Jaadugar Karan: 4/10

I try to catch magic shows when they come into town. A couple of years ago Jaadugar Anand blew my brains out with his elephants and levitations and item number dances but it's generally been downhill after that. Last night I dragged some friends out to see Jaadugar Karan at the Town Hall. So we bought front row tickets and entered the hall. In addition to the six of us friends (including Ajay's two year old son Satva), there were about 15 other people total in the hall and one megawatt light focusing on the audience. On the left and right extremities of the stage there were some TVS motorcycles and general TVS posters here and there. Ok, so he has a sponsor that probably takes him around the country, good for him. Then the lights went off and the show started. Three red ambulance lights in front of the stage started revolving and projections filled the curtain, it was 70s Bollywood Smuggler Villian's House Disco Party vibe and eventually the curtains opened after 10 minutes. Music pumping, some guys came in holding up a white screen and eventually fixed themselves at stage centre and a projection on the screen started a movie which introduced us to the show "starring Jaadugar Karan". In the movie, he walked in to the frame with sykotic magician/gladiator clothing, silvery suit and black boots and some barren hills in the background. He walked in slow motion towards his TVS motorcycle and mounted his steed. Then... the camera zoomed into the kick starter and we watched his black boot start the bike. Then... the camera zoomed to the accelerator and he revved the engine a couple of times. Then... he rode it around the mountains for 10 minutes and finally ended up stopping the bike in front of a wall and the screen burst open and there he was in real life on his TVS motorcycle behind it and he jumped out smiling and started the show.

He spoke in Hindi a lot. I thought he also spoke in Gujrati for a bit but Vishal told me that wasn't the case. He spoke English too but in some Tolkien dialect and you could only pick up a few words and phrases like "Greatest", "Run Run Run", and "First Time in Asia". His magic revolved mostly around boxes and making people disappear and decapitated using these. He also took some cloth pieces and put them together to form the Indian flag and then his stage assistants marched around patriotically. He threw in some short discourses on religion, nationalism and statehood. His magic wasn't very captivating. I was hoping for some good music and dance stuff but it was mostly him and the same really strange looking guys dancing vaguely to Michael Jackson and Khalnayak music. The ambience was pretty dark and sinister and nobody responded to anything he did (except us I think). There was no live orchestra. He was ok. But then he left the stage and in came his assistant to do some filler tricks and he is a certified crack fellow.

He seemed innocuous enough when he asked for a young volunteer, a five year old boy or girl if possible. He had to ask several times before some guy came up to the front with his son and lifted him onto the stage and gave him to the mad man. The mad man then proceeded to do some small talk with the young man who already looked pretty scared to be there. "Hindi teriyon?" "Padte ho?" "Daddy ka naam kya hai?" which stumped the young fellow and made him even less comfortable. Then the lights went out, music started and the revolving red strobes took us back into Amrish Puri's evil lair. A midget brought in a blindfold and much to the kid's dismay they blindfolded him lifted him up and took him towards the back where there was something like an operating table and they put the blindfolded kid on it. He was fighting now but it was too late for the trick had started. It was dark and red strobes and scary assistants and midgets who looked like they wanted to drink his blood, really scary even from where I was sitting. I think the mad man brought some swords and hoops and tried to prove that the kid was levitating but by this time the kid was in tears and had removed his blindfold and was trying to get up and yelling to his dad. But the mad man was having none of it and kept pushing him down. Finally when the trick was over, the kid was brought back to the front still crying and looking like he'd just come out of the Exorcist and returned to his father after giving him a chocolate.

I think that was when we decided we better leave soon. By now Satva was also crying and Ajay left. Karan came back and did a couple more tricks which elicited no response. He then asked poignantly "Aap ko mazaa nahi aa raha hai?", Vishal felt bad and threw in some claps. Karan thumped his chest many times during the show and talked about kalaa and kalaakars. He cut himself into half, that was a pretty neat trick but he could have made a bigger deal out of it. Then the mad assistant came in and did some Hindi standup comedy where he made fun of his wife and turned rice grains into thermocol. He also brought in the midget and a glass of milk and did something with it but I'm not sure what. They kept dipping their hands in the milk and splashing it around, then drinking it and spitting it out and finally he made the midget drink the milk from 20 feet away, converted the milk in his stomach into water and pulled it out of various parts his body with a siphon. Don't ask. So in conclusion, Karan's magic was ok, his assistant is most definitely rural guy with rural humour, and the show wasn't much of a spectacle, we agreed that it would have been more fun to watch if it was set in a tent in rural Haryana. Finally there was a 7 minute break. And that was when we got the hell out of there and went to drown ourselves at The Windsor Pub, which was fun as usual :)