When Somraj Guha started performing simple magic tricks in 2009, there were quite a few embarrassing moments when his only willing audience — his family — caught his out and yanked the chain in no time. Today, the 28-year-old researcher at IIT-Madras is able to slip a much more refined version of those tricks across some of the smartest minds in the country. But magic isn’t merely about showmanship for him. For many stressed, young students at IIT-Madras, Somraj is the go-to person — every time someone’s experiment in the lab goes wrong or if someone just needs a boost in morale. All Somraj needs to do is pull out a deck of cards from his pocket or swing a coin into action. The most popular among his tricks on campus are the ones where he pulls out a coin from nowhere, moves spectacles without touching it (like The Mentalist!) and makes a finger ring disappear, only to retrieve it from somewhere else.
A researcher in Chemistry, Somraj, a native of Kolkata, started brushing up on his magic skills after he joined the institution in 2012. “I’m big on close-up magic because I find it very challenging. Mastering its tricks not only requires oodles of patience, practise and experience but also a great deal of showmanship. And that’s all about involving the audience in the act, without letting them catch you,” he says. But has he been caught so far? Somraj shakes his head cheekily, “Luckily not. There are of course people who start heckling me, especially in situations when boys cannot stand their girlfriends falling for my tricks (laughs). But they are never able to spot the trick even though some of them demand to examine the props I use,” he says.
He does admit, though, that there is a constant fear of getting caught. “Magic is all about fooling the audience and the only way to do that is by manipulating them. That means even if they catch your tricks, you have to keep your composure and behave as if you deliberately gave that away. You could later cover up the damage with a wittier trick at the end of the show,” he reveals. Having learned magic over the years from videos on Youtube and magicians he has befriended, in his free time, Somraj says that the audience is his best guru. “Only a paltry 30 per cent of magic is about skill. The rest is about manipulating your audience on a psychological level,” he adds.
The audience indeed is one resource that he has plenty of at IIT, where he is often invited to perform during events. That apart, he attends state and national level convocations on magic. He was recently felicitated by the Indian Magic Academy, Chennai and came second in the Zee Boomba Magic Convention 2015. Apart from learning and developing tricks in close-up magic, Somraj is also increasing his repertoire in mentalism. Ask him if magic has anything to do with the supernatural or spiritual, Somraj says it is more of science than anything else. “There are certain aspects of science unknown to a normal human being and magicians merely manipulate these facts,” he adds.