The crystal ball has crashed to the floor and nothing can fix its brokenness. There is no cloud of purple smoke billowing out of pandals erected in carnivals where carousels, pinwheels and soothsayers assisted by parakeets are the description of entertainment. The turbaned man, wearing a new shade of gem on each other finger who sat caressing playing cards as if they were the forehead of a leopard, has unrobed himself and disappeared into the crowd. Those mirror mazes now stand unexplained and the dolls he pumped life into can be declared dead, more dead than they ever were. Magic is no longer country-silly and India isn't in toe-curling awe of it. Last month, the documentary by Kolkata-based IT professional Amit Sahai, Fading Magic: The Story of Kolkata's Magicians, won a Gold Award at the
IFCOM Film Festival in Jakarta, Indonesia. The movie tells the story of the West Bengal capital's stage magicians whose livelihood no longer shines under spotlight.
The suspense on Kolkata's streets wasn't the work of a coloniser's suspecting imagination, for here is where the father of Indian magic Pratul Chandra Sorcar practiced his craft. With his pencil-thin moustache combed into twirls over his face and cheeks, and eyes dolled up like that of a Kuchipudi dancer, he sawed some women in half and made others float in air. His contemporary K Lal was given the title of the World's Fastest Magician (1968) by International Brotherhood of Magicians in the US. He made his subjects disappear into boxes and brought them back safely within theatrical seconds. Sahai's film talks about 3,000 other magicians who regularly performed at the city's Mahajati Sadan theatre.
As the past is sinking into the sea, a bright new tomorrow is rising out of it; only in matters of magic can two such realities share light in the golden hour.
The era of ticketed shows is over. Recreation is born from the threesome of shopping, cinema and restaurants, that takes place openly in marketplaces and malls. Another reason for the decline in magic performances is the government's lack of interest in acknowledging magic as an art form. In 2012, magician duo from Pune, Vijay Bhopale and son Jitendra, appealed to the Bombay High Court to grant magic the official status of an art form. The petition is still pending. If passed, it will force the government to formulate a policy to promote magic and support an annual magicians' festival and also create a fund for struggling magicians. Jitendra, who did his mechanical engineering from the US, feels that magic alone cannot fetch a livelihood. The two want to empower street magician communities like the Garudis of Maharashtra.
Today's magicians customise their performance for niche corporate audiences and festivals like NH7 Weekender, the multi-city music festival, and Tomorrowland, the international song-and-dance festival that will make its India debut in July 2016. David Nobo, aka Amazing David, a Kolkata-based stunt illusionist, feels magic needs to become a thriving part of such festivals to regain the interest of the youth. He shot to limelight in 2010 when he set himself ablaze and managed to escape unscathed at St. James, his high-school in Kolkata. "The 10 Heads Festival that was recently held in Delhi clubbed food, music, fashion, films, drinks, drama and magic. This gave magicians an opportunity to perform for the masses, instead of limited corporate audiences," says Nobo, also a private entertainer to the royal family of Bhutan.
Pouroosh, the only grandson of P C Sorcar, holds a master's degree in Pure Mathematics and has also mastered Kathak to bring fluidity in his movements. He plans to open magic schools in Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. He played a magician in the Bangla film Baaj (2011) and wants to bring magic back to the silver screen. Like most traditional vocations in this country, magic too had its illustrious families. And as in everything else, here too, the common man is cracking the code. Karan Singh is a 24-year-old psychological illusionist based in Delhi, who creates tricks on gadgets. In his shows, which cost anywhere between `50,000 and a couple of lakhs, one can also expect a lot of clever jokes, evocative storytelling and drama, like an enactment of possession by a spirit.
