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The
truth is that every single “miracle” performed by India’s
swamis can be reproduced — with more skill — by any moderately
talented magician
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The photograph, which appeared in many
Indian papers, was part of the publicity for the Sorcar
family’s latest event: The gravity-defying feat of
riding bicycles on a pool of water deep enough to drown
a man. The trick will probably have been executed by the
time you read this, but it is only the latest in a
series of stunts (making an entire train disappear, for
instance) that Sorcar has performed all over
India.
Magic or miracle? Sorcar shows off as his
daughter Maneka cycles on water in Kolkata on 12
April |
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By
some coincidence, I had just finished reading William Kalush
and Larry Sloman’s biography of the magician and escapologist
Harry Houdini (The Secret Life of Houdini) when I saw a
photograph of P.C. Sorcar (Jr), India’s greatest magician,
waving at his daughter. There was nothing particularly unusual
about this except that Sorcar’s daughter was riding a bicycle
at the time. And the bike was riding on water, not solid
road.
But
my interest in the Sorcar family’s trick — and the link to
Houdini — lay in a childhood memory. In 1966, when I was a
small boy, Sai Baba-fever was at its zenith. These days the
baba prefers to talk about his charitable work but in that
era, he was best known for his miracles. Could he really
materialize Omega watches from thin air? Why did sacred ash
suddenly tumble from his portraits? Could he really raise the
dead? Why were his magic watches always Swiss-made? Did they
lack watch-making technology in Puttaparthi? (Okay, I made the
last one up.)
It
was against this backdrop that a man called Hatha Yogi
presented himself at the office of R.K. (Russy) Karanjia,
editor of the Blitz news tabloid, which had repeatedly
denounced Sai Baba as a fraud and asked such questions as: If
he has such magical powers, why doesn’t he produce a fistful
of wheat rather than an Omega watch or a gold ring? (This was
a time of food shortages in India.)
According to reliable eyewitnesses, Hatha Yogi
first levitated off the sofa and then told Karanjia that he
could walk on water. If Blitz was willing to lay its
scepticism aside, he would demonstrate this feat for its
readers. Karanjia, a confirmed sceptic (at that stage at
least; by the next decade he was wearing a Sai Baba ring),
asked what Hatha Yogi thought of Sai Baba. The yogi said that
the baba was a terrible fellow. But this appeared to be no
more than professional rivalry because he did not dispute that
Sai Baba had some powers though naturally, he said, they were
far inferior to his own.
Karanjia took the bait. Blitz hyped Hatha
Yogi’s imminent defiance of the laws of gravity, funds were
raised from readers through public subscription and a massive
tank of water erected in a Mumbai suburb. TV crews from all
over the world flew in and large crowds gathered at the spot.
On
the day in question, the yogi took one step into the water —
and sank to the bottom.
Later, he was to say that Sai Baba had put a
curse on him but by then nobody was interested. Hatha Yogi was
denounced as a fraud and vanished into obscurity — while Sai
Baba’s following grew and grew.
I
have never been able to reconstruct quite what happened.
Karanjia was convinced, till just before the mighty splash,
that the yogi, while no god, had yogic powers that would allow
him to defy gravity. Hatha Yogi’s own motives are more
mysterious. If he knew that he could not walk on water, then
why did he claim otherwise? The spectacle did him no good at
all. In fact, it destroyed him.
But
because I had been so fascinated by the saga as a child, I
wondered if it was actually possible for a magician to
recreate the feat Hatha Yogi claimed he could perform. The
Sorcar family’s trick suggests that a variation (cycling
rather than walking) is certainly possible.
Which
takes us back to Houdini. Most of us think of him as a master
escapologist, which, of course, he was. But he was also an
accomplished stage magician who took his name (he was born
Erik Weisz) from the legendary French magician Robert Houdin.
In
Houdini’s era (the early part of the 20th century), America
was in the grips of a wave of spirit mediums who claimed they
could communicate with the dead. Apparently, there was a
spirit world that existed in parallel with our own. Dead
people joined this world and a lucky few (the mediums) were
allowed to talk to them.
The
mediums not only offered to speak to dead relatives but
demonstrated physical manifestations — the spirits would move
tables, ring trumpets, take the form of ghostly ectoplasm and
even, for a price, have sex with willing clients.
Houdini recognized the mediums for the frauds
they were and he made it his mission to expose them. In city
after city, he turned up at séances, often in disguise, and
exposed the trickery behind the ghostly manifestations. Then,
he began to reproduce the tricks the mediums claimed as proof
of their spiritual powers. In every case — mind reading,
materialization, etc. — Houdini did the tricks more
effectively than any of the mediums had ever managed. They
were all frauds, he said, failed magicians, seeking to con an
unsuspecting public.
Each
time I point to the parallels with Sai Baba, I am vilified by
angry devotees of the Afro-head. But I do wonder why a
selfless Indian magician does not take it upon himself or
herself to do a Houdini on India’s godmen. The closest we came
to it was when P.C. Sorcar entered Sai Baba’s ashram in
disguise, did better tricks than him and was thrown out.
Sorcar hasn’t tried it again but any young magician eager to
make his name will win instant recognition by exposing our
godmen.
The
truth is that every single “miracle” performed by India’s
swamis can be reproduced — with more skill — by any moderately
talented magician.
And
now that Sorcar has shown us what Hatha Yogi should have done
42 years ago, even that bridge has been crossed.
Write to Vir at pursuits@livemint.com | 
