The Sockah-Wallah
‘MAMA!... MAMA!... WHERE IS THE DAMNED SOCKAH-WALLAH?’
21 year old miss Kriti was in a foul mood as she brushed her beautiful, long, dark hair in front of her bedroom-cabinet mirror. She was, naturally, anxious to look her best for her imminent rendezvous with her upper-caste, male friends and suitors in her local Mumbai night-club, and yet her family’s sock-servant or ‘sockah-wallah’ was nowhere to be found. She had already chosen her boots for the evening, but where were her socks?
Her mother’s voice came up the stairs and into miss Kriti’s bedroom:
‘I am not knowing, my darling! Have you tried calling for him?’
‘YES!...’ shouts back an increasingly irate miss Kriti – a well-educated, as well as very pretty, young Indian woman, but spoilt rotten even at the best of times; and a veritable young-female tyrant at the worst of times! ‘…THE DAMNED, IMPUDENT, LAZY FELLOW IS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN. JUST WAIT UNTIL I GET MY HANDS ON HIM! HE SHALL SOON BE FEELING THE STING OF MY CANE, ISN’T IT?’
She could, of course, instead of wallowing in her self-righteous indignation at the unavailability of the sock-servant, simply go over to her nearby, personal sock drawer herself and choose, and then put on, a pair of socks to match her pre-selected, shiny black leather, spike-heeled and pointy-toed, zip-up ankleboots. But the sweet and lazy miss Kriti was not inclined to do so.
And why should she? After all, her upper-caste family employed a sockah-wallah for just such an eventuality – to service the female family members’ hosiery. So why keep a sock-servant, and go to all the expense of feeding him with sloppy seconds and clothing him in rags, if you end up having to fetch your own socks for your feet?
Miss Kriti was right to be angry – and her overly-indulgent mother, madam Lekha, bizarrely felt the need to apologise herself to her angry daughter for the sockah-wallah’s, hopefully only temporary, disappearing act:
‘I am being most sorry, my darling! Please to be sending him to me also for severe punishment when you are finding him!’
Humph! Thanks for nothing, mama, thought miss Kriti to herself! So you’re going to whip him after I do? Big deal! I want my bootsocks brought to me, and I want them NOW!
‘SOCKAH-WALLAH! SOCKAH-WALLAH! COME HERE THIS INSTANT!’ she screams again at the top of her petulant, spoilt Indian-girl voice.
……………………………………………………………………….
The unfortunate sockah-wallah was, in fact, only a couple of sweet feminine feet away, in the bedroom of miss Sohni – miss Kriti’s elder sister. He was dutifully massaging a dozing miss Sohni’s socked feet, as he had been ordered to start doing over 3 hours ago now!
She had been awake at the time of ordering him, of course – but his ministrations to her sweaty-white-socked feet had just been so relaxing and soothing as he knelt by them at the end of her opulent bed, that she had fallen asleep.
The sockah-wallah hadn’t minded, even though he now has sore knees, as he loves to massage miss Sohni’s socked feet. Her feet are nearly always smelly as she, like her younger sister, prefers style over practicality when it comes to her Indian-girl footwear, and therefore she too will wear socks and expensive, designer, heavy boots even in the height of the Indian summer (rather than, for example, the relatively cheap and modest, flat, brown leather, strappy sandals on bare feet that their mother and grandmother routinely wear) just to impress the local Indian boys – though, it must be admitted, even the girls’ mother has now taken to wearing socks in order to keep her middle-aged feet warm at night, and socks and boots to keep them dry during the monsoon season.
Well, she might as well do since her two daughters had insisted that she employ a fulltime, household sockah-wallah for them!
Such was the influence of a Gynarchy-education on the two girls, and it is indeed probably because both girls were either being educated (in the case of miss Kriti), or had been educated (in the case of miss Sohni), in the much colder climes of the Gynarchy that there was also an element of unfamiliarity on their part with open-toed sandals on bare feet. Their study abroad also helped to explain their predilection for European-style boots and socks throughout the year! They feel naked without them, even in steamy and hot India!
That’s not to say, however, that miss Sohni and her younger sister, Kriti, totally neglect their bare feet. Far from it – both girls have regular pedicures, performed by the family pedicure-slave, but he is one step up from the sockah-wallah on the servant-hierarchy, since the sockah-wallah, being of a lower-caste even than the pedicure-slave, is absolutely forbidden to touch the bare feet of his upper-caste, Indian, female betters, and must restrict himself to their socks and/or tights!
