People at large, including me, tend to take things for granted and feel that the abundance, served on a platter, will always be there for us…I guess we all must compare our lives with Dharmendra Kumar, a 22-year-old cobbler, who sits on the main sector road, close to the Vyapar Kendra and sets up his shack under a tree by 10 am and is there all day long, braving dry heat, humidity, and sultry weather on a noisy and a dusty road, all this to make barely 400 to 500 rupees in his 10 hours of toil! “I work on all 7 days of the week, I haven’t taken a holiday ever, neither do I leave my shop unattended at any time of the day,” says Dharmendra. “I have five sisters, out of which, the two elder ones have been married and the other three are still young…”
Dharmendra at a very young age was put in a local government school by his father Ramdular, who was also a cobbler and used to operate from the same place but after decades of work, he had to hand over his profession to his only son. “I’m not too sure about how long I was a student because, except numbers, I can’t read, nor write anything. I started working when I was just about 14 years of age. This hammer, this anvil (called a Farma in their profession) these needles, and the awl used to be my dad’s property. “I am managing well. You can’t find a cobbler go out of his profession, till he has but two fingers and a thumb on each hand,” says he with a smirk. “We are a family of cobblers – my brothers-in-law, my cousins, and a few relatives are all cobblers and, over the past 5 decades, have mastered this art… It’s the place that we work from that creates an identity for us, we do our best not to shift to another place.
We are petty Karigars. I can barely manage to make both ends meet, over which, I am obliged to save more than half of what I make in a day – to fulfill my responsibility of a big brother of three younger, unmarried sisters.” And yet, says he with a wet eye, “The local policemen trouble me many times and take away my equipment… Shouldn’t they be running after the bigger fish and allow us to earn our basic, daily bread..?” He sits on the floor, over a plastic poster of some food court, displays his tools, polishes, brushes, and hangs on a line shoelaces of different colours, cushioning soles, and straps of rubber slippers.
Pointing to a shed covered with corrugated sheets with no provision of electricity, he says “This is where I sleep” and showing a black trunk of solid wood out in the open, he says, “This box is my vault, where, at the close of work, all objects of my shop fit in” He bathes in the open, uses the public toilets of the Vyapar Kendra and eats whatever he can get within his limited, per-meal budget.
“My dream is to own a shop of my own, something which I can lock and keep my things secured. This will give me a better atmosphere of work and, I’m sure, I’ll be able to do much better in life..”
