On magic and being irresistible

I read a line from Seth Godin today that triggered me. He says,

‘The heart and soul of a thriving enterprise is the irrational pursuit of being irresistible.

It immediately took me way back in time to recall anything that I could term ‘irresistible.’

The magic

Old time Bangaloreans will recall the magic of some of the pubs around MG Road and Brigade Road. I won’t name them – will leave that joy to you to fill in the blanks with whatever place you were hooked to; here in Bangalore or wherever you grew up. In fact, every city has such places which we get hopelessly nostalgic about.

It was the thing to do those days—hang out one of these pubs. Though these were pubs, the number of teetotalers and non-smokers who would frequent those places was staggering. The reason was obvious – people went to those places for the music, for the friends and for the conversation which seemed to take them a place where they felt they truly special.

The music (usually English, retro) was the kind you’d want to sing along to. Every now and then you’d be completely losing it in a debate with your friends and all of a sudden, you would drop the debate to sing along to the chorus of a song. That’s how it was – a guitar riff would appear out of nowhere, abduct people’s attention and carry them along on a line which obscured whatever else that was happening at the time; sometimes even the hot Gobi Manchuri which arrived ten minutes later than usual. No one remembers what we spoke then, but man, it was one hell of a time!

Everything about these places was average, but the experience was magical. Perhaps it was also indicative of a time in our own lives where we had just enough insanity inside us to see magic in these places.

Perhaps it was a coming together of what people dreamed of, overlapping with whatever the place stood as an offering for. A spontaneous, emergent resonance that seemed to hang like the smoke in Peco’s – just above your heads so it would be invisible, but always present in the air you were breathing.

Being irresistible

Call me old fashioned, but I don’t get that vibe anywhere today. I don’t even see it in the faces of young people who hang out at today’s happening places. It makes me wonder what happened. What did we lose in thirty years of accumulating so much wealth? Today’s places have an unprecedented capital and resource advantage and yet, I’m yet to find one place you could truly call irresistible.

Irresistible; that’s what those places were. That was their thing.

Every once in a while, something comes along that seems to have stumbled upon the vagus nerve of society. The result is, a deeply held, unspoken need is met in ways we could never imagine. We find ourselves getting filled (quite literally) by an experience we always wanted but never quite had the words to express. It applies to restaurants as much as anything else that pervades our life and arrests our attention.

Its impossible to manufacture that kind of magic by analyzing what successful ventures do. It’s like trying to fall in love by doing ten things on a checklist. The magic must be something that grows like a moss through the everyday stuff.

That's the thing.

The thing that makes it magical

When we do something long enough, it starts to whisper things to us – kind of like a loyalty bonus for hanging around long enough without expecting any returns. Over time, we learn to lean into these whispers and unpack them in ways we can.

There are no guarantees. The only thing one can do is try. The more we try, the more we seem to learn.

I guess the same applies in reverse too. A lot of those places are no longer functioning now. Their slide was probably because of relying on the magic too much. When you have a good thing going, it’s easy to get complacent. Our favourite places probably missed the beat of a couple of generations and, the socio-economic soup of our society that was already cooking with them.

While we were lost in the magic, they were trapped in the lie of the magic lasting forever.

Evidently, it doesn’t.

They had drifted into a plateau where every day is more of the same. That’s when life becomes mundane, the whispers don’t come as often, and the edge we once had of attuning to them starts to slip through our fingers.

Without the attunement, the magic doesn’t stand on its own.

Sure, we can come up with a few tricks, but they won’t take us too far. Soon, with every failed experiment, it can feel like we’re on a losing team and one day, we’ll be right. Magical at first, predictable from there, desperate at one point and eventually fading into the background, almost like the rockstars whose songs they used to play.

Now it makes sense. It seems irrational to want to be irresistible when good is just within our reach. When we settle for good, its usually the beginning of the end.

Anything becomes irresistible when it brings to life an idea of who we want to be.

Back in the day, when we came back from those places, we were slightly altered by the experience of being there (no, not the substances). That’s what made us go back. We wanted to feel like that again. After we came home, we would sit down with a Walkman, trying to feel the same song we heard earlier, in the same way we felt it there.

And, of course, it rarely worked, because magic needs a magician.

Magic needs a Magician

Despite my rant about today’s hangouts, there is one place worth talking about.

They play the same music, have cheap beer with good food and the best part, it was started by a guy who used to wait tables in one of ‘those’ pubs. His name is Kiran and the place is called The Local. Going there was almost like going back to those places and, with a bit of a contemporary vibe it seemed to also to connect with today’s youth.

But the last time I went there, it was like a fruit that had fallen off the tree. All the pieces were still there, except the magic. And then, we knew why.

I was told Kiran had left to start something of his own. What we were missing was his warm smile, small talk and so many little gestures only a person who cares enough can come up with.

There you have it. No Kiran, no magic.

I guess what makes a place irresistible are people like Kiran, with their tireless, irrational pursuit of making everyday extraordinary. We may never be able to decode what gives them their mojo (thank God for that) but we can say for sure that we need more like them.

People like him are the heart and soul of a thriving place. A place that thrives by giving people an experience they cannot get anywhere else. Such people can make us feel like we too might just be able to do it, because they make it look so easy. But it’s easy to think that way and forget how long they have been showing up every day, doing the same things tirelessly.

And the magic itself? I doubt if it’s a great strategy (although, that may come too); instead, it’s a visceral reminder to turn from their current task towards the next customer who’s shown up at the door, hoping they would be welcomed like a Kiran would do.

That’s all they keep doing.

And, that is probably why the muse whispers to them; because they are always listening.