The Mentalist: Nakul Shenoy

Nakul Shenoy is a leading corporate entertainer, a mentalist based in Bangalore (India) who travels the world entertaining audiences drawn from, but not confined to, Fortune 100 companies. He has performed his own version of ‘magic’ at venues in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, UK and the US. Nakul holds a master’s degree in Communications and specialises in Usability Research, with 10-plus years of experience in the software product industry. He can be contacted through his Twitter feed, or through his website. What follows is a special guest post Nakul wrote for Yahoo’s Fit to Post blog, on a magic reality show and the state of the art in India.

India is, I once argued in a post, the land of magic. It is the land of the Great Indian Rope Trick — an iconic number believed to have been performed as early as the 1800s.

It stands to reason, then, that a reality show such as Star One’s ‘India Magic Star’, airing Saturdays, would throw up compelling performances, perhaps even produce the modern-day heirs to our rich magical traditions.

Or so I thought, when I resisted the temptation to watch ‘Castle’, ‘White Collar’ and other prime time serials and checked the show out. Hoo boy — was I wrong!

My disillusionment began as early as first impressions: a tacky set, a too-loud hostess, outlandish costumes. And then the performances began — and my impressions nose-dived even further; the performers were so painfully amateurish that I found myself impulsively tweeting angry reactions.

I was tempted to write, excoriating that first show — but then I figured that in the interests of fairness I needed to watch a few more shows before writing about it. Now, four weeks after that first initial immersion, nothing has happened to change my original opinion: the featured magicians are just plain bad; several acts are blatant copies of international ones and, what is worse, performers blatantly claimed them as their own creations. To round it off, the judges — hailed repeatedly on the show as ‘master magicians’ — go into ecstasies over all featured acts irrespective of quality.

I’ll illustrate what I mean with a few examples from Episode 2 of the show:

Magician Kruti was facing relegation, and took the stage to fight for her place in the line up. This is the act she performed — to the accompaniment of the claim that she was the only lady magician in India performing this ‘black art magic’ trick:

The end of the act saw a chorus of wah-wahs from the judges, who not only acclaimed Kruti for the “unique” and creative act, but committed the additional sacrilege of comparing her with the incomparable Omar Pasha. Watch:

This was not the first time (and sadly not the last) that the magician judges displayed their abysmal lack of knowledge of magic. Clearly judge Rajat, who is from Kolkata,was not even aware of Uma Dasgupta, who had made this act her signature ages ago. His fellow judge Vasant, who joined Rajat in applauding Kruti as the first Indian lady magician to perform the act, apparently hadn’t even seen Poornima Acharya in action, dating back to August 2007. Here, watch:

Very early into the show, I found myself attempting to decide what I hated more: the mediocre mimicry of world-class acts, or the superlatives — phataphati, zabardast — with which the two judges greeted these acts.

And then came the performer Sooraj, with this “brilliant” act:

Yahoo journalist and my friend Prem Panicker, with whom I was exchanging notes at the time, was prompted to post on his Twitter stream:

Shite, seen David Copperfield do this brilliantly!

He was right — Sooraj had blatantly plagiarized one of Copperfield’s most memorable illusions, even ripping off the master magician’s clothes, and his very, very emotive patter. Here you go:

The whole thing stuck in my craw: plagiarism was bad enough, but for a performer in a reality contest to not merely plagiarise, but to go on and claim that the act was specially created by him in memory of the brother he had lost as a kid, was the outside of enough. Prem, who was still watching, posted:

Every word and move as I remember it. Why claim it happened in his life?

Immediately thereafter, Prem posted that he was switching channels; that the judge’s “analysis” of Sooraj’s show made it all worse, and that “life was too short to waste on such rubbish”.

He was the smart one — I stayed with the channel, and the show, and it only got worse. Or better, depending on how you look at it. Act followed act, all characterised by a mind-numbing ordinariness — and at the end, the judges had to pick one of the ten contestants to axe. That was a no-brainer: Rajesh had produced easily the worst act of the day and merited expulsion — but then, “master magician” Vasanth acclaimed him as “among the top 10 magicians” in India and even asked for his autograph!

That was perhaps the worst moment of a really bad day. Reality shows of the ‘talent hunt’ variety — Indian Idol, Super Singer, whatever — serve a purpose: they showcase emerging talent in a particular field, rigorously weed out the less talented performers and, finally, give the palm to someone who embodies, in terms of talent, ability, and growth potential, the best of the upcoming generation in that particular field. Clearly, the “magician judges” on India Magic Star don’t quite get it; in hyping the undeserving, in building up mediocrity and over-praising the undeserving, these judges do the art of magic in India a considerable disservice.

It was comforting to know I was not the only one pulling my hair out watching such despicable performances. Shalini Mohan (the renowned bassist from Lounge Piranha) stumbled across the show while switching channels and saw enough in 10 minutes to exclaim,

“Jackie Shroff is the greatest magician on the show. He has to look and act interested and surprised all the time”.

The magician judges did not escape Shalini’s eye either:

“One of those two jokers congratulated this magician on his confidence, body language, and stage presence. To me that guy looked like he was swatting flies on stage!”

The only magician worth watching on the show is the irrepressible Uday Jadugar. This performer, who has toured every nook and corner of Karnataka for nearly 20 years and is a legend in his own right, is fighting a lone battle to show what magical entertainment could be. Despite having retired from active showbiz for over a decade now, Uday Jadugar continues to give a tough time to the other performers on this show.

Clearly, the show provides enough fodder to write incessantly, but I will stop here with a solemn wish. International magician and mega-illusionist Franz Harary has recently joined the show as “Magic Guru”. Sitting alongside the “Supremo” Jackie Shroff, Franz is the only one who brings respectability and a hint of honesty to the show, even going to the extent of saying, after one particular magic act:

“I respect our mentors and Jackie, but obviously I am watching a different show”.

If the recent decisions (on and off the screen) and frank comments by Franz are anything to go by, the Indian magic fraternity’s one chance to woo audiences depends entirely on the difference Franz brings to this otherwise bad show.

I wish Franz every success: the art of Indian magic depends on him; the two Indian “master magicians” on the show are unfortunately all hat, no rabbit.