The Professions We Lost

This morning I was pleasantly surprised to hear the loud call of a man who sharpens knives and scissors, in our residential locality. Carrying a wooden contraption on his frail shoulders onto which was affixed a grinding wheel for sharpening knives, he went around expectantly from door to door, offering his services…

Dressed in a shabby, ankle-length checked lungi and an off-white, frayed full-sleeved shirt that had definitely seen better days, the dark man with a weather-beaten look about him went about his work, with drooping shoulders and a defeated demeanor. I doubt if his visit to our locality was worth it. In these days, when knife sharpeners are readily available at any departmental store, I guess people like him may find it hard to make a living from their dying profession.

Come to think of it, these days, a lot of professions seem to be fast disappearing.

I remember that, until a couple of decades or so ago, just before the onset of the monsoons, men used to go around repairing umbrellas and bags.

Similarly, cobblers, too, with shabby bags filled with tools and spare parts, were a common sight as they sat in front of houses, repairing broken straps or soles and sometimes even reconstructing the whole slipper, which was often in pretty bad shape.

Then there were dusky Tamil ladies with toddlers in tow, who used to go around asking if households wanted their grinding stones redone (ammi kothal) or their copper vessels lined with lead (Eeyam pooshal), without which they could not be used for cooking.

Aluminium and stainless-steel vessels of all shapes and sizes were carted around on bicycles by vendors who often traded them for old clothes. My grandmother, like many other ladies of her time, had a hobby of buying such vessels from these people and took great pride in her collection!

I totally understand that evolution essentially means the old giving way to the new. Guess that is the order of Nature too. Or else how would we as a humanity develop?

But once in a while, when I see someone like this from the past, I can’t help taking pleasure in that little feeling of familiarity—a feeling that brings back the sights and sounds that dotted my childhood days.