The Red and Gold Shoe
The Red and Gold Shoe part 5/7
The change began working from that very day. Now there is a way of wearing only one shoe so that nobody will suspect it is only half of a pair. Or better still, there is a way to make it appear that wearing only one is the most natural thing in the world, and the only reason why more people . don't do it is because other shoes are made for walking. This shoe was not.
Every evening Lata carried little Joseph Pinto out to a stone bench in the nearby park where he could watch the others play. It isn't a park really-only a half-hearted attempt at a park in the open space behind the shantytown where the city ends and the countryside begins. The statue in the center is of the man who first had the idea and gave the piece of land. But he died soon after and the rest of the money was spent on this statue, while the park was left unfinished. He is a tall stout figure of a man standing on a platform, and Momin Sheikh's pigeons, the sparrows, crows, and other birds have made a sorry mess of him. He is surrounded by a dozen or more small concrete posts from which it was planned to sling heavy chains, but the money was used up and everyone lost interest in the scheme. Janak Seth, he is called, and the children have made up a song that they sing as they play a game of their own around him:
