The card trick

I don’t know how many train journeys,how many picnics to Juhu beach (at a time when one still could have a picnic at Juhu beach without worrying about being run over by an acrobat or a straying auto-rickshaw aspiring to be a jet-ski),how many vacations,how many TV-less evenings,have I spent in the warm companionship of my well-worn deck.

The corners curled from careless thumbing in the course of a dazzling array of heart pounding games: Patience. Donkey. Memory. Thank You,Sorry. (Now,what kind of name for a card game is that?) And of course,the mysterious sounding and numerically named,304. (The zero being pronounced as “Naught”,as in “Three Naught Four”) A game that for some reason I have only seen played among my wonderfully entertaining South Indian relatives. Which is okay,since I have enough South Indian relatives to form a small Tamil state of our own,so what’s a little customised card game,huh?

Anyway,the point is I was kind of surprised to see my old deck of cards (with long banished liquor company’s ad on back face) in my daughter’s little hands. “Daddy,show me magic,” she said challengingly,thrusting the pack into my reluctant hands. “Darling…” “I know,I know,you don’t know any magic,” she said with a sneer,“Not like the cool guy on TV.” Hmmm. Since when have they started making 9-year-olds psychologically aware?

“Actually I do know some magic,” I said haughtily,“But have you done your homework?” Gotcha! “Yes.”

Oops! Daddy efficiently demonstrates remarkable flexibility in throwing size eleven foot into size three mouth…again. “Show me,show me. Unless you’ve forgotten.” Damn,what’s she doing with all my excuses?

“Well,okay,here’s what you do…” About half-hour later I had finally figured out the one card trick that my father had taught me. The one where you divide a pack into four piles,then get your mark to move the top cards of each pile around,here and there,according to your directions. Then turn the top card of each pile to reveal: Dhan-ta-tan!

All four aces! Well,most of the time.

For some reason when I did the trick the first seven times,the damn Queen of Hearts kept showing up,but eventually I cracked it,by the simple of method of sticking her in my back pocket. My daughter was gobblesmackerooed.

“Daddy! How did you do that? Tell me,please,tell me!”

Daddy retires triumphantly into blue corner,arms aloft,humbly acknowledging cheers of teeming Vikings in first nineteen rows.

“Daddy! Tell me! Or else I’ll tell mama that you didn’t have the low-fat strawberry ice cream! Tell me!”

So eventually I told her,since she twisted the arms of my weighing scale. And somehow the magic was lost. “You cheated!”

Postscript: My father always said: a magician never tells his tricks. But,you know what? These days,Daddy’s are dumb. And when they’re not dumb,they’re practicing how to get dumber. By watching politicians on TV,promising great roads,a booming economy,money for all by 3001 … and so on and so forth and see ya next trick!

(E-mail the columnist at adipochas@yahoo.com)