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Journalism of Courage
ON a muggy afternoon, a group of students from St Aloysius High School, Bandra, listlessly hangs around the school entrance. Their sluggishness, however, vanishes as soon as Azhar Pirani and Ian Fernandes introduce themselves as magicians and offer to demonstrate a few tricks. The children gather around, as the duo proceeds to confound them with conjuring tricks. One child is taken through an elaborate card trick until he finds his watch missing, which turns up in Fernandes’ pocket. Another boy is tricked into selecting the same card from a pack, despite his best efforts. The appreciative audience punctuates the performance with whoops and cheers and demands to know when the two will be performing again. “Soon,” Pirani and Fernandes promise, as their business head Janvion Rodrigues hands out the team’s card and asks the students to check out their videos on their social media pages.
Pirani, Fernandes and Rodrigues form Urban Shamans, a group that wants to bring magic out of its moth-balled closet stuffed with outdated tricks, clunky props and stifling costumes. Fernandes says, “Most magicians in India perform the same old tricks from over 50 years ago. However, the audience has evolved and their appetite has increased.” Urban Shaman’s magic is not about visual spectacle; it’s about removing the barriers of props and costumes between the magician and the audience and making magic a more immediate and personal experience.
Pirani specialises in conjuring while Fernandes is more a mentalist. It was only a month ago that both friends arrived at the idea of turning their hobby into a profession. After travelling abroad and expanding his skills, Fernandes had returned to perform in India. Pirani, who had been jumping from job to job without ever finding the satisfaction he was looking for, was immediately enthusiastic about the idea. He says, “It’s a relatively untapped market with a lot of scope for growth. Now, I realise that I like magic more than any other job I’ve done so far.” When they consulted their friend Rodrigues, he encouraged them and came on board too.
For their first public show last month, Fernandes performed on a stage set that was created to look like a living room. The idea, he explains, was to “invite” the audience into his home to introduce the idea that magic does not have to rely on elaborate props and settings and that it can be a lot more “organic and natural”. It is similar to the magic that we see from international names such as David Blaine and Criss Angel, but which hasn’t really found a foothold in India, says Pirani.
Most people, when they see a magician’s prop, know enough not to trust its supposed magic. On the other hand, if a magician can guess the word that is in your head, simply by pressing his fingertips against yours, he comes across as the real deal. That is clearly the conclusion that many of Urban Shamans’ audience arrive at and, in some cases, get spooked about. An example is the man the duo runs into near Bandra’s Mehboob Studios. Once he finds out that he’s about to see “real magic”, the would-be spectator shakes his head and hurries away. To Pirani and Fernandes, this isn’t new. “Many people react this way, because for them, magic can only mean black magic. They’ve never actually seen magic and have only heard about it through a series of Chinese whispers, so they don’t know that it’s not real. It gives them the wrong idea of what we do,” says Pirani.
The group is now consolidating its plans with a series of private corporate shows, besides free events for charity. They’re also looking at stage shows for a larger audiences, but the format will keep getting tweaked until they have what works for them. Rodrigues says, “For the first show, we mixed mentalism with other magic, but in the future, we’re looking at separate, dedicated shows. This way, we can showcase our talents, in the best possible way.”