From the rebound of a rubber ball to the suction of a manual toy car, there's scientific mechanism sitting at the bottom of everything that comes across as whimsical. Praveen, a Dubai-based mind reader who has been bending spoons and levitating on stage since the past 25 years, feels the role of magic is to restore wonder in adults at a time when faith in humanity is taking a beating. "In one of my recent shows, a group of ISRO scientists were sitting with a gleam of innocence in their eyes, laughing their heads off in excitement at secrets they weren't able to discover," says the man whose shows come with a disclaimer that the performer doesn't possess any supernatural powers. Praveen, who charges AED 10,000 per show, feels it is mostly a game of applied psychology. "I use my heightened memory to perform effects. For instance, we do something called a book test where we place three or four novels on the stage and somebody from the audience calls out a page number. The subject reads out the first and last line on that page and asks me to guess which word they're thinking of. I have already mastered the books and hence, I make an informed guess," he deconstructs one of his acts to indicate the vast reserves of power that the human mind has. With bodies of neuroscience backing their claim, magicians like Praveen tell the corporate world that it might be using only five to 10 per cent of its mental resources. Also, skills like clinical hypnosis are proving to be
effective in improving confidence and ridding people off their phobias.
Arvind Jayashankar is a close-up magician who lives in Belgium and is the lead administrator of the Ellusionist. This is the first online company that pioneered the digital evolution of magic. It produces instructional videos, supplies premium magic props and teaching material, and manages a discussion forum. The core team is spread across the US, Canada and Europe. Together, they form a network that keeps nearly 70,000 magicians from places like the Philippines, Mexico, the Netherlands, Singapore, China and Australia tied to their craft. "Today, magic centers around the performer, one cannot tremble and explode, especially while performing for companies where the audience is largely skeptical. Just like people suspend their disbelief while watching a movie, magic tricks should be able to make them forget reason and have a good time," says the 28-year-old who uses a sleight of hands on a deck of cards, as a mentalist, as a cardshark and as a magician. Towards the end of the sh ow, he discloses that the different definitions of his role influence the expectation of the audience from his act. Jayashankar, who has also performed in Off-Broadway theatres in New York, is a mechanical engineer from National Institute of Technology in Mangaluru and most of his magic developed while finding ways to entertain his engineer friends.
Another similar life story is Nakul Shenoy's. This mass communication graduate spent 15 years in usability research and development, where he conducted huge numbers of interviews, assessing little details like the way they use the telephone or their hand gestures while talking. "I have serious interest in behavioral psychology. I tell people how they can remember details and offer tips on body language," shares Shenoy, who has held memberships to the American Hypnosis Association (US), The Magic Circle (London), and the International Magicians Society (US) and performs regularly across Asia, Europe, the US, the UK and the Middle East. With the guidance of Max Maven, magic consultant for David Copperfield, Penn & Teller, Siegfried & Roy, and Doug Henning, Shenoy compiled the book Smart Course in Magic: Secrets. Staging. Tips. Tricks (2013) that contains advice for beginners.
At the age of five, Shenoy imagined himself to be the comic-strip character Mandrake. In an industry whose members keep secrets from the world and also from each other, a sense of identity is derived by finding an idol and relating to his or her strengths repeatedly. Kabbir Taneja, escapologist from New Delhi, does what he does because Harry Houdini did so. Doing his bit to mimic last century's epic stunt performer, Taneja enjoys escaping from handcuffs and locked boxes. The fresh psychology graduate attended workshops in the International Brotherhood of Magicians in Arizona two years ago and the Mind Vention in Vegas last year. Making `15,000 for a basic 20-minute show. He spends on magic whatever he earns from it, to satisfy his artistic conscience. "I focus on the alternative handling of tricks, for instance, in the famous trick involving a bird, an orange and an egg usually ends with the bird reappearing inside the egg. In my version, the bird is seen chirping inside the o range instead," says the 21-year-old. A couple of decades before Taneja arrived on the scene, Prahlad Acharya was imitating Houdini's escapes from Siberian prisons. On finding his way out of a locked cell in Bangalore Central Jail, he was named the Houdini of India. Acharya, now 45, believes in reinventing his magic genre every five years. His area of interest in recent times has been hand-shadowgraphy. "David Copperfield used to do ventriloquism in the beginning, we learn everything initially and upgrade to whatever we are best at. In that sense, magic is just like classical music where voices incline towards some ragas," he explains. Acharya's shadow play isn't limited to showing dogs and rabbits. His finger movements choreographed to Bollywood songs carry powerful social messages like women empowerment and child labour.
