The crystal ball has crashed to the floor and nothing can fix its brokenness. There is no cloud of purple smoke billowing out of pandals erected in carnivals where carousels, pinwheels and soothsayers assisted by parakeets are the description of entertainment. The turbaned man, wearing a new shade of gem on each other finger who sat caressing playing cards as if they were the forehead of a leopard, has unrobed himself and disappeared into the crowd. Those mirror mazes now stand unexplained and the dolls he pumped life into can be declared dead, more dead than they ever were. Magic is no longer country-silly and India isn’t in toe-curling awe of it. Last month, the documentary by Kolkata-based IT professional Amit Sahai, Fading Magic: The Story of Kolkata’s Magicians, won a Gold Award at the IFCOM Film Festival in Jakarta, Indonesia.  The movie tells the story of the West Bengal capital’s stage magicians whose livelihood no longer shines under spotlight.

The suspense on Kolkata’s streets wasn’t the work of a coloniser’s suspecting imagination, for here is where the father of Indian magic Pratul Chandra Sorcar practiced his craft. With his pencil-thin moustache combed into twirls over his face and cheeks, and eyes dolled up like that of a Kuchipudi dancer, he sawed some women in half and made others float in air. His contemporary K Lal was given the title of the World’s Fastest Magician (1968) by International Brotherhood of Magicians in the US. He made his subjects disappear into boxes and brought them back safely within theatrical seconds. Sahai’s film talks about 3,000 other magicians who regularly performed at the city’s Mahajati Sadan theatre.

As the past is sinking into the sea, a bright new tomorrow is rising out of it; only in matters of magic can two such realities share light in the golden hour. Read more…  http://www.newindianexpress.com/magazine/The-New-Masters-of-Make-Believe/2015/12/05/article3161040.ece1