So, this whole ‘indian foot love’ thing, it’s not quite what you might think, not for me anyway. It wasn’t some kind of instant enlightenment or anything. It actually all kicked off because my feet were just giving me hell. Always have, to be honest.
I’d gone through stacks of shoes, you know? The expensive ones that promised the earth, cheap ones, even tried that whole barefoot trend around my house. My feet just weren’t having any of it. Then a mate of mine, she rocks up from a trip to India. And she’s got these… well, sandals, I guess you’d call them. But they were different. Juttis, she said one pair were. Kolhapuris, another. They looked comfy, and honestly, pretty cool.
That got me thinking. I had to get my hands on some. So, my ‘practice’, if you want to call it that, turned into this epic online quest. And let me tell you, trying to find the real deal, good quality ones, from outside India back then? It was a proper headache. I’m talking hours, days, just glued to the screen, scrolling through endless sites, trying to figure out what was what from tiny, blurry pictures. You’d think buying shoes would be simple. Nah. Not these.
And the sizing! Don’t even get me started on the sizing. It was a complete lottery. Every seller had their own made-up chart. Some were UK, some US, some just ‘small, medium, large’ – which is totally useless for feet, right? I ended up with one pair that might’ve fit my kid niece and another pair so big my dad could’ve rowed a boat with them. Seriously.
So, yeah, my practice involved a lot of waiting. And sending stuff back. I got real good at taping up packages, let me tell you. The fella at my local post office, he started giving me this look, like, ‘Oh, here comes the Indian shoe guy again with another return’. It was almost a running gag.
But, you know, I stuck with it. Eventually, after what felt like a lifetime, I stumbled on a couple of sellers who actually knew their stuff. And when those first pairs landed on my doorstep, the ones that actually fit and felt good… man, it was something else. They weren’t just shoes. They were comfy, they looked amazing, and they felt like they had a bit of history to them, you know?
It made me stop and think a bit. We’re always chasing the latest brands, the newest hype over here. But there’s all this incredible craftsmanship out there, stuff people have been making for ages, that just works. And sometimes, getting to that good stuff isn’t a walk in the park. It takes a bit of digging, a bit of effort. A bit like that awful job I had a few years back – they sold me a dream and dumped me in a mess. You just gotta plough through, learn the hard way, and sometimes, you stumble onto something genuinely decent. Or at least you learn to appreciate the graft, even if it’s just for what you stick on your feet.
