The OG Jaadugar: Craziest magic tricks PC Sorcar and PC Sorcar Jr pulled off
Netflix’s Jaadugar pays tribute to PC Sorcar, India’s greatest magician who pulled off some classic tricks. We take a look back at the Sorcars' signature acts.
Now Jaadugar is a sports comedy centering on an amateur magician played by Jitendra Kumar, who you might remember from Panchayat and Kota Factory. The attire that his character "Magic Meenu" sports, along with the posters in his room, are a clear reference to magician PC Sorcar. Even one of the promotional posters for the movie has a hand-painted vintage feel to it, much like the posters of Sorcar's yesteryear magic shows.
Wearing a flashy turban with a featherhead on top and an equally flashy tunic, the ever-grinning PC Sorcar emulated the "jaadugar" image in Indian pop culture. As magic is also about showmanship, Sorcar ensured that his wardrobe was bright and fancy enough to raise eyebrows so much so that even his son PC Sorcar Jr ended up performing in the same getup.
In fact, the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Magician" was such a showman that he even died on stage. While leaving the stage after a show in Japan, the then-57-year-old succumbed to a sudden and fatal heart attack.
Performance magic might be losing its charm in modern times but his legacy lives on with some of the craziest tricks that he pulled off. The secrets behind these tricks are still the subject of much speculation because after all, "magicians never reveal their secrets".
Sawing a woman in half: It is quite common for even Western magicians to cut their assistants into half and then bring them back as a whole. As for PC Sorcar, his routine of buzz-sawing a woman was unique because of the mayhem it created among the masses.
The year was 1956 when the magician was touring London with even the BBC willing to broadcast live his performances. In one such show, Sorcar placed his assistant Dipty Dey in a box with her body in full view for the TV audiences.
But as soon as he put her in a trance and the saw touched her backbone, host Richard Dimbleby proved to be too weak-hearted and ended the broadcast by stepping in front of the camera. The British viewers were obviously confused and the BBC received multitudes of phone calls for closure. Did the magician just kill his assistant on live TV? Or was this just a publicity stunt? Who would have thought that an Indian magician would terrorise the West like this!
Thankfully, it was just a part of the trick and Dey survived the encounter in one piece. Initially, it seemed like the host's interference spoiled Sorcar's trick, but it only ended up giving him further attention.
The Water of India: A regular part of Sorcar's routine was "The Water of India". This involved him placing a jug or pot with water filled up to the brim. Sorcar would call people from the audience and ask them to empty the vessel but somehow it would never run out of water.
No matter how many tries, the container would be filled with water over and over. To make it look more convincing, the trickster used to not touch the container at all and place it on the floor.
In another world, Sorcar could have just ended water scarcity with this trick!
X-ray vision: Another simple yet enthralling trick was Sorcar possessing X-ray vision, one of the several tricks that was also carried forward by his son.
The trick was basically a reinterpretation of the "card guessing trick", with the magician blindfolding himself and asking his audience to scribble words and numbers on a blackboard.
Initially, Sorcar used to guess what was written but PC Sorcar Jr upped the game to new levels. For instance, he asked a man to scribble a series of random numbers and he ended up writing the very same numbers along with him in the very same minute (all while being blindfolded of course).
Adding another layer of difficulty, Sorcar Jr then asked his audience to write questions which he would answer in real time with his X-ray powers. So, when someone scribbled "What is your favourite colour?", the blindfolded magician hopped in and wrote, "I am colour blind", drawing laughter and cheers from his viewers.
Making Taj Mahal disappear: The one trick that made Sorcar Jr surpass even his father was the vanishing and reappearance of the Taj Mahal. As strange as it sounds, it is reported that he made the Agra monument disappear for over two minutes in 2000. Of course, there has to be a scientific reason behind it, with most observers stating that Sorcar Jr is a master of using the laws of light refraction (given that most of his vanishing tricks took place in broad daylight).
He continued the trend by making Kolkata's Victoria Memorial and a train coach at Bardhaman Junction in West Bengal disappear.
However, it seems like Sorcar Jr might have gotten some help from foreign influences as American illusionist David Copperfield has pulled off similar tricks in the past. Copperfield had made the Statue of Liberty vanish in thin air back in 1983. He did the same with an Orient Express dining car in 1991.
Regardless, the Taj Mahal trick has gone down as one of the most thrilling moments in the history of Indian magic.
So, while Jitendra Kumar's Jaadugar might not be quite an interesting watch, you can always go back to the OG Jaadugar of India and see what real magic looks like.