Four-Year-Old: Magician Preaches, Teaches, and Performs Banana TrickInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

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The New India News Service
reports from New Delhi “Grandhi Himakar is a magician
with a mission. Along with his trainer ‘Professor’ Vikram, he uses
magic to raise awareness on social subjects ranging from HIV/AIDS
to harmful consequences of superstitions.”

His “trainer”
‘Professor’ Vikram (can this title be any more qualified with
“quotation” ‘marks’?) brought him to the capital of India to
participate in the National Competition of Magicians. Young
Master Himakar won a national contest at three-years-old and
hooked up with the Professor.

His magic is often
mistaken for real magic by villagers. “Villagers are astonished
to see him perform the same tricks that local priests perform,”
said the Prof. Villagers are then told that it was just a trick
and there was no supernatural power behind it as claimed by those
godmen.”

As part of his public service, Master Himakar,
performs a traditional favorite in his act called “Folk Magic.
[Master] Himakar first mixes four differently coloured sands in a
bucket of water and then takes them out separately one after the
other — without getting them wet.”

The kid and the Prof
picked this trick because it is often used by “self-styled godmen
in the southern state resort to this act to claim supernatural
powers and then extract money from villagers.”

“When people
see Himakar perform the same trick, they realise that they were being
duped by the self-styled godmen,” Vikram said.

To raise
awareness on the AIDS threat, he first puts a fresh banana in a
bag and brings out a rotten one after casting a ‘spell’ on the
bag. In the second part of the act, he puts a fresh banana in the
bag after covering it with a condom, but this time the fruit remains
fresh. The act is followed up by a short speech on the benefits
of using a condom.

The Prof ends the story with the quiet hope his young charge can use these tricks in the competition.

We
have nothing meaningful to add to this story lest we seem more juvenile
than a four-year-old magician who is clearly doing noble work.

Read
the full article here:
http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEP20050923073200&Topic=0&Title=Nation&Page=P

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