Mumbaiwale: Tales from the shoe attic

What’s life like when your office is a stockroom above a shoe shop?

Balkrishna Shankar Mandavkar is the shoe salesman you never see. He operates out of the hole in the ceiling – gatekeeper to the 20,000 pairs of sandals, sneakers and stilettos in the stockroom loft of Shoe Bazar’s Grant Road store. He’s the one who will translate the floor salesmen’s cryptic codes, to toss down shoes in the size and colour you need.

Balkrishna Mandavkar operates out of the hole in the ceiling – gatekeeper to the 20,000 pairs of sandals, sneakers and stilettos in the stockroom loft of Shoe Bazar’s Grant Road store. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)

Mandavkar, 55, has worked 10-hour days for 25 years. But he has a better workplace than most. Shoe Bazar’s 2,000-square-foot store has a 2,000-square-foot upper level. It’s quiet, clean, high enough to stand in, and as organised as a school library. “Storage follows the same plan as the display zones below,” he says. Shoeboxes, shelved all the way to the ceiling, are sorted into gents, ladies and children’s, and organised by size and design. Nine holes in the floor let him and a colleague pass them on to waiting salesmen in each section.

Mandavkar, 55, has worked 10-hour days for 25 years. But he has a better workplace than most. Shoe Bazar’s 2,000-square-foot store has a 2,000-square-foot upper level. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)

The day is long but the job’s not complicated. At the most, quick multiplication is needed to work out that a child’s size 5 foot corresponds to a shoe size 20. “But you must learn the language of shoe selling,” he says. “We have to give customers what they want even when we don’t have it. The salesmen and I talk in code to indicate if a size or style is out of stock and we’re tossing down alternatives.” It’s a simple substitution cypher: Twai for white, Laboo for blue, Darey for red. Mandavkar, who studied until class 7 and previously worked for a fan-belt manufacturer, says he likes his job. In the run-up to Diwali, there’s no time for a lunch break until early evening. But the average day allows him to sit by the holes and enjoy the air-conditioning, radio and conversation from below. He’s seen styles come and go – few of them more popular than the transparent heels from a decade ago.

He’s the last of the shoe-librarians. As new stores switch to lower-ceilings, smaller inventories and backroom storage, there’s little need for a hole in the ceiling. Mandavkar owns only two pairs of shoes. “Size six; plus slippers.” he says.

JESUS & SIDDHIBABA JOIN FORCES

Taking Worli’s Pandurang Budhkar Road? Stop by the tiny Gothic-Revival shrine at Gopal Nagar. The stone structure holds a crucifix and bas-reliefs of Christ and the Madonna. Twin bollards indicate that boats were moored here before the area was reclaimed in 1784. But the sign reads Jai Siddhibaba, at the back are rows of bells, and agarbattis burn in niches meant for candles. What’s going on?

Temple bells, crucifix, posts to moor boats and niches for incense, this shrine has it all. (Rachel Lopez /HT photo)

“The shrine was originally Christian but is now also consecrated to Siddhibaba, a local sage,” says Vishnu Arlekar who runs the adjacent flower shop. Arlekar has lived in Mumbai for 68 years and remembers Baba as a quiet mystic who walked around with a large dog. A small temple was erected across the road when he passed away in the 1960s. The two shrines merged during a spate of redevelopment in the previous decade.

The shrine is seen as doubly powerful. Pujas are held on the full moon and new moon. “Devotees break enough coconuts to fill three sacks,” says Arlekar’s nephew Rakesh. “All religions are welcome. This is a wish-granting shrine, and everyone’s wishes are ultimately the same.

Rachel.Lopez@htlive.com