Nevertheless, as he gently fondles the sweaty, white socks of the still somnolent miss Sohni whilst kneeling by the end of her smooth, brown, miniskirted legs as she lies back on her bed, the humble, elderly sockah-wallah can clearly see the bright red, painted toenails of his young Indian mistress peeking through the well-worn and sweat-moistened material of her short, cotton socks. The thin, white cotton socks fail to hide miss Sohni’s pretty, painted toenails completely from view, just as they fail to retain her stinky footsweat from smell; sweet, young-womanly foot perspiration which, over the last three most pleasing hours of gentle sock-rubbing servitude, has now largely transferred itself onto his wizened old, sockah-wallah hands and fingers.
Such an honour and a privilege for a humble sockah-wallah – to have one’s beautiful, young Indian mistress’s socksweat all over your maleslave hands. To have your unworthy, male hands reek of her dainty, socked feet!
The incorrigible sockah-wallah deliberately sniffs his hands as he lowers his face towards his sleeping beauty’s white-anklesocked feet ostensibly in order to better examine that which he must attend to – her dirty socks. But, of course, even the humble, uneducated, illiterate and unskilled sockah-wallah is perfectly capable of smelling and looking at the same time, and so he enjoys examining all the little brownish-yellow sweat stains on the soles of miss Sohni’s soft, white, but well-worn, sneaker-socks – caused by the inner linings of her leather boots reacting with the fresh foot-moisture on her socks. He fervently hopes that some of those glorious, yellowy-brown, girlsock sweat-stains will have rubbed off onto his fingers!
‘SOCKAH-WALLAH! SOCKAH-WALLAH! YOU IMPUDENT FOOL! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?’
The piercing voice of miss Sohni’s younger sister coming from the bedroom next door is the only thing spoiling the intimate scene of the dutiful slave worshipping his sleeping mistress’s socks. Slave sockah-wallah is actually quite annoyed at the verbal intrusion into his paradise, though he isn’t, of course, allowed to show it! That self-obsessed minx, miss Kriti, can be such a demanding little madam at times; treats him like he was her personal sock-servant – which he is not! He is the sock-slave of the whole female family!
And what’s a pathetic sockah-wallah to do in such circumstances, when he is on his hands and knees already obeying the orders of one family member, who just so happens to have fallen asleep, whilst another family member also requires his sock-related services? Is he just to stop rubbing miss Sohni’s socked feet, without permission, and risk her justifiable young-womanly wrath when she wakes up and finds her feet unattended? Or is he duty-bound to continue fulfilling his original orders, and thereby risk the serious charge of sock-neglect from miss Sohni’s even more demanding and whip-happy, younger sibling?
Either way he can’t win – he’s bound to be bound, and whipped. That’s because he’s a born loser!
Fortunately for him, or perhaps unfortunately, all the noise and fuss miss Kriti is making – shouting the house down with her piercing screams of anger and frustration – eventually causes her elder sister, miss Sohni, to stir. The first sign of her waking up is the stretching and flexing of her pretty, red-varnished, socked toenails underneath his manipulative, slave fingers. She then yawns and stretches:
‘Oh…what is all that damned noise, slave?’ she enquires of the sock-servant whom – she is pleased to see through her sleepy, but at the same time sultry, eyes – is still kneeling by the side of her bed and obediently attending to her sweaty-socked, Indian-girl feet.
‘Oh pray, miss Sohni, it is being the voice of your most eminent sister, my mistress Kriti, if it is being so pleasing to you miss Sohni! She is being calling for me, isn’t it mistress? Oh pray madam, if it is being pleasing to you madam, I must be humbly seeking your permission to be attending to your most respected sister the miss Kriti, if you would be so kind and merciful to this humble sockah-wallah at your feet, most beautiful mistress Sohni?’
Most kind and merciful, beautiful mistress Sohni is too tired to argue the toss, and dismisses the sockah-wallah with a disinterested yawn and a peremptory wave of her delicate, Indian-girl hand. Besides, the sockah-wallah had done his job of relaxing her feet – and she really should be thinking about following in her younger sibling’s footsteps and getting up in order to get ready for a night out on the town herself, with her manly and handsome boyfriend, Pravir.
‘Oh thank you, miss Sohni. You are being most kind and gracious to the humble slave, most magnificent mistress Sohni!’
