Through The Glass Doors

I was 10 minutes early, so I had to wait in the reception area. Looking out the glass doors of the studio, I remembered a colleague complaining about the guys at the Pilates studio measuring their customers' waist and weight right there.

It looks so bad. Don't they realize that people on the road can see what's going on inside?

The truth is no, they don't. Most of the time, we don't realise that the people on the other side of the barrier are watching us. We know that they can see us but it's not on our minds as we go about our day. We pretend that everyone is getting on goes with their business, unmindful of what is happening on the other side of the wall. It's like, by putting up a wall, even a transparent glass one, we have created a barrier that allows us to behave differently to those on the other side and the other side won't notice. Unfortunately, reality is far from that.

People inside think those on the outside are hurrying through and walking past without looking in.

Oh they have better things to do. 

Hah! They are looking at you. They are looking, alright.

Those outside assume that they are not being watched because the insiders are busy with their stuff.

Why would they waste time looking out?

Oh no! They are watching you, as if you can't see them. In fact, those on the 'inside' side of the glass wall are always aware of what's going on in the 'outside' world.

Stand against a wall on the pavement and scratch your bum discreetly. You think no one's watching but I bet half a dozen folks from the buildings around you have seen you do that, through their windows or doors. Some of them may even remember your face.

Suppose you take the glass door away. Everyone becomes more aware. The guys at the Pilates studio, for instance, wouldn't be doing your measurements out where every passerby can stop to look. The pedestrians wouldn't blatantly stare or stop to watch.

What changed? It was a glass wall that disappeared. You could see everything before as you can now. Yet, people's behaviour is different when you remove the imaginary boundary separating two sets of people,

Queer Mr. Sevenraj

What is in a name? One of the most cliched questions. In my opinion it is the silliest too, because we all have found atleast one name to be fascinated about, at some point or the other. How many people would pick a random name for their children, without a second thought? Well, here is one man who named his 7th child, No. 7! How many of us have wanted or met some who wanted a different name because the given one was queer? No. 7 rationalizes the name his father has given him.

The story of Mr. SevenRaj goes like this... 

Note: I have picked up only the 'queer' bits of his story and left out his rags-to-riches life to the rest of the internet world to narrate. Google him up, if you care - there is none other by this name.

As the 7th child in the family, he was named No. 7 by his father, who wanted to name his children without any indication of their caste or religion (seven was what he could come up with?) He hails from Badagara in Kozhikode district of Kerala and when his family moved to Bangalore, his son's name was changed to Seven because the school refused to accept a number for the name. When Seven had to drop out of school. due to financial difficulties in the family, he started dabbling in films and added Raj to his name, as was the trend during those days. He has been SevenRaj ever since.

Continuing in his father's footsteps, he named his children IndiaRani and BharathRaja as a way of declaring that he did not care about the caste system and showing his patriotism to the country. Ahem!

This afternoon, I watched a show on one of the local channels. The studio was done up in red and white. Mr. SevenRaj and his family were being interviewed, all of them were dressed in red and white. What started off as a brand-building exercise for SevenRaj seems to have turned into an obsession as his efforts stretched to extremes. He only ever wears that colour combination and that is right from his innerwear down to his socks.  His suit, mobile, furniture, office, handkerchief, stationery are all red and white. His house is painted in red and white, so are his cars. He is proud of it. He explains how he has tried to create his identity using these colours. The late Tamil movie star MGR who was recognized by his famous dark glasses, Mahatma Gandhi is recognized by his glasses & bare torso with a white towel, so I had to do something similar to be recognized by one and all, he says. 

It does not stop there. He has a craze for the number 7 too. His mobile number ends with 77777. His first mobile number ended with the number 007. His blazer has 7 buttons and he speaks 7 languages (his native tongue being malayalam). 

He believes that he can change the world. While he claims he does a lot for the society by way of helping people, charities, donations to temples, he says the big thing is yet to come. It seems that he is expecting certain super-powers to come to him in the next 2 - 3 years, which will change his life and help him change the world. He does not know what it is, except that it may be some sort of a 7th sense (7 again!) but he knows for sure that it will happen.

I could not help but wonder if his family (wife and children) feel the same way about the colours and number. If not, what do they feel about his fetish? In a similar question asked by the host on TV, his wife Pushpa said that while she could be embarassed sometimes and does not understand his fixation, she is fine with it as he seems undeterred by what people have to say and he does a lot of good work too. His children are happy to let their father be but do not share the same excessive love for those colours or numbers. They both share his love for movies, though.

Queer as he might be, Mr. SevenRaj has come a long way from a boy born to a large, poor family with no money or job to a mobile real estate agent with a bungalow, a few cars, travels abroad and continues to draw attention with his flashy apparel. He is not embarassed by it. Instead, he is thrilled that people recognize him by it and elated with the attention he gets. He says his dream is being realized - he wanted to be famous and stand out in the crowd. In that red and white suit, he sure does!

