Jadugar Anand’s spell-binding magic shows

By Gopal Ethiraj, Chennai

CHENNAI, 26 July (asiantribune.com): He probably can create money out of thin air. However, people are only too willing to pay him. You will be, too, if you have him in your town performing. That is Jadugar Anand. The magic show of his Mayalok.

“Performance of magic is all about perception. Making impossible possible is impossible. So magicians make the impossible seemingly possible,” he says.

By his quick tricks and lightning speed, Jadugar (magic) Anand has earned the reputation of being the fastest magician. His magic show is best running stage show in the country.

The king of magic, he keeps coming back in a periodic manner to all the cities and important centres to enthrall his fans, who range from kids to old. He endears himself with his audience so closely that a large crowds linger around even after his shows are over to talk and shake hands with him, also have a click of photo with him with their children.

Children enjoy it the best, because they are the least skeptical about reality and different perceptions of reality. Adults too enjoy, because a willing, though temporary, suspension of disbelief is a highly satiating escape from hard realities.

Anand says “magic is a pleasing and amusing art and an exhibition of “practiced skills”, where the laws of Nature are seemingly set aside for an innocent entertainment.” But he maintains that his magic is not hypnotism or group hypnotism or mass hypnotism.

However, in some of his items he uses hypnotism, he agrees. He enlightens that magic is only an illusion created to hide from the eyes. In illusion, it is the eye which sees a thing and conveys the message to the brain; whereas in hypnotism it is the brain which dictates the eyes to see it in the way it interprets, the Jadugar says.

The art of quick performance and ‘misdirecting’ the audience makes magic very deceptive. But to Anand it is a thrilling and interesting profession and certainly it is no cakewalk. He says it is a team work with around 90 people who are involved in making the show perfect and a hit.

“They take up various responsibilities and the success of the show depends on their coordination. It is like a mega film production and involves the selection of the venue, publicity, ticket sales, stage designing, lights, costumes and so on,” he says.

“Once the show starts, there has to be a minimum break between any two items. All this is taken care of by a well planned and precise team. But all the sweat and struggle, tension and toil is forgotten, the moment I hear the applause of the crowd. That is a very satisfying reward and it truly makes our day,” he says.

Anand, in a soft tone, remembers his days when his parents almost killed him for showing interest in magic and for deciding to take it as a profession. His father was a practicing doctor.

He was bitten by the magic bug when he was seven year old, watching jugglers perform in the streets. They brought laddus from the thin air. Young Anand wanted to learn that art so that he can have any number of laddus he can, that dragged him deep into the magic perfection.

Anand hails from Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. He learnt hypnotism from spiritual guru Rajneesh (Osho), who also hails from the same place. “In turn, I taught him magic. It was more like a barter system,” he smiles.

“Around 16, I chanced upon a film on Harry Houdini’s underwater escape, and told myself ‘I can do this too’ And, did it!” At 18, he freed himself from the fetters and surfaced out of the Narmada River in a mere 40 seconds, a world record then. (Houdini did it in six minutes; PC Sorcar in 90 seconds, and more recently, his son Akash in 14 seconds in Kerala.) The feat shot him to global fame. Over the years he has innovated a lot of tricks.

Jadugar Anand has just completed his ‘magic’ tour of Tamilnadu cities and towns, and right now he is having his shows at Tirupati.

So far Anandji has completed about 27,500 stage shows traveling length and breadth of the country and also across 36 countries. He is into the profession for more than 40 years.

Aakash, his heir apparent

Before opening the show in a town, Anand does one of these things—blind-fold driving of motor bike or underwater escape or fire escape—with his Aakash Awasthi. Which is like announcing he is in city. A good publicity.

Aakash, the heir apparent of Mayalok, performs the riskiest stunts, in all of which the chance of survival is 50-50. In the fire-escape event, Aakash would be tied with 40 ft thick steel chain, locked with 40 locks, taken by a crane to 120 ft high and thrown into a huge burning haystack. He comes out of the flames after releasing himself from the chains, unscratched. This he has performed 11 times, a Limca book record.

In the blindfolded bike rides in the city, Aakash would ride covering about 20 kilometres in the busiest roads. This is performed to highlight safe driving and create traffic awareness—if blind-folded person can navigate safely on busy roads, why should normal driving lead to accidents.

In underwater escape event, Aakash would be hand-cuffed, chained and locked. Then he would be put into a gunny bag, tied, sealed and placed into a wooden box, locked and thrown into water. Aakash would untie and come out safely. This he has done twice—one at the Hussain Sagar Lake in Hyderabad and another at Trivandrum in Kerala a couple of months back.

Anand has many new magic tricks in his box, including making the Statue of Liberty and the Taj Mahal disappear, making an elephant appear from thin air, and bringing characters of movies alive from the screen and sending them back, floating a girl in mid air, cutting a body into two, etc.

Incidentally, Anand, also the national president of the All India Magic Federation, and he says that the number of the members from across the globe exceeds 16,000. He’s planning to set up an Academy of Magic in every State capital.

“Russian circus” and “Indian magic” are of great repute across the globe. No other art brings in so much of foreign currency as does magic, he claims. Sadly, there are no great facilities to learn this art, nor is there a social status in it.

“The State and Central Government should lend an encouraging hand, so that the new generation can learn it. Prospective magicians should not go through the difficulties I went through,” he says.