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This way magic, that way tragic
At Millennium Park, abutting the Hoogly, some friends and followers helped Lahiri into a hired boat, and then the group set sail for the middle of the river, where the water was at its deepest.
On most Sundays, Chanchal Lahiri would sleep in, but on June 16 he woke up early. By 7.30am, he was out of his unfinished two-storeyed house in the rundown Sonarpur suburb of Kolkata and on his way to the Hoogly riverfront, an hour away.
“He appeared absolutely relaxed. In the past, he would look jittery before a show but not that day. He smiled at me and asked me to not worry,” said his wife of 16 years, Rita Lahiri.
It was the biggest day in the 42-year-old’s life.
He was attempting to pull off a trick – escape to the surface after being dropped underwater with his arms and legs tied with ropes and chains -- successfully accomplished by legendary American magician Harry Houdini and Indian master PC Sorcar junior. It was supposed to mend his reputation that was gutted by two devastating previous failures.
It would also be his last.
At Millennium Park, abutting the Hoogly, some friends and followers helped Lahiri into a hired boat, and then the group set sail for the middle of the river, where the water was at its deepest.
In the meantime, Lahiri struggled out of his everyday clothes and into a bright yellow jumpsuit, red shorts, black socks layered with medical bandages, aviators, and a frizzy bronze wig – the kitschy ensemble a homage to his idol, Mandrake the Magician, the protagonist of the iconic comic strip by Lee Falk.
As the crew maneuvered the boat around a pier of the Howrah Bridge, Lahiri lay down in the boat to allow himself to be bound with nylon ropes and steel chains. An assistant took out a camera and clicked shots. Spectators began to gather along the bridge’s railing, followed by television reporters. “The chains and ropes cannot be untied by a normal human,” Lahiri told a news channel correspondent. Then he smiled into the camera and added, “If I can do it, it will be magic, otherwise it will be tragic.”
At roughly 12.30pm, a crane lowered him into the turgid waters of the Hoogly head first, never to be seen alive again. His lifeless body washed ashore in Howrah at noon the next day. “It was all over in 45 seconds,” said his assistant and nephew Rudraprasad.
Rita, who was controlling the crane, said Lahiri was scared of drowning. “He would often tell me ‘Have you ever imagined how a man suffers when he is drowning? It is scary.’ His words now ring in my ears.”
ACT OF DEFIANCE
For most of his life, Lahiri chased fame but found little of it. Born to a chandelier maker in Sonarpur in 1977, Lahiri discovered Mandrake, who used hypnosis and magical powers to fight crime and extraterrestrials, and was the precursor to Falk’s most famous creation, Phantom.
At 17, he held his first magic show. “He earned R80 and dropped out of high school,” said Rudraprasad.
Over the next two decades, Lahiri slowly molded himself in the frame of his favourite comic character but dropped the ‘E’ to call himself “Mandrak, the Magician.”
He was entering a field of work whose rules were already set. In the late 1980s, stalwarts dominated Kolkata’s magic scene. Sorcar Jr was enthralling thousands-strong audiences with his vaudevillian shows while Prince Sil boasted a lucrative job at a five-star hotel after executing a daring catching-bullet-with-teeth routine. They dominated the posters on street lights, graffiti on the walls, airwaves on the radio, and the then-nascent television.
Defying the usual route for newcomers, Mandrak refused to apprentice under them, or go to well-known magic teachers such as Goutam Guha. Instead, he turned to books and his own imagination.
He also developed a distaste for elaborate vaudevillian shows that most Bengali magicians specialised in. “Mandrak wanted to challenge the concept of showmanship popularised by PC Sorcar Jr. He always said a magician doesn’t have to appear before his audience in a turban and sherwani,” said Lahiri’s friend and magician Sujit Kumar.
“He liked Indian magic but was mainly drawn towards American and European performers. He used to say, ‘if an act can be performed so simply why do performers in our country use huge props and add such extravaganza to a show? It takes the finesse out of the art’,” said Rita.
Of course, in the world of high magic, this was sacrilege. “Magic is nothing but science, and science has a grammar that has to be learnt,” said Sorcar.
Prince Sil, who finished 50 years in magic this year, also stressed the importance of process and training. “Yes, Lahiri did a lot of magic. But from what I knew of him, his problem was that wanted to do some new adventurous stunt,” he said.
His chosen path was lonely. “He never had any friend among the big magicians in Kolkata… for most of the time he used to keep to himself,” said Rita.
Lahiri’s big break came in 1998, when he escaped from a glass box after being submerged in the Hoogly. Rudraprasad remembers how Lahiri, then a one-man show with little cash and no publicity, worked tirelessly for months to secure permissions from police and civic authorities.
“He used to walk from Sealdah station to the Kolkata Police headquarters and back to save bus fare. His patience paid off. The act was a hit and he was in the newspapers for the first time,” said Rudraprasad.
