Sculptures adorning the land’s places of worship in virtually all regions across its length and breadth by artisans whose identity is sadly lost in antiquity have almost preserved their original image over centuries but for the uncultured act of iconoclasts as recorded by chroniclers at different periods in the long history of the sub-continent. While the idols have been sculpted to reflect the beauty of various characters from head to foot as it were, figurines in the land’s epics, in a mix of divine and erotic postures, enduring their magnetic attraction to every kind of viewers in infinite numbers and still counting, one is obliged to point out that the artisans don’t seem to have included footwear of the characters, except in passing. However, the paintings of both the divinity chosen by sculptors as well as common people of the bygone past by artistes do show the characters wearing footwear of none-too-intricate designs, unlike those which are common sight in our times.

We are in an era witnessing bold and revealing multicoloured advertisements by producers of and traders in lingerie of both sexes in periodicals as well as on the small screen creating an unstoppable urge to indulge in their impulse buying. Even the one-time humble footwear is vying for space sought by the advertisers, what with glorifying the superiority of their respective brands, cost being of no concern, driven by the factor of status by wearing high-end products.

Footwear, no matter what it costs to its wearer and what rating it enjoys, has its enigmatic and stigmatic side, given the practice of disallowing entry to the premises of places of worship footwear on and also that of leaving the protective part of one’s attire outside the doorstep, a practice followed to this day widely, obviously for good reasons. Mysureans of a not-too-distant past were also required to enter the office of bureaucrats in high posts of the government not to wear footwear but leave it outside as a rule, again for good reason, namely, not to give scope for hurling footwear at dignitaries as it is reportedly happening occasionally in the country.

The idioms “The wearer knows where the shoe pinches,” and “The shoe is on the other foot” may assume deeper meaning in the backdrop of the just announced measure by the Tamil Nadu Government to replace the official shoes being worn by the fair-sex fraternity in the Police Department designed for men with a different one to suit the peculiar ergonomic feature of women staff. TN’s pioneering step in providing the best suited shoes to the fair-sex foot- soldiers of the State with a 33 percent presence in 1.2 lakh strong force may witness countrywide adoption, including Karnataka.