Today, the Karnataka chapter of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the Academy of Magic in Thiruvananthapuram keep the community afresh with ideas. But, a community can only help if it is sensitive to the uniqueness of one's craft. Clown magician Pravin Tulpule couldn't relate to the Clown Association of America because. "Unlike in the West, where a clown is accepted on a mall and a roadside, in India, people aren't comfortable reaching out," he reasons out. Tulpule took premature retirement and hung his Indian Navy uniform to don the clown's costume a decade and a half ago. He now makes around `15,000 to `20,000 per show and uses silliness as a hook to convey messages on hygiene, water conservation and moral values. "I don't chop off ladies and fit them into boxes. For me, magic is the ability to stun children through my persona and some subtle tricks. It's just entertainment," says the man who calls himself a clown in the land of jokers (the India n version). Part of the Indian Society of Magicians in Mumbai, Tulpule feels interaction with other magicians of the society taught him how to deal with skeptics. "Even little children will want to challenge what you're showing, but the trick is to act calm," he confesses. Another gem that the society has nurtured is Kedar Parulekar, whose style of ventriloquism doesn't involve a puppet. He stuns his audience by transferring feel and thoughts with the sharp focus of his vision. It isn't just the packaging that Parulekar has focused on; his content is hailed for its rich poetic undertone. His Marathi show Rhoon Shabdaanche, meaning a loan of words, has been doing the rounds in literary circuits since 13 years.
Raja Moorthy, a cabaret style interactive illusionist, has been attending conventions since 1996. "I have noticed a shift in attitudes towards conventions in the younger audience that is comfortable learning from online tutorials. At the same time, senior magicians find a sense of belonging in communities. Structured brotherhood is necessary," he says. He considers the six to seven annual magic conventions in India as the propellers of change, where discovery of technique happens. The ones he looks forward to are held in Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and the Shankar family's convention at Udupi. Just like his all-time favourites Paul Daniels and David Williamson, both magicians from the UK, Moorthy too adds life to throw away tricks or non-tricks such as being able to count six cards after discarding three.
Telling his own tale of magic is KS Ramesh, who has closely witnessed the changing forms of magic in cinema. He has scripted magic for Amitabh Bachchan's Jaadugar (1989) and acted in the silent movie Pushpak (1987). "Today, digital mediums have taken live magic away from cinema, so the focus has shifted towards the live entertainment industry," states Ramesh, declaring an overdose of 3D effects as the reason why live entertainment is regaining novelty. Keeping his connect with the film industry intact, he designs illusions for the Bollywood-style musical platform Kingdom of Dreams, in Gurgaon. However, his major work is organising live shows across India in collaboration with the Magic Academy Bangalore. "Through our recently concluded 200-city tour for Tata Motors, we were able to offer steady employment to magicians from across the country, from conjuring artists to shadow play experts to ventriloquists, these performers were able to earn `70,000 to a lakh in a month d uring the tour," says Ramesh, stressing on the need for setting up platforms. In 1997, he curated the Great Indian Festival in Bengaluru. That year, magicians from 14 countries—including the US, Russia, France, Italy and the UK—participated and the show became an annual property. In 2012, Ramesh's self-funded venture earned the support of the Karnataka government and hundreds of street artistes got the chance to perform before a discerning audience.
Magic has taken it upon itself to fill wonder into readily available objects like playing cards, coins and rubber bands. For these masters of make-believe, magic is more real than those objects, because illusions compete with reality and defeat it.
Source: The new Masters of Make-Believe
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