Once during a conversation, Vallabhbhai said
to Bapu, “There used to be a good cobbler over here. But they are hard to
find these days, so I sent away my shoes”. Bapu replied, “I would have
fetched some leather and tried if I can still use the skill I learnt. You
know that I used to make very good shoes. A sample of my feat has been kept
in Sodpur’s Khadi Pratishthan (institute). Sorabji Adajania had been here.
Satyanand loved him deeply. So Adajania wrote me, “I would like you to make
a pair of shoes for Satyanand.” I did send him one, but the extremely modest
Bengali person as he was, he said, ‘these shoes are not be worn; they are to
be worshipped.’ He never used them. He preserved them and then sent them to
Khadi Pratishthan’s museum.” Mahadevbhai had just finished writing new
chapters of autobiography for Oxford University, the same day. Bapu checked
all of them.
On remembering this incident Bapu said,
“Mahadev, why is there no mention of my shoe making anywhere in this brief
edition? It ought to be there. It was a good occupation at the Tolstoy farm.
I made shoes for so many children there. Kalenbech had learnt it at the
Trapist Monastry and then taught me.”