We Indians have rather a complicated relationship with feet and footwear. On again, off again. No shoes in the house, definitely no shoes on the bed (those Hollywood movies make us shudder!), no shoes in religious places, endlessly washing your feet or someone else’s feet, and so on.

It may be surprising to discover that, over the centuries, Indians had all sorts of extremely elaborate footwear, not just the basic chappals we might assume they made do with.

A distinctly Indian type of footwear was the paduka, made of wood – or, if you were rich, silver or ivory – with just a large knob between the big toe and the next. Sounds uncomfortable! In the Ramayana, Bharat took Rama’s padukas and placed them on the throne to symbolise that his elder brother was still the king and he just the regent.

Important Buddhist texts like the Vinay Pitaka describe the Buddha forbidding his monks from wearing an astonishing variety of shoes so that they could focus on a simple lifestyle. It also shows us that ancient India had the most creative footwear! Some shoes described in ancient texts are laced boots, cotton-padded boots, shoes pointed with ram horns or goat horns, shoes with...

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