Crazy is the word.

What is that one thing that Jayalalita, Paris Hilton, Sarah Jessica Parker,Celina Jaitely, Dia Mirza, Aishwarya Rai and my next door neighbour have in common........... they are all crazy about one thing........ SHOES.

What is it about the strange passion that makes each one of them (and a hundred million other women) go to a shoe store and spend the last penny in their wallets for a new pair of shoes.

Stilletoes, boots, slip-ons, keds, slippers, flip-flops, sandles, cow-boy cuts and a few hundred other designs and colours ranging from the basic black to unimaginable purples, blues, reds and even bright yellows, women want it all. This one for work, the other one for a camping trip, this one for a party at the boss's, that one for a girls day out, the reasons for buying shoes are countless and as ridiculous as " oh I just saw them, liked them and bought them."

The other day I heard a woman sitting with her girl-friends in an upmarket restaurant planning her 25th birthday party and asking her friends to buy her a pair of high heels, the new Vercace designs and so on and so forth for each one of them, since her husband was now sick of her buying them on her own. I found this too much to digest for my sensibilites.

Strangely enough, it appears to me that the "infection" for buying shoes among women has assumed mounting proportions since I often hear my carpenter that he is extremely busy these days desining glass cabinets for shoes and that orders are pouring in from women all across the city.

I was taken aback when I went to use the rest-room in a friend's place only to discover shoe shower curtains, a shoe coaster, a shoe shaped dustbin and catalogues only for shoes. My friend took the last breath out of me when she showed me her newly acquired much talked about possession.............. a shoe shaped, diamond studded necklace.