Suddenly, things looked up for him. Lahiri began drawing assistants and apprentices, and hosting shows. But business was not steady and the competition was tough. “Mandrak’s shows were mostly self-financed and attracted people for a few years but then came a lull. Many of his old assistants left,” Rudraprasad said.
By the mid-2000s Lahiri was booking fewer and fewer shows, bringing in only R7,000-8,000 monthly, and desperately trying to find inspiration from his sole pastime: detective novels and films based on detective novels. Around him, the world of magic was in a churn. With the advent of the Internet, young viewers now had access to millions of performance videos and tutorials breaking down each trick. A live act promised far less thrill, and the pillar of the magician’s livelihood, the show, suddenly was far less lucrative.
BANGAL KA JADU
Bengal’s tryst with magic is at least 500 years old. “Jahangir, in his memoirs, describes how a troupe of seven magicians visited his court and performed a series of 28 tricks over several days including a version of the famous Indian Rope Trick - so Bengal’s association with magic goes back a very long way,” said John Zubrzycki, author of ‘Jadoowallahs, Jugglers and Jinns: A Magical History of India’.
Sorcar argues that the history goes back at least two millennia, to the times of the Vedas. At any rate, by the time the British set foot in Bengal, magic was flourishing. The colonial era influenced the practice in the 1870s, when instructional books on how to do magic started arriving from Britain and enabled the creation of a whole new class of professional magicians.
In their 2007 paper ‘Conjuring Images of India in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Peter Lamont and Crispin Bates note that the first western article about the “levitating Brahmin” appears in 1832, followed by a deluge of coverage about “mystery” and “magic” in the Orient.
From the middle of the 19th century, even as French and British entertainers started to adapt Indian tricks, oriental literature drew a distinction between the high-caste “levitating Brahmin” and the lower-caste street artistes and “dirty” charmers, a bias that culminated in the 1876 Control of Dramatic Performances Act, which ended up being used brutally against street artistes.
Things came full circle with Ganapati Chakraborty, a Bengali Brahmin who started his career in the 1880s as a stuntman in a circus and became inspired by Houdini’s escape routines. “His most famous trick, the Illusion Box, went one step further than Houdini’s version. After untying his ropes and removing his chains while locked in a wooden casket, he did the process in reverse,” said Zubrzycki.
Chakraborty’s success spurred on a whole generation of magicians in Bengal, said Saileswar Mukherjee, a Kolkata-based historian of magic. “Chakraborty’s students passed on the secrets to the next generation. The 1950s and ’60s became the golden age of magic in Bengal,” Mukherjee said.
Magic in Bengal turned a corner in the 1950s, when a 27-year-old Pratul Chandra Sorcar took the West by storm. Zubrzycki notes how the BBC was flooded with calls in April 1956 by hundreds of viewers convinced they had witnessed a gruesome murder live – Sorcar’s trademark trick of slicing a body in half.
Sorcar turned the orientalist trope on his head by wearing bright, maharaja-like clothes, featuring the Taj Mahal and the elephant in his stage design, and taking on the moniker of the “Greatest Magician of the World”.
“He was the biggest showman. His son Pradip successfully carried the legacy forward…in all these years, no one else has been able to come even close to the father-son duo,” said Mukherjee.
DOWNWARD SLIDE
As Mandrak came into his own, West Bengal was on a downward slide. Industries were fleeing the state hamstrung by strikes and government policies, and taking away disposable incomes and potential patrons of magic. Only the best could survive. “It was not a well-paying profession. Other than the established ones, not everyone could earn well because of the intense competition,” explained Sil.
The Internet boom dealt a further blow. “It increased the competition, and drove down incomes. Now, most magicians work with corporates and at birthday parties,” said Sumit Kharbanda, president of the Indian Brotherhood of Magicians.
The problem was more acute in Kolkata, explained Sanjay Chatterjee, co-founder of the Federation of Indian Magic Associates. “Even though craft and talent are better in Kolkata, we are left behind by Mumbai and Delhi, where magicians know how to sell themselves better. Money and the lack of agents or marketing are our big problems,” he added.
The life of Saptarshi Purkait perfectly demonstrates this. The 29-year-old entered the world of magic in 2014 after watching American illusionist David Blaine on television, but quickly realised it was not enough to earn him an income. After struggling for a few years, Purkait gave up and opened a mobile phone repair shop for sustenance. “People like magic but no one wants to pay anymore. People now work for as little as R500-600, they get very bad quality but no one wants to pay more,” said the resident of Baruipur, a suburb of Kolkata. The most money he earned for a show was R8,000, and he is sure he will never get that much again.
Sorcar disagrees vehemently. He thinks the magic scene is better now, booming even. He says that is because the wall of mystery around magic has crumbled, making space for trained professionals to stand out. “Magic is to be done by trained people. If a novice comes into a boxing ring, what do you think will happen to him?”
