When the Shoe Fits

Khaleej Times (Life) / 15 March 2013

My flat feet that can walk only in a particular brand of footwear had a fancy for other people’s shoes. The tall kind, the stiletto sort, the open toes, closed ones — everything except the ones that they are destined to fit into.

Imagining myself in the another man’s (actually, woman’s) shoes has been an amusing distraction for me. There were many things that I wished I had been, many others that I wished I hadn’t been; roles that I wished I could revise to live the lives of other people, especially the illustrious and industrious ones.

For instance, if I were to be born again, I had wanted to be an investment banker-cum-author. There is something beguiling about these folks who crunch numbers for lunch and munch alphabets for supper; something romantic about the idea of being a banker by the day and a writer by the night and eventually a best seller by the morning after. Amish Tripathi recently landed the biggest signing amount ever for an Indian author, Chetan Bhagat continues to rake in the moolah for his highly ‘flick’-able texts, David Lender made a ‘tsunami’ of a fortune with his e-book, Ravi Subramanium made a banker out of God Himself…the tribe is growing and how! Seriously, do they teach creative writing in Business Schools?

When I saw my friend and former classmate take home a jolly good pay cheque from an MNC, I wished I could be like her. A working woman enjoying the professional roller coaster and leading a happily chugging family life, she has the best of both the worlds. Women like her who juggle business at home and work amaze me beyond words. A woman entrepreneur I met a while back as part of a freelance assignment is a powerhouse of hardcore professionalism. Living the high life and constantly on her toes, she is a go-getter, with precise ideas of what she wants out of life. I wished I was like her, knowing what I really wanted to do with my life and then knowing how to get there. Those were times when the feeling of acute inadequacy over powered and crushed the stay-at-home woman in me.

When I saw young reality show contestants sing, I wished I had taken music lessons and given my latent talent some chance to bloom. My voice has now gone down the drain and presently I am a match only to the monsoon ragas of toads and frogs.

Often when I saw Barkha Dutt, Christian Amanpour or Lyse Doucet on TV, I wished I had carried my talent as a scribe further and given my journalism degree some credence. I wished I had grilled and barbequed public figures with my questions. Now I try to wring answers out of a reticent husband who descends into diplomatic silence whenever he is carpet bombed with questions.

I marvelled at the eloquence of eminent orators and wished I could reel off expressions as easily. I drooled at the talent of my young nephew who runs public speaking courses and wondered if I must join Toastmasters just to fork myself out of the pits of inferiority. I wished I could ‘speak’ and not just ‘rattle’; be articulate and not be just verbose.

As ridiculous as it may sound, I wished I was in the shoes of all those I admired for all that they were, but I was not. I wished I could do many things that others did and be them, until one day a friend casually remarked, “I wish I could be like you. Busy, doing things that you so love to do, at your own pace and will. You are one blessed soul. I am jealous of you.”

It was a truly defining moment for me.  After a whirlwind tour of fancy footwear stores, my feet returned to my own shoes, where it fit snugly.