Pure magic

Every time former Union Minister Shankara Pillai Krishna Kumar played the ?match-box trick?, using his wife Usha as the guinea pig, his audience would freeze, writes Kumkum Chadha.

Every time former Union Minister Shankara Pillai Krishna Kumar played the ‘match-box trick’, using his wife Usha as the guinea pig, his audience would freeze. Usha would stand in the centre of the room, draped in an exquisite South Indian silk sari. Krishna Kumar would then strike a match and set her sari on fire. Before you could say onion rava masala dosa, Krishna Kumar would put out the flames with his bare hands and — presto! — both Usha and the sari would be intact. Later, when age caught up with him, and perhaps maturity as well, Krishna Kumar decided to substitute the sari with a shawl. “In case of a mishap, you can throw the shawl away, but a sari on fire can prove fatal,” he says.

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Krishna Kumar also carries a pack of cards in his pocket all the time. Mention it and he brings it out and performs a trick or two. “Part magic, part manipulation,” he concedes. Fond of telling dirty jokes, he also heads an informal group called ‘Jokes Risqué’, which meets often to exchange the latest in the genre. “Krishna,” his friends confirm, “beats everyone.”

That apart, Krishna reads palms. Though accused of using it as an excuse to hold a lady’s hand, Krishna has often stumped people with his predictions. As for himself, during the ‘sade-saati’ (seven-and-a-half-year period of Saturn), he suffered three heart attacks, was a victim of political intrigue and had Fera cases registered against him. “But then,” he consoles himself, “even Lord Krishna was imprisoned and accused of stealing.” Considering that Krishna shares his name and birthday (he was born on Janamashtmi) with the God, the comparison is apt.

He is confident that his “best is yet to come”; and things have already begun to look up. To begin with, he has been exonerated in the Fera cases. He also returned to the Congress after a brief stint in the BJP. With his arch rival and Kerala’s seasoned politician K Karunakaran out in the cold, Krishna Kumar now breathes easy.

This week, he, along with Union Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, played host to Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and several Union ministers. They had come to bless his son, Adarsh, and Aiyar’s daughter, Yamini, who had got married recently. He is also all set to do a doctorate on a new model for Kerala’s development.

Sixty six-year-old Krishna Kumar claims people often compliment him for looking much younger than he is. Starting his career as an IAS officer, he joined politics in 1980 after “feeling suffocated” in the bureaucracy. As a district collector back home in Ernakulam, he had organised Shivratri festival on the banks of the Periyar, where priests were replaced by officers. As prasadam, they distributed title deeds to the landless.

Till the family planning ‘festival’ a year later, which Kumar spearheaded, he was known as the ‘people’s collector’. Following 64,000 vasectomies, in what Krishna Kumar believes was a “festive atmosphere” in a town-hall camp, he was nicknamed “Nirodh Kumar”. The name has stuck.

Email Kumkum Chadha: kumkum@hindustantimes.com