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:
Janak Rajah went to Dilli,
Brought back thirteen bowls of gold,
Thirteen bowls for thirteen children,
Some still hungry, some still cold.
The one who is chosen to be the rajah climbs onto the platform and takes his place between the broad feet of Janak Seth, holding a long stick in his hand. The others skip around and sing the jingle. When the rajah brings his stick down to strike the closest post, there is a scramble to get to any one of the posts surrounding the statue. There is much laughter and yelling, much shoving, pushing, and hair pulling along with wrenching at each other's clothes. Arguments often grow so bitter that some don't speak to each other for days afterward because all those who don't get to a pillar and cling to it for dear life are declared "out" by the rajah. However, in the next general scramble they usually get right back into the game. And so it goes, endlessly.
Lata had never been chosen rajah and so she naturally thought it was a silly game. "It's the stupidest game I ever saw and I refuse to play it," she said since she wasn't given any place in the playing of it. "Yes," echoed little Joseph, to whom all such games had to seem silly, "it's the stupidest game I ever saw." So the two of them always pretended to be more interested in watching the big boys playing marbles or tipcat.
Continue The Red and Gold Shoe part 6/7
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