‘Yes, I am kind and magnificent,’ thought miss Sohni to herself as the elderly and deeply unattractive sockah-wallah withdrew from her feminine boudoir, shuffling backwards on his stinking hands and knobbly knees as he was required to do out of respect for his Indian-female better; ‘and selfless; I mean, I could insist that the damned sockah-wallah slave stays here and attends to my socks, for I had him first! But anything to stop that grating voice of my sister from disturbing the family peace!’
…………………………………………………………………………..
Slave sockah-wallah girded his loins inside his raggedy loincloth as he crawled penitently into the den of his furious, younger mistress – the ever impatient and petulant miss Kriti.
She was seated on the edge of her bed, tapping her impatient, ankle-chain-decorated, bare Indian feet on the bedroom floor; looking extremely pretty (as she always does when she’s angry; which is quite often) in her revealing white blouse and skintight, blue-denim jeans, but also extremely dangerous – for she was already fondling her thin and whippy, rattan cane through her dainty, upper-caste, Indian-girl fingers:
‘WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN, YOU DIRTY, STUPID SOCKAH-WALLAH? DIDN’T YOU HEAR ME CALLING YOU? ARE YOU DEAF, AS WELL AS STUPID, OR SOMETHING?’
Sockah-wallah loved her westernised, Gynarchy accent – but very much feared the content of her rebuke, for that, coupled with her irate-young-womanly body language, did not bode well for him. He hastened forwards on his decrepit old hands and knees, keeping his head bowed to the floor, and kissed the ground in front of his angry young mistress’s feet (he wasn’t allowed to kiss her bare feet, as we have explained before):
‘Oh pray miss Kriti, if it is being pleasing to you most excellent mistress Kriti, this slave is being apologising most humbly and profusely to the young mistress, but was being occupied in rubbing the mistress Sohni’s socks, if you would be being most kind and understanding to a humble sock-servant, most magnificent and powerful mistress Kriti?’
The most magnificent and powerful mistress Kriti rises up onto her feet in order to get a better swing with her lithe and whippy, rattan punishment cane down onto the cringing, semi-naked sockah-wallah’s wrinkled, old, bare back:
Swish…Crack!...Swish…Crack!...Swish…Crack!
‘HOW DARE YOU, SLAVE! HOW DARE YOU BLAME MY SISTER FOR YOUR TARDINESS! YOU DIRTY, LAZY, GOOD-FOR-NOTHING OAF!’
Swish…Crack!...Swish…Crack!...Swish…Crack!
The slave with the white-sock-soiled fingers flinches under each stinging blow of the young woman’s thin and swishy, rattan cane. But he doesn’t cry out. He is used to pain. It comes with the job – the job of being the constant servant of demanding females.
He merely continues to apologise to his young mistress, and to kiss the ground in front of her, now standing, bare feet – feet which he notices are, like her sister’s before her, fully pedicured, but in the case of miss Kriti with soft, pink toenail-paint:
‘Oh pray miss Kriti! This slave is truly being most apologetic towards you, mistress! Thank you for whipping me, miss Kriti!’
He hears the voice of her mother, clearly attracted by the sound of the whipping-stick emanating from her daughter’s bedroom, calling up from the hallway below:
‘Ha! Ha! That’s right my darling Kriti! Be whipping him all you like, and please to be remembering that I shall be whipping him also on your behalf after you are being finished with him!’
‘Yes, mama – all in good time! But first the lazy, impertinent oaf must be attending to my socks!...You, the lazy, whipped sockah-wallah, go and fetch me my black bootsocks with the ribbed tops this instant!’
And she sends him on his shuffling way over the few feet to her nearby sock-drawer with yet another stinging blow of her personal whipping-cane – a 21st birthday present from her mother just 3 weeks ago!
It already looks frayed and well-used!
A bit like the socks sockah-wallah has just been sent to fetch! Well, they are frayed and well-used on their lower parts at any rate, but he knows miss Kriti likes wearing them with her ankleboots precisely because of the ribbed stitching on the black uppers of the socks, for it makes the socks look undeniably very pretty as they peek out over the tops of her shiny, black ankleboots and beneath the tapered, ankle-length hems of her blue denim, skintight, Gynarchy-student-girl jeans.
He returns with the rolled up ball of fresh, black girlsocks in his mouth and deftly starts to unravel them as he kneels once again in front of a now reseated miss Kriti.
‘Put them on my feet!’
‘Yes miss Kriti. At once miss Kriti!’
