BENGALURU: At a time when it is hard to understand what’s going on in the minds of people, here is 30-year-old Narpath Raman who makes that sound easy-peasy. From figuring out your phone’s passcode to revealing the name of the person you are thinking about, Raman is full of tricks and surprises. Raman, who stumped the cricketing legend MS Dhoni by revealing his first crush’s name, is now embarking on a new journey to introduce the first mentalist series on OTT.
“It will be a blend of fiction and non-fiction factors. I have been talking to the top OTT platforms for the last six months and the series could be a chat show or a documentary that explores the world of mind reading. I will try to be the pioneer in this format,” says Raman, who started mind reading after he quit his IT job in March 2013, much against his parent’s wish.
Interestingly, Bengaluru has opened an avenue for him to hone his skills. Although he is a mechanical engineering graduate, he ventured into being a ‘street mentalist’ to ‘educate’, ‘empower’ and ‘entertain’. “In 2013, I started performing magic with cards on the streets of Koramangala and Jayanagar. I used to wake up early in the morning and randomly approach people at shopping malls and read their minds and surprise them. I’ve been thrown out of malls several times, and from a cafe too, which equated my work to black magic,” says Raman, who draws inspiration from an English mentalist Derren Brown.
He worked and learnt the tricks of mind reading from extensively watching the videos of different mind readers and mentalists across the globe. He spent two years performing in the streets of Bengaluru and later went on to pursue this as a serious business. “My first mind-reading show was at Rangasthala Auditorium at MG Road. To my surprise, there were 140 people who turned up for the show, although the seating capacity was just 130,” says Raman who then went on to perform at cafes, corporate offices and celebrity shows. Some of the celebrities he stunned using his mind-reading skills are actors Sai Pallavi, Gouri Kishan and Ritu Varma.
Raman also started mind-reading tutorials when the lockdown set-in due to the pandemic. “Earlier, I shied away from teaching mind reading to people because these are tricks of the trade. But with social gatherings restricted during the lockdown, I felt that I had to think outside the box,” says Raman, who also has a YouTube channel by the name ‘The next door mind reader’.
While Raman has encountered several naysayers along the way, he feels that a mentalist is an actor who plays the role of a mentalist. “Beyond that, it’s upto the people to decide if they want to believe in it or not,” says Raman.