Are you the sort that struggles to socialise? Have you always found it hard to walk up to someone you like and strike up an impromptu conversation? Acknowledging these apprehensions that tend to arise in social situations, is Bangalore’s Prayas Abhinav, founder of City Spinning Labs, through his own brand of chappals which he calls Zoda-Zoda.
The Zoda-Zoda are like slip-on chappals with velcro on the sides. You wear them on top of your regular footwear in a social situation where everyone else in the room is also aware of the Zoda-Zoda concept and is wearing these slip-ons.
Now, imagine you’re at a social gathering and wish to speak to this man who seems to interest you. You go over to him and stick one side of your Zoda-Zoda to one side of his Zoda-Zoda with the Velcro in your Zoda-Zoda. If he is interested, he will continue ‘staying stuck’, making conversation with you. If not, he will ‘unstick’ himself and move away.
Abhinav, who navigates the worlds of art, technology, design and architecture through projects and research, says that the Zoda-Zodas were made especially for introverts.
“You can wear them on any shoes,” he says. “If you like someone at a party, you can get stuck to them! It works in an ideal situation, where everyone possesses a pair of Zoda-Zoda chappals,” Abhinav clarifies. And if the person is disinterested in sticking, he can unstick and walk away. “It’s like getting spammed in your mailbox where you can’t stop them but here, you can simply unstick and walk away.”
Abhinav explains that this product is a playful take on the social spaces, he believes, have become inhibitive. Tribal communities, Abhinav says, have had a system where they identify interest/disinterest in social situations.
Women, for example, wear a flower in their hair to indicate their interest in someone. But in the urban setting, “signs have lost meaning” and in order to communicate correctly, a “certain protocol has to be followed.” For example, he says, the privacy settings on Facebook help you moderate the people you want to be in touch with. Besides, the offline mechanisms completely take the guesswork out of the whole game. The Zoda-Zoda is, therefore, a “comment on the social situation” prevailing today.
Was this idea born out of his own introvert nature? “Oh, I can’t get my head around these things. I am not a party animal at all,” he shakes his head. “I feel inhibited in large groups. I can work with a group of 10 people maybe, and beyond that, I get inhibited. I don’t understand the rules of the space. Zoda-Zoda may help ease the difficulties of someone in a situation like mine.”
Eventually, he even plans to introduce Bluetooth and LEDs that will help connect with people who are open and available to ‘sticking’, unless they are already ‘stuck’.
What are the possibilities of the Zoda-Zoda becoming a commercially viable product? “Well, this will be really cheap since, it’s only made of rexine and Velcro. Moreover, if it becomes popular, it can very well become a trend,” he says with a smile. “But I don’t really know since variables of price, awareness (on the part of the customers) and availability areinvolved. And I don’t care.”
He prefers not to introduce the “autocratic thought of attributing a functional value to everything.” The concept, he says, was not created with a profit motive in mind. It’s an idea that takes a dig at the current social scenario and how we go about making friends.
Zoda-Zodas are up for sale in a few weeks from now.
Visit http://prayas.in
