Mr Siegel, of the University of Honolulu, disputes that he told the young man that rewards were still available for anyone who mastered the rope trick, but either way the street magician decided to try to crack the mystery. At that point, while some magicians had managed the trick on a stage with the assumed assistance of hanging wires or some other help no one had done it outdoors.
I read the books, I spoke to the elders, and then in I did it for the first time. While his performance in outside Qutub Minar, a 12th-century minaret in south Delhi, may have been significant, a repeat of the trick two years later on the coast at Udupi in southern India became famous. Video recordings of the event are posted on the internet. Dr Lamont, who was among the 30, spectators that saw it, said: "Ishamuddin has a version of this trick and it's a good version.
He did more than anyone had done before. It's the best version and I am happy to say that I don't know how he does it. Another Indian magician, Tejaswi Shankar, whose father, also a performer, organised the event, lamented that the skills of Ishamuddin and others who performed at Udupi had not been better recognised. With events such as the Commonwealth Games to be hosted next year in Delhi, some have wondered why India has not done more to promote its traditional performers.
No rewards have ever been paid to Ishamuddin, despite him being generally recognised as the first performer of the rope trick. At his small but spotless home amid the narrow, dank alleyways, Ishamuddin took a video from a metal cupboard and pushed it into the player.
As his wife served cups of hot milky tea and a plate of raisins, Ishamuddin narrated over the performance of himself conjuring the rope from a basket and watching it rise 20ft into the air. Agonizing screams are heard from above. Soon, a leg falls on the ground, followed by an am, another leg, another arm.
Looking at this horrified audience, the conjurer reassures them that he will climb up the rope and check what went wrong at the top.
By the time the conjurer reaches the erect end of the rope, the boy reappears within the crowd, magically. The conjurer will then descent and the erect rope will become as limp as it was in the beginning. Some people believed that the part about a boy getting chopped to pieces is only a rumour generated by people to make the rope trick seem more lucrative.
There are others who dismiss the entire illusion as a hoax because they did not find convincing evidence on it. Magician, Jasper Makerlyne, however, tried to provide rational explanations for the success of the rope trick. He explains that the rope might actually have been bamboo with joints made to lock. According to him, since the rope would have been thirty feet, the sun would have stung the eyes of the audience which would explain the supposed disappearance of the boy.
It is believed that the blood-smeared limbs might actually have been of an animal which the troupes would have thrown at the audience while they were engrossed locating the boy.
There is another absolutely bizarre theory — that there was magic, but the rope trick never happened. It is remarkable to observe how the rope trick has been whisp ered to professional magicians through generations over centuries, and even though it has distorted and become less theatrical over time, yet the basic essence of it is intact. Then there were hoax photos and the myth was perpetuated. Dr Lamont also cast a sceptical eye over levitation, sword swallowing and body piercing, and demonstrated by stabbing a spike through his own tongue.
He said there was an enduring fascination with India among westerners. In the mundane world we have, and especially the less spiritual world, we hanker after something that tells us there is a bit more to life. We have an interest in something that gives some sense of spirituality.
Every second traveller I have met in India is on a quest for spirituality. On a hillock nearby, a small but lively crowd had collected — mostly village folk from the surrounding farmlands — and like most rustic folk, they were more interested in magic than in history. Come to think of it, so was I! The object of their interest was a man in a mustard-coloured robe, accompanied by a skinny young boy wearing nothing but a loincloth or langoti.
With the help of his acolyte, the man had been performing various feats of magic, to the amusement of the gathering. The magician claimed that he could invert the order of nature, and someone in the crowd challenged him to produce out of thin air, a bunch of coconuts, well knowing that coconuts grew by the sea and not in the Himalayan foothills. He now paid out the rope, which kept going up higher and higher until it disappeared in the mist, leaving only a short length in his hands.
He then told the crowd that as he was too heavy to climb the rope himself, he would ask the boy to do so. And handing the end of the rope to the boy, he told him to go ahead. At first the boy demurred, saying that if he fell from a great height, he would surely be killed.
0コメント