Of Slippers, Crocs, and Changing Times

Recently, I went to Ashoka Market—the same old place where we’ve been buying shoes and slippers for years. This time, my mission was simple: pick up a pair of blue slippers, the typical Bata ones, sturdy enough to counter the monsoon slush.

But oh my God—Ashoka Market has transformed! It now feels like a galaxy of almost 100 shoe shops, each trying to lure you with options so overwhelming that your old trusted slipper doesn’t even make it to the race anymore.

The youth today? They have moved on. The humble Bata slipper has been dethroned by the so-called new-age wonder: Crocs.

Now let me be honest. Crocs, to me, look exactly like the kind of footwear our local rickshaw wala used to wear back in the 80s. Only difference? Back then it cost 10 rupees, and today it costs ₹2500. Same holes, same ugly design, but now they call it premium lifestyle. Our RAM is too slow, our processor too weak to process this nonsense. Basically, Crocs are just a polymer experiment gone wrong—but marketed as fashion.

Out of curiosity, I asked my son if he’d like a pair. To my surprise—and slight relief—he chose the old-school slipper with tape. Perhaps DNA chemistry runs deeper than market trends.

That little moment threw me back to my own good old days. Back then, wearing a slipper itself was a privilege. Only a few kids could afford them, and we guarded our pairs like treasures. Outside temples, the risk was real: someone would deliberately exchange their old pair with your new one, all in the name of God-fearing devotion. Losing your slipper was almost a rite of passage!

And the durability? Ha! Slippers weren’t designed for the energy levels of kids in the 80s and 90s. Within days, the strap would snap. Buying new ones was impossible, so we turned into mechanical engineers overnight. Safety pins, cycle wires, matchsticks—you name it, we used it to perform open-heart surgery on those straps. The idea was simple: delay discovery by parents and postpone the inevitable slap by at least 24 hours.

Fathers had their own fix. Instead of buying new ones, they simply replaced the tape with whatever was available. The sole might be Bata, the strap from some local brand, but we wore it proudly—at least until our energy once again defeated the elasticity. This cycle repeated until the sole finally developed a hole big enough to embarrass our fathers in front of colleagues or relatives. That’s when, grudgingly, a new pair arrived.

Compare that with today’s generation. They don’t run wild in the rain playing football or burn themselves in the summer playing cricket. Their slippers aren’t stress-tested by muddy fields or temple thieves. So for them, Crocs may work. But if you drop those Crocs back in our times, they wouldn’t survive a week—neither against temple “chor log” nor against our free radical energy.

Times have changed, but for me, nothing beats the old slipper with tape. Affordable, sturdy, and full of stories—they carried our childhood, our mischief, and our memories. Crocs may be fashionable, but slippers?