SevenRaj - 7, Red & White everywhere

It reminds me of Scott Adams' recent posts on The Value of Attention and The Attention Contest. In my opinion, Seven is a clear winner!

Disclaimer: This blog post is a collection of facts from the show on TV, memories from an old newspaper article and a small post on the internet, interspersed with my fascination of the strangeness of it all. The views expressed are purely a personal expression of such fascination of an intriguing anecdote and not intended to take a dig at any person(s).

How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill

When I first read the title, it sounded like a story of someone who started working at Starbucks and went on to become somebody in life, possibly a writer (he wrote this book, after all). Or maybe he was struck by a sudden inspiration while sipping coffee in Starbucks one day. I wondered if I cared to buy a book like that.

Then I read the punch-line that went with the title - "The Riches-to-Rags Story of a Man Who Had It All, Then Lost It All and Found It Again". At this point, I decided it was a narration of how a rich man who was driven to the point of bankruptcy and rose again after a stint at Starbucks. Hmm, maybe I should read it, I thought. Books like that have a lot of positive attitude in them, if nothing else.

I turned to the back cover to read the synopsis and see if that would help me decide. It starts off with the following excerpt. I bought the book home, just for a feel for some die-hard attitude and aggressive behaviour, which I was sure the book would be full of.

"A candid, moving and inspirational memoir about a high-flying businessman who is forced to re-evaluate his life and values when he suddenly loses everything and goes to work in Starbucks."

Since the day I bought the book until I started reading it today (because I badly needed some positive reinforcement), I was pretty sure that the book would be an inspirational tale of rising from a fall, back to an earlier glory or more. Why I thought that, is beyond me. The book clearly says it is a "Riches-to-Rags" story.

As the punchline and the title aptly suggest, it's the story of Michael Gates Gill, born to an affluent family and now, working as a barista at Starbucks in the late years of his life. Born to a celebrity-like dad who worked at a newspaper in New York, partying with the Queen & poets like Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost, etc and studying at Yale, getting into an advertising job straight out of college and quickly moving up the ladder, Gates' life is one of comfort and luxury. He has a good family, with four children, and a good life.

When he gets fired by a young executive, who he helped move up in life, he knows she had to chose between firing him to prove her loyalty and macho business sense or getting emotional and screwing up her career prospects. Knowing does not change facts or help the feeling. He had given 25 years of his life and his loyalty to JWT but now, at 53, he was not part of their young brigade agenda. 

His hopes to start a career in consulting remain an unfulfilled dream, long after his severance package has depleted and he ends up broke. In addition to this, his attempt to distract himself from his problems in the form of exercise/gym, lead him to meet the woman he ends up in an affair with and bears him a son. When he confronts his wife and children with the news, divorce follows and the wife gets to keep their house and four children. 

As Gates says in the book, his baby Jonathan remains his only friend for a long while after that, for Jonathan's mother soon loses interest in Gates as his availability for her increases post his divorce. 

With no job, no family and no money, it was a stroke of good luck that Gates meets Crystal, his African-American boss at Starbucks. An unexpected, unprepared interview, some stressful days of waiting later, he finds himself with a job he feels completely unqualified for. He talks about how he finds his way around at Starbucks, with an altogether different culture - a young crowd with an average age of 20, a group of African-Americans (the kind he had, in his old-fashioned sense, stayed away from in his better days). As he cuts through a new world and finally "gets it", he finds satisfaction and an acceptance he realizes he had never felt in his richer days.

He talks of how he starts with a cleaning job and gets excited at his first real clean bathroom work, learning to pull the till, handle guests and become one of the legendary Partners (what the people who work at Starbucks are called) at Starbucks. Finding acceptance in his 4 children, living with a hearing problem caused by a tiny tumour in his head, enjoying the family he finds at Starbucks, Gates is so full of his new life that it comes through in his book. 

The book is one long narration of his excitement at his new-found life, his everyday life at the first Starbucks at Ninety-Three and Broadway where it all started. Reading the book is like listening to an old man gush excitedly about his new job, every single thing he learns in the new job and how much he enjoys it. There is no entertainment, no grand examples of risks taken and masterstrokes leading to the rise of a great empire. Just an old man, chattering about his time at the Broadway Starbucks. As I read it, it felt like I was sitting at a table at Starbucks, across an old man in his seventh decade, happily talking and I did not want to interrupt.

I've finished the book and old Mr. Mike has gone back to work at his Starbucks store somewhere in New York. Funny coincidence that just a couple of days ago, I was thinking of what it would be to have a few months off and be able to do something totally different from my current job, something not for money but for a slice of a different kind of life. Today, Mike introduced me to the inside of a coffee house.