Friday, February 23, 2007

Feet larger than a Foot

I have something in common with Bipasha Basu and Esha Deol. All three of us have large feet. (We have something else in common too - we are all muscular !)

The size of my feet (thankfully it has stopped growing now) is 14. It had shot beyond 12 when I was in 8th itself. This has led to a series of unusual predicaments for me. Initially, when I was in school and brown leather shoes were compulsory, I had to make do, till I passed out of school, with a really old pair of shoes whose leather had stretched enough to fit me. However, I could not find a pair of sports shoes or sandals of my size in the whole of Bombay and Pune. As far as I know, as of now, footwear beyond size 12 isn't available in most places. It wasn't as if you couldn't get shoes at all - you did, but either they were of bad quality or they were custom-made and ugly !

There are only two advantages of having gargantuan sized feet. Firstly, the chances of your footwear getting stolen are very tiny. Who will want to steal my sandals - they are double the size of most sandals, and occupy an unbelievably large amount of space. Secondly, large feet provide free temporary air-conditioned sitting lounges.

A few years ago, me and my family had gone to Simla, and on our way, we stopped for a couple of days at Delhi. After seeing Lodhi gardens, India gate, the Lotus temple, etcetara, we had nothing else to do. So we decided to see the real Delhi. We went to Palika bazaar, Nerula's and just walked around Connaught place and Ring road. We were tired and just wanted to sit for sometime before making our way back to our hotel. Then, I came up with an economically viable solution ! So confidant was I of not getting footwear of my size, (after years of shoe-searching), that we went to the nearest shoes store, and asked for shoes of my size. Now, the shop keeper wasn't willing to admit immediately that he didn't have shoes of my size. (they always do that.. and we wanted to capitalize on that) So, they pretended to search for shoes, in the meantime trying to engage our interest in other things. Blah, blah, blah ... basically we got what we wanted - the comfort of a soft seat and an a/c. The rest is history ... !

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