sufi · Day 144 · Week 21
The Cobbler's Hands
The same hands that will hold your baby are already holding cups, doors, papers, faces — every small touch tonight is rehearsal.
These hands stitch the king's sandal. These hands also fold in prayer. They are the same hands.
In the lanes of Banaras, a little away from the river, in a quarter where the smell of fresh leather mixed with the smell of cooking, there sat a cobbler named Ravidas. His shop was a low stone platform under a neem tree. His tools were few — an awl, a curved knife, a small hammer, a coil of thread soaked in beeswax. His customers came from every corner of the city, because Ravidas had the gift of making a sandal that fit the foot of the one it was made for, and only that one.
Kings sent for him. Pandits walked past his platform with their eyes on the sky. Ravidas only smiled and worked. Stitch by stitch. Loop by loop. He hummed as he worked, soft songs that nobody had taught him, songs about a river that flowed inside him and never dried.