A craft that is quietly and slowly vanishing from the pavements

Dedicated cobblers breathe life into footwear, struggling to sustain their craft in the face of dwindling business.

On a Saturday afternoon, in the searing heat, Lakshmi Selvam, 56, pushed a hand stitcher through a slipper and deftly pulled out the thread. A few quick stitches, and the strap was sewed to the sole and she collected ₹20 from her customer.

Be it giving a dash of shine with a polish or mending a snapped slipper, cobblers, like her, seated under a tree on a footpath, breathe a new lease of life into footwear. “Some days, the business is fairly good and some other days, it is poor. In the last 30 years since I got into this work after my marriage, I can see how the business has dwindled drastically in recent times,” she says.

Y. M. Srinivasan, 56, travels every day by bus from Red Hills to Anna Nagar West. He sits near a bus stop from 8 a.m. till 5 p.m. He doesn’t mind the commute because unless he goes to a busy location, there will barely be any business. “My father taught me this craft and I began doing it when I was about 16,” he adds. While working in the gruelling heat is exhausting, there will be some business during the summer, Mr. Srinivasan says. “Monsoon is a time that I dread. Barely anyone comes and I have to sustain by borrowing every other day,” he adds.

M. Ravikumar, 62, tried his hand at repairing fans, lights, and radios before becoming a cobbler in 1980. He learnt this craft from one of his acquaintances at Periamet and would get a weekly wage. He worked rigorously. With great difficulty, he began not only mending footwear but also making and selling it. “All that came to a grinding halt during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, I work as a cobbler at a shop at MMDA Colony and manage to run my family,” he adds.

With changing times and plummeting business, there are a few cobblers left in the city, he says. As people buy everything online at a throwaway price, they dispose their footwear of rather than repair it, he adds. “No one appreciates this craft. It is dying. But people will realise its value only when they won’t have the heart to discard an expensive pair of shoes or sandals,” he says.