Shoes the world over organised continental conferences as well as a world meet on December 15, 2008 to register their anger and resentment against their “gross misuse” a day earlier in the capital of Iraq. They passed a strong-worded resolution protesting against the “insult” caused to the shoe family by a “small-time” scribe, Mr. Muntadhar Al-Zaidi. “The footwear fraternity feels outraged at the humiliation ….”
Notwithstanding the hurt caused to the finer sensitivities of the aggrieved, the truth is Mr. Al-Zaidi has turned into a trail-blazer, an icon and a model overnight. How? What “how”? Each and every shoe-thrower, here and everywhere – be it the one who targeted the Chinese premier, Mr. Wen Jibao or the Iranian President, Mr. Ahmadinejad or an Indian Supreme Court Judge, Mr. Justice Arijit Pasayat or Bharat’s home misister Mr. P. Chidamberam or its daydreaming Prime Minister Mr.Lal. Krishan Advani – claims he has been inspired by Al-Zaidi.
Today if the residential premises of a corrupt tycoon is raided by the Income Tax department, he feels elated, boasts to that effect among his friends so that black sheep among them, may convey it to his foes.
For different reasons, widowhood is also today a “status symbol” so happens to be the case with spinsters. I really do not know it, for similar reasons, the price-tag of widowers or chronic bachelors has also registered an upward curve. In this dubious backdrop, my hunch is, sooner or later, rather sooner than later, shoes thrown at speakers would be treated like trophies. The targets would advise their grand-children to preserve then like prized possessions for generations to come.
Throwing shoes at women speakers, I feel, should be considered “bad manners”. Decency demands only “Chappals” should be lobbed in their direction. The Congress ladies as well as their saffron counterparts would appreciate if only “wooden sandals” are preferred for them. Yes: respect should be shown to their respective ideologies and sensibilities.
Shoe, in history, had always its uses. The feudal, the chieftains, the police officers, the husbands, everybody who was somebody had used (or misused) shoes with impunity and with the least compunction. Shoe is the easiest, cheapest and nearest tool to give vent to less-than-noble feelings. Its latest use is the lightest use. Otherwise its past is punctuated with heavier duties. But in ultimate analysis, the most telling use of a shoe is its lighter use.
Like this half-backed and half-hearted camp-followers Mr. Muntadhar Al-Zaidi threw his 8-No shoes with single minded devotion behind which were about one million Iraqi casualties. There is virtually no family in Iraq which has not lost at least one of its members in the unjustifiably inflicted war. Around five million Iraqis were driven out of their hearths and homes. This is the brief background of shoes thrown at the ever-smiling generic Dracula.
While lobbing the first shoe, Al-Zaidi said: “This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss”. Throwing his other shoe, al-Zaidi remarked: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”
It is not that the regional and the world conferences of shoes did not understand the pain and the agony of Al-Zaidi and the Iraqis. The real anguish of the shoes lay in their feeling of degradation and desecration. By a voice-vote they disapproved of their being thrown in the direction of a dirty, a sleaze, an evil, a profanity. To quote the resolution of the world shoe conference: after all, we shoes are a respectable commodity and have our own integrity, our own identity and our own self esteem. By throwing us in the direction of a profanity, an unholy effort has been made to bracket us with dirt and evil. We can never brook this mischief. Shoes of the world unite to erase off the unclean and uncouth from the surface of the earth.