STFU #47 - What Chamayavilakku (Kerala) and Hot Dog Eating Competition (New York) tell about Empathy in Startups

Every year at Kottankulangara Sree Devi Temple in Kerala's Kollam district, hundreds of devotees visit the temple to pay their respect to the Goddess with a lamp in their hands. Clad in colorful sarees, rich jewelry and heavy bangles, well-made eyebrows, and bright make-up, they look stunning in their traditional avatars.?

They pay their respect to Goddess Durga and dance all night. The vibe there is electrifying when all the devotees celebrate the event together till the break of dawn!

Just one minor nuance - the devotees are mostly men....dressed like women (yes, including the image above)!

In this unique 2-day Chamayamvilakku festival, hundreds?of men shave off their mustaches, thread their eyebrows, apply makeup, wear jewelry, and swaddle themselves in brand-new colorful sarees and tailored blouses. Some of them are so stunningly feminine that it’s difficult to believe they are actually men dressed up as women.

But it's not a joke or some satire – it’s part of their sacred offering to the Goddess. Men believe that offering prayers and dressing up as women will bring them blessings in the form of jobs, wealth, etc.?These days, Chamayavilakku is also a festival of transpersons as several community members turn up for it. The place?does not discriminate between the participants.

Why do they do that? According to local folklore, once a group of boys were herding cows near a pond.?They came across a coconut and one of them tried to bang it against a stone to split it open.?But to their shock, they saw drops of blood dripping from the stone.?It turned out that the stone possessed the supernatural powers of Goddess Durga, who was pleased with the boys. She promised that she would visit the place every year on a given day.?

In those days, only young girls were allowed to prepare flower garlands and light lamps in temples, so the cow herders began to dress as women and girls, offering prayers in the temple. Since then, men have followed the tradition diligently!?

Kobi -?How many Hot Dogs can you eat

In the autumn of 2000, a young economics student, Takeru Kobayashi (“Kobi”) accidentally?participated in a televised eating competition just to afford electricity for this flat. With some smart thinking using game theory, he beat his competition and won his first $5000.?

He realized that there is money in ‘this’ kind of participation so he started winning contests all around. Step by step, in 2001, he finally entered the ‘biggest’ event in ‘competitive eating’ (which by the way is a sport and televised live on ESPN): the Nathan's?Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest in New York City, seen by more than a million viewers every year!

The rules were simple. A contestant ate as many hot dogs and buns (HDB) as he could in 12 minutes.?

At that time, the world record stood at?a mind-boggling ~25 HDB in 12 minutes. Kobi stood first and broke the record. How many hot dogs do you think he might have consumed? Take a guess!

Not 27-28. Not even 35 - he consumed?50! The margin of victory was enormous, unlike any other sport!

It was a number no one had even imagined to reach. So much so that people doubted the means by which he achieved the number, and were sure that something was being unethically done. But when he broke the same record next year, and the next, the naysayers went quiet. He eventually won the championship 6 years in a row!

What was the secret??

According to Kobi, two things mattered - asking the right questions and disregarding old benchmarks.?

Until then, almost everyone ate the same way - an accelerated version of cramming the hot dog and bun into the mouth, chewing as quickly as possible, and then gulping it down with water.?

Kobi wondered if?perhaps there was a better way. Instead of asking “How do I eat more hot dogs?” Kobi asked a?different question: “How do I make hot dogs easier to eat?”

Unconventionally, he ate the buns and the meat (hot dogs) separately due to their ‘density conflict’. He then dipped the burger into?water, squeezed out the water, and gobbled it up, making him less thirsty as well, which meant less time wasted on drinking! He even found out that water should be warm so that it relaxes the chewing muscles! He also made more room in his stomach?by jumping and wriggling as he ate - a strange, animalistic dance that came?to be known as the ‘Kobayashi Shake’.

Only by?redefining the problem was he able to discover a new set of solutions. He asked,?“How do I make hot dogs easier to eat?”

Secondly, since the competition was using older methods, he ignored the records made till then. And that’s probably why he rolled past the 25 number and reached 50 that year!

Chamayavilakku and Kobi Shake for your startup

As we scale our startup, we sometimes forget to look at things from the other’s perspective. It is easier to build sympathy than empathy - but when you get into others’ ‘attire’ and way of living, that’s when you empathize more.?

Chamayavilakku makes men understand, by making the effort, what it takes for a woman to dress for puja. They don’t take shortcuts and take grooming very seriously.?

No wonder that the people of Kerala,?among all states in India, are?least likely ?to agree that men should have more rights to limited jobs than women (Research published in 2022 )!

On the other hand, sometimes getting existing benchmarks could cloud our own thinking. If we reconsider the questions to be asked, we might end up playing the game with absolutely different standards!?

Maybe it is our own stereotypes, biases, comfort zones, or artificial mental barriers that hold us from executing to our complete potential. Break them and you might just get surprised with the new records you create!

At True Elements ,?those of us who have seen the ‘zero’ world in zero-to-one appreciate the 1 and the 100 now. But new joiners struggle to appreciate what they get. So we ensure that anyone who joins us is exposed to ‘ground zero’ for the first few weeks.?

In the first few years, we ensured every new joiner picked stocks and took them with them to kiosks. That made them empathize and take good care of the brand.?

Even when it comes to brand vs selling, the perennial issue is probably a bit less at our place.?

The brand team is exposed to hard selling when they learn to sell a product with all the communication they have planned for. That’s push!?On the other hand, the sales team needs to learn how to?get a product picked up without you being around. That’s pull.?

As we should know by now, it is only with the right balance of pull and push that can you properly drape a saree!

In Summary, if you are not comfortable with being?in someone else’s shoes to learn their tricks, you will not know what they are doing and reinforce your biases without getting their?point of view.?

As you empathize, by asking the right questions, you can set your own standards and conveniently ignore the current benchmarks!

Those who prefer to read benchmarks to set targets or are living with their stereotypes, get your 'coconut head' to find a stone!

Those who don’t mind wearing a saree and doing the Kobayashi Shake,?

STFU!

References:?Chamayavilakku?1 ,?2 ,?3 ?, Kobi?1 ?| Image:?Chamayavilakku ,?Kobi Hot Dog | Books: Think like a Freak