Odds and Ends: The Hawai Chappal

A monthly column about miscellaneous things, curated by Palash Krishna Mehrotra

Our homes have transformed. The Uptron TV has been upgraded toa flat screen and the 2-in-1 has made way for the home theatre. But the hawai chappal is still there, hanging in there with the pajama.

We segregate things into the pure and the profane. The spiritual and the dirty. The slipper slips in everywhere. I remember my mother would admonish me for roaming around in the house in my shoes but the chappal could go anywhere. To the utter horror of my grandparents, once from the toilet to the kitchen.

Our fancy leather shoes sing a song of a dignified us. “Saala mein toh sahab ban gaya. Yeh boot mera dekho, yeh suit mera dekho, jaisa gora koi London ka”. Our shoes are our best foot forward as we play out our well-defined roles: The boss, the playboy, the executive. Lace yourself into the shoe and look the part till you get home.

The chappals, however, allow us to shape shift, as we slip in and out of roles in the Indian societal eco-system. The open design of the chappal enables us to quickly slip out of them when needed.

Fufaji is suddenly leaving for Mussoorie, take them off and touch his feet!Our chappals respect the fluid, liminal nature of our identities. They help us cross thresholds of various kinds. To suddenly be ‘nanga pair’, the pious us, we quickly take them off. Genuflecting and taking prasad at the satsang, just slip them off!

Our chappals are for the evanescent us. Slippers allow us to seamlessly transit from the tribal to the domesticated. From the unshaven, barefoot, deranged homebody to respectable enough to go the sabzi mandi.

As we flip-flop around in them, our slippers suggest we are comfortable in our own skin. The laidback confidence of showing our feet, tufts of hair, misshapen nails and all. The chappals are like the ‘kachhas’ of footwear. A comfortable state of undress.

Eventually, the chappals provide us a sense of swathed comfort. The hawai chappal is the tropics answer to the leg warmers. They are all-weather comforters. In the winter, we wear them with our mojey and boldly strut around as Eskimoes may in boots of Caribou fur.

The shoes can only be envious of the versatility of the hawai chappal. I have witnessed kids wear their slippers in their hands like gloves and dive like Nayan Mongia; and, at other times, use it in fights to slap people.

Our chappals eventually become the extension of our feet. We start sinking into them.The white base of the slipper giving away to the blue, as we ghisao the chappal. Over time, our chappals take on the shape of the soles of our feet, forming a personalized mould, a receptacle for our feet to safely snuggle into.

I wait for the day when a town square will have a statue of an aam aadmi scratching his behind, standing proudly in his hawai chappal.