Magic! My head’s intact

Our correspondent sticks her head into a conjurer’s decapitation machine. Her head stays and so does her grimace

What are the odds of being decapitated while you are the subject of a magician’s escapades? One in a zillion? Of course, conjurer Jitendra Raghuvir is adept at his job. So, when I accepted the offer with an unusual degree of alacrity, I had faith in Raghuvir’s antics. In fact, I found myself pleading with him to try the most precarious ones on me. “If I am out of the guillotine intact, will you try a similar machine on my limbs? Or are you going to try your fire tricks,” I asked Raghuvir.

All this bravado was on the phone with Raghuvir. Inside the magician’s lair, I am a different person. With the decapitation machine in front of me, I let my imagination run wild. I ran a finger across the scimitar’s edge. The sword is as real as the sky that looms above me and the sun that beats down on my face. “You think the show would go awry just because YOU are the subject. Stop flattering yourself,” I muttered in an attempt to reassure myself.

But Raghuvir is not the reassuring kind. “The guillotine was specifically invented and designed during the French revolution. As there were several prisoners, the machine ensured that the decapitation was faster. All one has to do is put the head in the aperture and shove down the lever, holding the scimitar hard,” he said nonchalantly. He insisted that the blade pass all the way down to the other end of the aperture, leaving no scope for failure. “I will chop a cucumber first, only so you understand the mechanics of this instrument,” he said.

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The machine is grotesque. The rust and grime on its body made it look a 100 years old. Raghuvir held my head squarely in his palms and thrust it into the monster’s hole. “Keep still and lift your head up for the blade to slice across your neck and not the back,” he instructed. He stuck a wooden wedge below my chin lest I change my mind and try to escape. I close my eyes. I am an ardent supporter of the ‘Ostrich routine’.

“I will count to three and yank. 1, 2, 3.” A loud cluck as the lever travels all the way down. Of course, my head is still

in one piece. “If the blade was there all the while and traveled across the entire length of the aperture, then why is my head still intact,” I asked him, the grimace that assisted the act does not leave my visage for a good five minutes.

“Magic combines the best of science and technology to portray that which cannot be. The machine looks authentic and it really is, and while it would have hacked the cucumber into pieces, your head came out unscathed. That is why they call this magic. Also, a magician never reveals the mechanisms of his feats,” he replied.

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Despite having known that the decapitation ceremony was a façade, I cannot help but realise how it actually feels to be standing on the scaffold. The amusing hours I have spent watching reconstructed executions on the History Channel in accompaniment to a bag of popcorn do not seem all that amusing anymore.

“You’re alive! God help us,” Oinam Anand, the photographer, said sarcastically as I prepared for the next act: passing a sword through my gullet. By now I am sure that the man in the iridescent black coat had his head in order. Be it a sword or an axe through my throat, he was inarguably skillful.

“I will put a metal clamp around your neck before I pass the sword through it, moving the sword through your neck, of course,” Raghuvir said, attempting to sound as intimidating as possible. Yawning, I allowed the magician to clamp the device across my neck while I considered the more interesting things the afternoon had in store for me: a sumptuous Big Mac or perhaps pizza at the joint down the road. Screech, the sword passed through and I stood there, unruffled. Who are you kidding, bro? Nothing can go wrong here and for all I know, that sword might be plastic, my mind snapped. I touched the sword that was to cut through my neck and twisted it. Plastic it was.
Sword and scimitar custom done, and my head still intact, I foray into a search for the biggest Mac I ever had.