She sounds a bit less angry now as she curtly utters her blindingly obvious command to the freshly-whipped servant at her feet. I mean, he could see the black shiny leather, spike-heeled, zip-up ankleboots lying in wait on the floor beside her. It was obvious he was required to boot and sock the mistress.
And besides, she always goes out at this time on a Saturday evening. He suspects she does the same when she is studying out in the Gynarchy, although, sadly, he has not been able to get a slave-visa to go with her. Some other poor sod must be employed to look after miss Kriti’s socks when she is abroad, leaving him with just her elder sister, and occasionally her mother, to wait upon hand and socked-foot! (Miss Sohni has finished her studies abroad and is now a young Indian lady of leisure in Mumbai – soon to be married to young master Pravir).
The sockah-wallah is acutely aware, of course, that miss Kriti – whilst she may not be on the prowl for a husband as such tonight – is nonetheless going out hunting for a free man with whom she can make love, for she is quite promiscuous for an Indian girl. It is therefore beholden upon him to do his best to beautify his young mistress’s legs and feet by ensuring that her boots, and socks, look good on her – with just enough matt-black, ribbed sock material showing atop her shiny, patent black leather boot-tops to add that certain flare to young miss Kriti’s casual, western attire – attire designed to attract a mate!
Again, he feels honoured to touch the socks of such a beautiful and petulant girl, even if they are currently clean and fresh, since they are the intimate foot-garments of a superior young woman, and therefore of his infinite better. And he knows they won’t be so clean and fresh when he is obliged to peel them off her feet again later in the evening!
The sockah-wallah is careful not to brush his unclean (with her sister’s footsweat) fingers against the mistress Kriti’s soft, brown, foot and ankle skin as he rolls up each anklelength, black cotton bootsock onto her pretty, outstretched feet, ensuring that the ribbed stitching at the top of each sock is fully pulled-up and looking straight, just the way the young mistress likes it. Wonky sock-tops would be sure to earn him another impromptu whipping with the whippy, rattan cane which is still at her pink-painted fingertips!
If there’s one thing the sockah-wallah has learnt how to do well in this household, it’s how to put on a girl’s socks. Even the critical and pernickety miss Kriti can’t find fault with his humble efforts:
‘Now put on my boots!’
You see – not a word of upper-caste, young-womanly criticism. That could almost be construed as a compliment to the lower-caste sockah-wallah!
‘Yes miss Kriti! At once miss Kriti!’
It is always with a tinge of regret that the sockah-wallah zips up the sides of miss Kriti’s stylish, black leather, pointy-toed and high-heeled, black patent leather ankleboots, for it means covering up much of her socks, and hiding them from his girlsock-obsessed view. Only the ribbed tops of the socks remain visible – until, that is, she stands up, and then even those are covered by the orange-stitched, tapered hems of her blue denim, skinny-tight jeans.
But that, of course, is the whole object of the exercise – to leave just a hint of sexy, black sock to attract the boys when she is seated, cross-legged on the bar stool; smart, ribbed bootsocks which will be easy to remove and won’t get in the way of any sexual activity later on, in the way that tights would do. I am ready for casual sex – is the message miss Kriti wishes to convey to her prospective beaus through her black anklesocks; can you see my nice, soft, bare brown legskin atop my socks? Would you like to see some more?
None of these subliminal, come hither messages are for the benefit of the dirty, humble sockah-wallah, of course. If miss Kriti does bring a young man home for sex this evening, the humble sockah-wallah’s role will merely be to divest miss Kriti of her boots and socks and then to kneel silently and unobtrusively in the corner of her bedroom facing the wall with his nose and face buried in her discarded, warm and sweaty footwear. He must beautify her feet for the benefit of other, more worthy, men – not for his own benefit. He’s just a young woman’s humble sock-servant.
‘Now go downstairs and report to my mother, dirty slave. She is waiting to whip you for your insolence and disobedience towards me!’ declares miss Kriti with a hint of bad-girl gloat in her self-confident, Gynarchy-educated voice.
‘Yes miss Kriti. I am thanking you most profusely miss Kriti,’ replies the sockah-wallah in his contrastingly uneducated, quivering, male-servant voice as he lowers his lips to the pointy toe-end of miss Kriti’s shiny black, outstretched right boot – just a slither of black, ribbed bootsock towering over his head beneath the slightly raised hem of her blue-denim, jean leg whilst he prepares himself mentally for yet more female-delivered, physical chastisement.
Still, at least miss Kriti’s socks look good on her arrogant, young, anklebooted feet.
The End
