The magic vanishes

Aradhika Sharma

Magic, fantasy, mayajaals and indrajaals — this book offers fascinating insights into the history of magic that has faded from popular memory, but is no less significant a part of the Indian cultural inheritance. It is, of course, typical that it has taken an Australian author, John Zubrzycki, to chronicle this enthralling treasure that is poised to fade away from public memory and the nation’s history.

Apart from PC Sorcar Jr and his daughter, Maneka, who are among the few well-known magicians that India can boast of, other magic makers like the jadoowallahs, the jugglers, the kathputliwallahs, hypnotists, conjurers, the peep show wallahs and street entertainers live a life of abject poverty, dodging the police and wandering from place to place in search of livelihood. Only a handful are ‘discovered’ and sent as cultural emissaries to perform at international cultural exchange programmes.

Yet, India, the birthplace of magic, has a rich and textured heritage. Magic and enchantments are described in ancient texts, seals of Mohenjodaro, the Athravaveda and Buddhist scripts as well as well mantras, tantra, spells and magic. It’s a long and valuable legacy of jadoo and Zubrzycki does a tremendous job of tracing it and even making perfect chronological sense of a history that is as varied as its practitioners were.

Like practitioners of other art forms, the jadoowallahs and miracle performers needed patrons to support their craft and found them in the royal courts here and in the theatres of America, Europe and Australia. Among these were the Rafa’i fakirs who subjected their bodies to extreme torture without harming themselves. They could thrust swords and daggers into their bodies and even “slit (his) stomach open and spread (his) bowels on a tray”.

Those who wowed audiences abroad in the past centuries were Linga Singh, ‘the Hindoo sorcerer’, who could wrestle six cobras simultaneously; Ramo Samee aka Ramaswamy, who arrived in England in 1813 with his fascinating troupe of jugglers, and finally PC Sorcar Senior, who, for Zubrzycki, is “undoubtedly India’s greatest magician” with his chutzpah and impeccable timing. The author feels that probably the greatest, and yet unexplained trick is the great Indian rope trick whereby a boy climbs up the rope to vanish into thin air!

The author has invested two years in following the trails of the magic performers and chronicling them. He studied ancient texts, records and testimonials during the time of English imperialism, newspaper reports, memoirs and diaries of magicians. He sifted through fables and myths, anecdotal accounts and researched the archives in the major cities of India as well as in London, New York and Washington. He feels that except for a few recent books, “for something so enduring, there has been very little scholarship on Indian magic”.

As he says in the introduction, magic is “so wonderfully strange”. Isn’t his book so too — strange and delightful…