DO OR DIE
In the summer of 2009, Lahiri decided to undertake his most daring act yet: Attempt to walk across the Hoogly in broad daylight. Posters of Jadugor Mandrak were plastered all over Kolkata, and a big crowd gathered to see the feat. Unfortunately, minutes into the act, it became clear to them that Lahiri’s team had placed wooden planks in the shallow water, but the low tide made the deception clear to all spectators.
The next day, a leading Bengali daily carried a big feature on Lahiri titled “Cheating is good until you get caught”. This article is how many young magicians came to know of him. said Purkait.
Humiliated, Lahiri retreated into the shadows, doing small shows and gathering props and ideas for his next big attempt.
Rita recalls that during this time, Lahiri put up shows with simple vanishing tricks, and even used her in some of them. “There was one popular act in which I appear from a globe… Another big stage act was called ‘Bermuda Triangle’ in which everything thrown at a rotating tunnel used to disappear,” she added.
In December 2013, he resurfaced again to attempt an even bigger stunt -- improve on his earlier glass box trick by escaping from a locked cage underwater, another magic move made famous by Houdini. On December 2, thousands of people gathered in the morning on the Howrah Bridge to see his trick. As planned, he was put in a locked cage and lowered into the Hoogly. Ten seconds later, his head bobbed above the water and shortly after he clambered aboard a waiting boat.
But ashore, a rude reception awaited him. Incensed spectators said they were duped. They had seen a clumsily concealed trapdoor, fastened only by a couple of screws, in the so-called locked cage. Some ripped away his wig, others landed a few blows – on live television. One demanded “his lies” be uncovered on the news.
Mandrak appeared unfazed. “We all know magic is a trick. Some tricks are complex, some are easy to detect, there is nothing more to say,” Mandrak told a television channel.
Despite the calm exterior, the incident affected Lahiri deeply, say those close to him, and prompted him to temporarily suspend his ambition. Instead, he built on smaller shows and tricks. He spent hours at cyber cafes downloading hundreds of magic videos and carrying them in CDs to practice the acts at home. He would also show up at every magic show in the city. “He prepared his scripts meticulously and practised with his gadgets tirelessly. He never broke down. I never saw him brood or repent. Such was his nature. He never paid any heed to what people said,” Rita said.
Gradually though, as money dried up, he returned to planning his next big stunt – a last-ditch attempt to attract financiers and fans, said his family.
Opinion is divided on why Lahiri’s last act failed. Some think his bandaged legs were too heavy, others say he made a mistake performing in high tide that swept away his body before he could undo the knots. Rudraprasad thinks they waited too long for the audience to gather. Sil thinks he should have kept an underwater rope, or a diver at hand. One thing they all agree on: He was not prepared.
LEGACY AND DESTINY
On the best of days, Chanditala is halfway between chaos and gloom. A cramped neighbourhood in the small town of Sonarpur, this is where Lahiri lived with his wife and 15-year-old son in a misshapen house – he never had the money to finish construction on the second storey – and managed his small magic business.
On June 22, his funeral was held in the same house. A small stream of fellow illusionists stood in a serpentine lane that led to his house to pay their condolences. Two old monochrome photographs of Lahiri were garlanded and placed on plastic chairs.
Beyond the pall, friends and magicians exchanged tidbits. Ajoy Das remembered how Lahiri was fearless while planning daring stunts but was deathly scared of needles. Sujay Kumar detailed how much effort Lahiri would put in designing his look before every big act. Rudraprasad griped about the criminal complaint against him and other assistants for the June 16 incident, and for allegedly concealing the nature of the trick in their letter seeking permission for the event.
In one corner, Rita sat on a chair. She fondly remembered how he would never lose his temper. “My life is empty right now. I followed him like a shadow,” she said.
After 16 years of being married to him, Rita prefers to call her husband not by his given name, but his chosen name: Mandrak. She choked when recounting that she is haunted by nightmares of him gasping for breath underwater. “He did not believe in the word ‘impossible’. He kept telling me that any and every act is possible because a magician can do anything,” she added.
Halfway through the rituals, a message arrived from Drummond William Thomas Money-Coutts, the renowned South Africa-born British magician popularly known as DMC, offering the family aid of R1 lakh and an offer to carry on Lahiri’s craft with support from magicians in Europe. “All that he stood for, his commitment, his dedication, will live on for generations. I wish there was a form of magic that could change or undo what had happened…” the message said.
Slowly, other messages of condolence began to trickle in. Purkait saluted his courage in challenging himself. Sil credited his spirit of performance. And Sorcar Jr said the magic fraternity had to suspend the criticism for a moment to support his endeavor, dream and spirit. In life, unfortunate circumstances dogged Lahiri’s craft. In death, he had finally become the household name he always knew he was destined to be: Jadugor Mandrak.
