EXPLORING THE CHARM OF NEW DELHI

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EXPLORING THE CHARM OF NEW DELHI

EXPLORING THE CHARM OF NEW DELHI

LEARN MORE ABOUT EXPLORING THE CHARM OF NEW DELHI AND EXPLORE FAR FROM THE TOURIST TRAIL IN NEW DELHI, A TRAVELER FINDS MAGIC

EXPLORING THE CHARM OF NEW DELHI

I sensed everybody observing us. The kids stopped searching among the rubbish for a minute and sat looking at us with caution. On the stairs of a building across the street, two guys stopped talking and turned to look at us in silence. Amit looked back. A woman crossed the road with a big bundle of yellow fabric pinned to her head, glanced up suddenly, saw us, appeared surprised, and hurried away. As we stood on the corner, I sensed that everyone in Shadipur Depot was stopping to notice our arrival.

 

“There,” said Amit a moment later. “That must be him.” A man walked toward us from one of the side streets. He wore a bright yellow shirt and a gray vest that looked out of place in our burned-out surroundings. He looked more like a dad at a soccer game than a great magician.

“You are Nate?”

I nodded.

“My name is Ishamudin Khan. Welcome to my home.”

Ishamudin led us down a path into the slum and I became lost almost immediately. The path was narrow and seemed to lead through houses as often as it led around them—we crossed a small courtyard, turned down a side passage, walked through someone’s kitchen, turned onto another side street that also served as a hallway through one of the buildings, and descended a long staircase that somehow both started and ended at ground level.

The narrow strip of sky overhead vanished frequently as we passed through tunnels, doorways, hallways, and buildings. We passed a monkey chained to a wall and sleeping on a pile of cloth, and a man standing next to an upright oil barrel, working on a fire. We kept going. I stood to one side as a young boy—a toddler, really, no more than three years old—staggered down the hall carrying a baby. The two were practically the same size. The older boy smiled at me as he passed, carefully gripping his baby brother as he stepped across an open drain in the floor. They turned the corner and were gone.

We stopped when Ishamudin announced that we had reached his house. He opened a door and led us inside a dark, low-ceilinged room. It was filled with magicians.

Ishamudin introduced me to the group; then I sat silently as they spoke to one another. A plate of potato chips sat in the center. I would learn later that this was an extravagant gesture of welcome—potato chips for the American visitor—but at the moment I didn’t know what to think. Amit was clearly uncomfortable. This made me uncomfortable.

Finally Ishamudin said, “I understand that you are a magician?”

“Yes.”

“Could you show us one of your tricks?”

Of course. They wanted to see if I was any good.

In America, entrance to the various clubs and societies of magicians is sometimes contingent on a performance, to demonstrate that you’ve already put in the requisite time and commitment to the craft, and this group—quite rightly—wanted to verify the same. The potato chips indicated that their hospitality would be offered either way, but I wanted to talk to them about magic.

I gathered the group in a circle and removed the spool of thread from my backpack. Some illusions rely on subterfuge or technology, some rely on psychological subtlety and a mastery of the ability to manipulate the attention of the audience, but some illusions rely on nothing more than pure sleight-of-hand technique that cannot be faked, purchased, or obtained by any other means than standing in front of a practice mirror and putting in months and often years of work. I didn’t know whether I could amaze this group of magicians, but I wanted them to know that I had chops.

I broke a three-foot section of thread from the spool and held it at my fingertips so that everyone could see. They were watching very closely. Slowly and deliberately, I broke the piece of thread into four or five smaller pieces, handing each piece to a different magician to demonstrate that the thread was actually broken.

When I had performed this for the teacher at the ashram in Rishikesh he had watched sharply, trying to catch any false move. But I felt a warmth from this group and remembered that magicians love magic tricks more than anyone else.

“Roll the pieces into a small ball,” I said. Amit helped with the translation, and one of the magicians collected the broken pieces and rolled them together.

“Watch this.” I retrieved the ball of broken thread and pulled slowly on two of the loose ends. The magicians began to smile.

As I pulled on the string, the ball continued to unroll and within seconds they saw that the thread had been completely restored. Laughter, applause, handshakes, pats on the back. I’m sure that any of them could have performed a similar feat easily, but my execution had been flawless and their reserve fell away.

We spoke for an hour about magic, first in generalities about our careers and then about specific illusions. One of the tricks in my show has its roots in a traditional piece of magic from India and they watched—with amusement, I think—as I demonstrated my version of an illusion that has been handed down from father to son in their tribe for millennia. I passed out a handful of sewing needles for inspection and unwound another length of thread. After gathering the needles I placed them on my tongue, closed my mouth, and swallowed. In my show this moment elicits groans, gasps, shrieks of disgust and dismay. Here, nothing.

No response. I opened my mouth to show the needles were gone and they just waited. One man nodded politely. The same thing happened when I swallowed the length of sewing thread—no response. It was only when I pulled the thread back out of my mouth—now with all of the needles threaded along its length, dangling and glinting in the light—that they responded with any sort of enthusiasm.

“It’s good,” one of them offered—a young man about my own age who spoke no English but communicated with me through Amit. “You have good technique.”

 

 

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