While examining the poetics a mundane object, one finds how a pair of shoes becomes a profound philosophical and social metaphor across Vincent van Gogh's painting "A Pair of Shoes" (1886) and two Hindi poems titled "Jute" by Kedarnath Singh and Ashok Vajpeyi.
Kedarnath Singh's poem presents shoes left behind after a gathering disperses: "The gathering dispersed / Shoes remained / In the empty hall, two stunned and sad / Dust-filled shoes / Shoes with gaping mouths whose heir / There was none." The watchman discovers these abandoned shoes and marvels that after all the speakers' debates, only the shoes remain—speaking more eloquently through their silence than any speech.
Singh transforms ordinary objects into carriers of truth. The "gaping-mouthed shoes" symbolize the marginalized classes—those for whom gatherings are organized but who remain heirless and forgotten once debates end. The "dust" signifies their labor and struggle. The empty hall represents power centers where grand statements are made, leaving no impact on actual suffering. The watchman, himself from the working class, recognizes this tragedy.
The poem's craft employs minimalism, personification, and contrast between speakers' words and shoes' silent testimony. Time here is immediate and political—linear movement from commotion to silence, revealing how transient debates are compared to permanent deprivation.
Ashok Vajpeyi's poem offers a contrasting vision: "The shoes were there / There were no feet in them / From time to time fungus grew in them / Because no one wore them / ... / Then one day they disappeared, / Perhaps seizing the opportunity in the darkness / They themselves walked towards the end." Here, shoes belong to a departed father. No dust or mud soils them—they are preserved as sacred memory, not witnesses to labor. Fungus and hardness depict time's slow decay.
The shoes' eventual disappearance represents grief's resolution and memories fading. Vajpeyi's shoes are carriers of heritage, not class struggle. Time is static and historical—preservation leading to decay, culminating in dissolution. The emptiness is existential, arising from permanent absence.
The two poems reveal fundamental differences. Kedarnath Singh presents public and political reality with dust-filled shoes representing active struggle, where shoes speak and seek an heir, depicting social orphanhood. His emptiness is sonic and external, time functions as social stir, and the focus is on marginalized society.
In contrast, Ashok Vajpeyi presents personal and memorial reality with dust-free shoes representing stagnant memory, where shoes disappear silently having lost purpose due to the father's absence. His emptiness is existential and internal, time functions as personal emptiness, and the focus is on elite and middle-class memory.
Van Gogh painted five versions of old shoes in 1886, using impasto technique to create rough texture. The twisted leather, loose laces, and worn soles depict a laborer's hard life. He reportedly walked in them through mud before painting, wanting authenticity. Earthy browns merge shoes with soil. Van Gogh's shoes share with Singh's the "dust-filled" quality and gaping mouths—both document labor and struggle. With Vajpeyi, Van Gogh shares stillness and the object's dignified isolation, with dark backgrounds echoing Vajpeyi's dissolution into darkness.
Philosophical dimensions enrich these interpretations. Martin Heidegger read Van Gogh's shoes as revealing the "equipmental being" of a peasant woman's world—the toilsome tread, silent call of earth, anxious mortality. This resonates with Singh's dust-filled shoes speaking the laborer's truth, while Vajpeyi's shoes have lost this "protected belonging" to any living world.
Jacques Derrida deconstructed both Heidegger's and Meyer Schapiro's readings, insisting the painting offers no stable restitution of ownership. The unlaced, gaping shoes mark the constitutive absence of any wearer, resonating powerfully with Singh's "heirless" shoes and Vajpeyi's disappearing ones—both refuse to restore a lost subject, exposing the groundlessness of meaning. Vedanta Desika's Padukasahasram from the fourteenth century provides an ancient parallel: when Rama is absent, his sandals become the throne's authority. Shoes as "presence in absence" connects Sanskrit tradition to modern poetry—real history resides where marks of struggle remain.
Key elements across the three works reveal deeper meanings. Regarding dust and soil, Van Gogh treats soil as creative force and peasant's dignity, Singh treats dust as social evidence and the working class's uniform, while Vajpeyi's absence of soil marks grief and departure from earth. Regarding silence, Van Gogh's silence is commemorative of sacred fatigue, Singh's is explosive with untold protest, and Vajpeyi's is nirvanic with invisibility and dissolution. Regarding personification, Van Gogh's shoes embody weariness, Singh's become political agents speaking truth, and Vajpeyi's gain independent will choosing dissolution.
Regarding time, Van Gogh's time is solid and visible experience, Singh's holds history's present demanding justice, and Vajpeyi's flows toward infinity and oblivion. Regarding power and resistance, Van Gogh resists through choosing dignity for the discarded, Singh resists through unwanted presence challenging the system, and Vajpeyi resists through renunciation—choosing departure against time's power.
These three creations form a complete philosophical circle. Van Gogh's shoes connect us to timeless labor's dignity. Kedarnath Singh's confront us with today's truth—the gap between political discourse and lived reality. Ashok Vajpeyi's leave us on the journey to infinity, where memories dissolve. Through an ordinary object, all three explore how human presence manifests most powerfully in absence.
The shoes speak not despite being empty, but because they are empty—their gaping mouths, worn soles, and eventual disappearance become the most eloquent testimony to human struggle, grief, and dignity. Whether on canvas or in verse, shoes emerge not as mere footwear but as monuments to the truth that outlasts speeches, the labor that builds civilization, and the memories that define our humanity.
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*Professor & former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author's original paper
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