Monday, April 1 2002
Net of Magic by Lee Siegel
- Anjana BasuAnjana Basu taught English Literature, briefly, in Calcutta University. She writes poetry, stories, features in the local newspapers and in Cosmopolitan. She has had a book of short stories published by Orient Longman, India. The BBC had broadcast one of her short stories and her poems have featured in an anthology brought out by Penguin India. In America she has been published in The Wolfhead Quarterly, Gowanus, The Blue Moon Review, and Recursive Angel, to name a few.
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Book Name:Net of Magic
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Price: Rs. 295
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THE ILLUSION THAT IS INDIA
The book is almost as vast as the Indian subcontinent and peopled with a mass of outrageous and exotic characters. What it is, is a voyage through the lower depths of Indian magic. To the western world India has been synonymous with magic and mystery ever since the East India Company opened up the country. Though the best known illusion is still probably the Indian Rope Trick. Lee Siegel, an American scholar who discovered magic while buying a box of tricks for his son, guides us through the age-old practices of Indian magic with giving us revealing glimpses of the world of India’s lesser known magicians and street entertainers. Siegel is a professor of Indian relations in Hawaii and was a former member of the Brotherhood of Magicians.
Siegel’s encounters with magic take him to the slums of New Delhi where he finds the heirs of a remarkable magical tradition still flourishing. In Shadipur he is indoctrinated into the customs of street magic and takes a turn as a magician’s accomplice in the crowd, or shill. Most magicians, he says, are Muslims, because Allah is not easily swayed by illusion. However he also meets a band of Hindu magicians who claim descent from court magicians - in Calcutta, the unlikely capital of Indian magic. A dark city which paralyses him with its dreadful night.
Through Net of Magic, Siegel switches narrative styles and genres like a chameleon. The book is alternatively a travelogue, fiction, biography and ethnography. It teems with snake charmers, courtesans, pickpockets, tourists and fakirs - not to mention the shills and stooges. The cast of characters includes Naseeb, an itinerant street magician who acts as Siegel’s guide through the nether world of street magic; there is the Industrial Magician who is paid by a bank to advertise traveller’s cheques by making normal currency notes disappear; the Government Magician is part of the family planning programme and does a trick with condoms; P C Sorcar Senior and Junior, India’s most celebrated magicians make an appearance and there is the fictional Professor Bannerji who comes and goes in various guises and finally goes to ground in the flamboyant show world of Las Vegas.
The very absence of style is in itself an illusion. What are we actually reading? Is it fact is it fiction, is the fact fiction or the fiction fact? Life, after all, is about the way people cling to their illusions. Human beings need to be deceived, need to believe in something. And the Net of Magic weaves its spell very entertainingly.
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