Seven street magicians on Saturday made Kochiites rediscover the seldom experienced states of awe and wonderment at the Street Magic Fest organised by District Tourism Promotion Council and Muthukadu Magic Academy.
The magic show began at the Durbar Hall ground and later the magicians performed at Marine Drive Walkway too. Rope tricks, magic numbers and Indian basket were the traditional items that mesmerised the crowd. The major aim of the magic fest was to provide financial support to magicians in the state.The fest will be held in Kozhikode on Sunday. An online directory of Indian magicians was also launched on Saturday, before the fest began.
Ernakulam District Collector P I Sheik Pareeth, Greater Cochin Development Authority Chairman N Venugopal, magician Gopinath Muthukadu, actor Captain Raju and director Kamal were also present at the venue.Renowned street magician of the state, Shamsudheen from Cherpulassery, was the star of the show with his great mango trick.
From a mango seed, Shamsudheen nurtured a mango tree and plucked the mangoes from the tree and gave them to the crowd. He also hypnotised his son who correctly told the numbers of the currency notes in the pockets of the people gathered there and thereby received huge applause and the prize money from the organisers. Street magician from Delhi Ashiq Ali performed tricks with playing cards. The other magicians who performed were Farooq from Rajasthan, Ace Mohammed from UP and Shemeem Khan from Ghaziabad. Director Kamal said the images of street magicians performing were deeply imprinted in his mind.
“That is the reason why I chose street magicians as the lead characters in my movies like ‘Unnikale Oru Kadha Parayam’ and ‘Vishnulokam’,” he said.“However, like any other art form which gets affected by commercialisation, street magic too is slowly vanishing. It is the responsibility of society to promote skilful art like street magic,” he added.