nemesis' also lost to him. Ghisai also accepted defeat from them. Oops, they lasted more than the first shoes and for two years, really, didn't even have to go to him to get the shoes made again.
But one day, when he went, he saw that one of his two shops had a signboard of a different name—yes, he too was a shoemaker and made shoes for the royal family—and there in the empty window outside, in the empty window of his splendid shoes. That they weren't even three or four pairs. The shop was left alone, so it looked even more dark, smaller and like a ditch.
The smell of leather had also thickened.
But that wooden chair was still lying like that. I went and sat on it, but it didn't take as long as it used to, today after that long a face peeped from above and then after living with the same silipers, he finally stood in front of me, "squatting" on living with the lumber of the wood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hua and staring at me from the rusty armpit asked- “Mr….isn’t it?”
"Yes, yes, I am." I said hesitantly, "But Mr. Gasler, your shoes don't break! Look, its appearance has not deteriorated yet. Saying that, I put my foot forward. He took a look at my shoes.
"Yes! He said, "But people do not want to have a good shoe."
To avoid his glare and complaints, I asked hurriedly, "But what have you done to your shop?"
He replied calmly – “A lot was spent. Why do you need a shoe?"
I immediately ordered three pairs, although I only needed two pairs and just left quickly. But I cannot say exactly how he got the impression that in my heart I have not so much antipathy towards him, or towards him himself as against the ideal of his shoes. But I understand no one would want to think that way, because when I went to a bar a few days ago, I remember thinking, "'Ugh! will also be; But I can never leave that poor person - that's how everything goes.
It may have been his elder brother."
But, I knew that his elder brother did not have the courage to keep his eyes silent on my side.
So it gave me some satisfaction to see that it was his elder brother in the shop, who then came waving a piece of leather in his hand.
"Say, are you good Mr. Gassler?" I asked
"Yes, I am fine," he replied, "but our elder brother is dead.
And then I realized hey! It is not that, but now how much. It looks old and moldy too! But before that I had never heard him say anything about his brother.
Hearing this, I was very surprised and shocked. I said softly... "Oops! It is a matter of great sadness."
"Yes" he replied. "He was a very good man, he was making a very good shoe. But he died."
And he put his hand on his middle scalp, from which his hair had blown off a lot, just as his brother had blown away. This gesture made me feel as if he was telling the cause of his elder brother's death.
“He could not bear the loss of another shop. You need a shoe”, said Usain, raising the piece of leather in his hand towards me and said, “Kitna khubshoorat hai.”
Without hearing anything, I ordered many shoes. After a long time, he came in the form, but he had never made my shoes so good. They could not be torn torn, they could not be broken. After a few days I went out.
After more than a year I came back to London. And the first shop I went to was my old friend Gassler's. I had left a sixty-year-old man, but returned and saw a 75-year-old man: tired, weary and trembling. This time he didn't really recognize me.
I said sadly, "Mr. Gasler, oh! Those shoes of yours turned out great! Look, I've been wearing the same shoe all the time traveling outside, and now look, it's not even half worn, is it?
For a long time he gazed at my shoes—the only shoes made of Russian leather—and his posture became steady and serious.
He put his hand on the shoe near my ankle and said-
"Does it fit in here? I remember we had a lot of trouble making them.
I assured "No no, it's perfect."
"You want a shoe? Hum bahut jaldi bana dega, sitting empty handed – nothing is working.”
I said, "Yes, yes, I want all kinds of pairs."
“We will make a new type of shoe. Your foot is big isn't it", he said slowly and slowly drew the measure of my foot on the paper with a pencil, and in the meantime, raising his face towards me only once, said-
"Did we tell you that our brother is dead?" His body was just a skeleton of bones. Seeing him was very painful for me, so I quickly left from there.
One evening when the parcel of new shoes arrived, I took off the Russian leather shoes. I opened the parcel and took out four pairs and placed them in a row.
Then one by one I started wearing them. There was no doubt that he had never made such fine leather shoes.
In a couple I found his bill kept. The total cost of the shoes was the same as what he had always taken modestly, but he asked for the total price immediately. I was very surprised to know this, because at first he never sent the bill before the third month. I immediately went downstairs and cut a check and immediately put it in the letterbox with my own hand.
A week later, as I was walking down his shop street, I thought let's say to Mr. Gassler that this time your shoes are the best. But when I reached in front of his shop, I saw that the signboard with his name was missing, but in the window still kept the same janani pair, patent leather pumpshoes and black riding boots. I got very worried and went inside. Those two small shops were merged into one big shop; A young Englishman was present in it.
"Mr. Gasler?" I asked He looked at me. There was a strange modesty and modesty in his eyes.
"No sir," he replied, "but I am in your service to do whatever you command. We have taken this shop completely. You must have seen our name in the shop before. We make shoes for some very rich men.”
"Yeah, right," I said. "But where's Mr. Gassler?"
Oh" he replied. "He is dead."
"died! But only on the last Wednesday, he has made these new shoes and sent them to me.
"Hi!" He said, "It's a sad story! Poor people died of hunger!?
"Hey, God!"
“The doctors used to say that they died in solitude.
And you see, they used to work even then.
And used to run the shop! And this was the condition of the work - he used to do all the work alone - not allowing anyone to touch his shoes. He used to spend so much time on one order that the poor customer used to get bored. In the same way all his customers broke down and then he sat and worked day and night - I can say that no one in the whole city of London made a better shoe than him, and never can. But look at the competition, how great it is. But he never advertised his goods; He used to apply the best leather and did all the work with his own hands and this is the result of that. What more can be expected from this?”
"But starving-"
“This may be some poetry – as the saying goes, but I myself know that he should stick to his shoes till the very end. I used to see them working day and night. I have never seen them eating food in time; Haven't seen him sleeping, never had a camouflage in his house. They didn't even have a fire to heat them in the night. How did he survive for so many years, I wonder. But that man was only one.
There is no other shoe maker in London to make his shoes!”
"Yeah," I said with a heavy heart, "he made great shoes."
Having said this, I immediately turned and went out of the shop, because I did not want to show my tears to the young man.