P C Sorcar goes for role revearsal, woman to slice him into two

P C Sorcar goes for role revearsal, woman to slice him into two
RESHMA PATIL

PUNE, AUG 7: Women's lib and Harry Potter have finally cast their spell on eight generations of Hindustani Sorcar blood. P C Sorcar (Junior) has a new relative. The British Potter wizard just "happens to be my cousin".

His elephant and lions are snoozing at home in Calcutta but for the first time in Maharashtra, Sorcar will suffer a sword attack from the very woman he has methodically sliced into two 400 times a year, on stage.

"Women, especially my mother-in-law, loves the sight of a wife chopping her husband into half," the master illusionist winks, whispering that "women's lib" compelled this reversal of traditional roles. And "ladies make better magicians".

Conjuring a matchbox out of nowhere hours before his first show in Pune after six years on Monday, Prodip Chandra Sorcar told The Indian Express at the "simplest person to baffle is probably the President of the country".

"The more educated an adult the more gullible he is," and Sorcar junior, who categorises his audiences into the enlightened and the innocent, believes children are his biggest challenge and so "difficult to control".

Whipping together a magic potion of hypnosis and illusions, Sorcar seriously admits that just before a show he tells himself that "I create hypnotic effects and divert the attention of audiences not to baffle or cheat, but for the cause of entertainment".

The Indrajal (Sanskrit for magic) entertainer who competes with MTV and satellite television, insists that audiences have not dipped, for reality is boring. "We only pretend to be magicians. The quality of our work depends on the dreams people dream. If people of a locale are culturally mediocre, we cannot offer good magic," he said.

Caustic criticism of hocus-pocus, supernatural, ghosts and mantras from even urban audiences have not diminished the tricks up his sleeve. This illusionist who once turned baby elephants into horses and girls into pythons, is emphatic that "today's magic is yesterday's science...a scientific theatrical representation". Steven Spielberg, Faust and Walt Disney are all "professional magicians" to him. Helped along by "fakes" getting away with advertisements claiming to be P C Sorcar himself.

And magic will survive...Sorcar junior has his "fingers crossed" that the family tradition will be carried forward through daughters Maneka, Moubani and Mumtaz, who are yet to perform on stage.

"Greasepaint is a curse. Once you apply it, it never comes off."

No elephant or lions. Only pigeons, ducks...and a satellite.

Nine hundred bewitched Puneites beginning Monday, will witness Insat I's (1971) first showbiz take off from the Tilak Smarak Mandir stage. Enter a "mechanic" for an astronaut, travelling through an atom dividing machine. Disintegrated into energy, this astronaut will travel faster than light, repair the satellite malfunction and land on earth as good old mass. In 15 minutes. The eight special additions for the P C Sorcar (junior) show, keeping with contemporary tastes, promise a futuristic rendezvous with space, time and the universe, helped along by 12 traditional jadu girls and 70 tons of equipment fresh from a charity performance in Chadka, West Bengal.