SPELL CHECK

He is, so he claims, India’s first street magician. Not for him the stage where rabbits get pulled out of hats and women in pink tights get sawed into half. He takes his show with him, to strangers in malls and markets, to housewives out for an ice cream and young men checking out babes and brands. His appearance, too, lacks the extravagance of a conjuror. The turban with a red plume has been junked for straggly locks; the brocade robes for black T-shirts and jeans; loops of pearls for chunky pendants and belts. The only element of drama comes from the kohl-lined eyes that offset his gaunt face.

An hour before the shoot, magician, mentalist and bizarrist Sarcar—that’s how his card describes him—is in his make-up van, surrounded by a stack of laptops, a colourful ashtray where a cigarette has been hastily stubbed out, and bottles of packaged drinking water. Up close, the layers of make-up are visible. “In India, you tell someone you are a street magician and they think, ‘madaari hai,” he says. “But it’s a great art, more difficult than a stage show. I’ve only shown you a trailer.”

Sarcar’s show strings together episodes of him surprising passers-by with his tricks. He approaches the man on the street or the market with politeness, pulls out his pack of cards and the magic begins. He has slid a coin into a sealed bottle of water without opening it, levitated on a Mumbai sidewalk, bent spoons and made cellphones ring on their own. It’s a no-fuss performance shorn of grand gestures. It tells the audience that this is an impromptu, unrehearsed performance—that the conjuror has plucked magic out of the humdrum life around him. It works, though is not exactly edge-of-the-seat action. Sometimes, the show appears amateur in its production values.

For Bindass, the magic is in the viewership figures. 3rd Degree is now the most popular show on the channel. “Its popularity has only grown. When we started out in September, it was a two-minute filler. It got people hooked and in November, we started a full half-hour episode,” says Shalini Seth, creative director of 3rd Degree.
Which is not saying much. Even the great powers of the occult cannot beat everlasting saas-bahu soaps and screechy song-and-dance shows at the TRP game. Bindass, moreover, has a niche viewership and the number of the show’s loyal watchers is a blip. But it does hold up a new, and, sometimes, gripping face of contemporary magic.

Sarcar, despite his break with the tradition of magic, was born into a charmed life. His father M.C. Sarcar was and still is a big name in the gallery of Karnataka magicians. With his elder son, he runs a school of magic in Bangalore, Karnataka Magic Academy Trust, which has about 7,000 students. “I grew up surrounded by magic. As a child, I accompanied my father to many stage shows. But even then, I didn’t like the idea of loud performances and the magician with layers of make-up. It was too unreal,” he says, running his fingers through his hair.

Sarcar also had no patience for formal education. He dropped out of college because he didn’t see how cramming Newton’s law of gravity would help him when he was “considering ways to defy it.” But he took a long detour before he found his way to the school of magic. “I took up any job I could find. I have worked in a call centre, as a medical transcriptionist, been part of a marketing cell, performed as a stand-up comic and given motivational lectures to IT executives. Magic is about playing mind games. That was the best way I could learn about the psychology of people,” he says.

After 12 years at playing the rolling stone, it was time for him to learn the tricks of illusion. Only, his father refused to teach him. “I mean, here I was, all set to be a sincere student and he refused flat out, without giving me a reason. In my anger, I shot off my mouth and said I would learn 100 card tricks in a month,” says Sarcar. As it turned out, he hadn’t made a tall promise. “When I went back to him with my small repertoire, he told me there if I could have picked up these tricks on my own, I didn’t need any training. Looking back, I realise he was the best teacher I had.”

Street magic as vaudeville performance by travelling magicians has existed for thousands of years now. This ‘hit-and-run’ style of magic was made famous in the US of the late ’90s by David Blaine when he performed his tricks on television. How is it more difficult than stage shows? “Magic,” says Sarcar, “ is about angles. On the stage, you can control how your audience sees you. On the street, it’s out of your hands. You are exposed. So you better be good at your job.”

Surprisingly, Blaine does not figure in the narrative of his education in magic. “I discovered street magic on my own. David Blaine had nothing to do with it,” he says almost gruffly, before qualifying the statement. “It’s quite possible, of course, that Blaine, being the extremely creative person he is, hit on it around the same time. I have always been a prankster and I love freaking out my friends with my tricks. Street magic seemed to me to be an extension of that. I just walked out to the street and spooked out strangers, but with no props, no support from your environment.”

Our David Blaine, however, has a lot of catching up to do. Most of his shows have as their backdrop the stale glitz of airconditioned malls. Blaine took his art to edgier environs where the street had as many surprises for the magician as he had aces up his sleeve besides reinventing himself as an endurance artist. 3rd Degree also needs to come up with better scripts and do away with the current tacky voiceover.

Sarcar, though, isn’t bothered by comparisons. “Artists like Blaine, Criss Angel and Ugesh Sarcar are unique. We know how to defy the laws that rule our life,” he says grandly. “What I have done is the tip of the iceberg. There is more to come. Wait and watch.” The last, irresistible question—from mere mortal to magician—remains. How does he do it? Sarcar smiles and answers. “Can you keep a secret?..So can I”.